Influential Owners
The Blickling Estate, and its owners, were very influential in their time. It was Lord Lothian who persuaded Churchill to write the historic letter to Roosevelt which for the first time gave the Americans an unequivocal statement of Britain's depleted military strength.
At a daringly timed conference in Washington (1940), Lothian delivered a similar message to the American public which was to be his last during his final visit to America.
Watch his speech here.
Those who once owned Blickling
The manor of Blickling is recorded in the Domesday Book. Its owners have included Sir John Fastolf and Geoffrey Boleyn, grandfather of Anne Boleyn, the ill-fated wife of Henry VIII.
The present red-brick mansion was built 1616-24 by Robert Lyminge (the architect of Hatfield) for Sir Henry Hobart, 1st Baronet, Lord Chief Justice to James I.
Little is known about the long tenure of Lady Caroline Suffield and her husband. Despite inheriting Blickling in 1793, it wasn't until the late 1820s that she made her mark on the house.
