I remember as a young child with my brother sat in the back of our parent’s car as they took us on a weekly car journey through Hull to visit our Grandparents who lived in the small coastal village of Aldbrough, on the east coast, situated between the seaside villages of Hornsea to the North and Withernsea to the South.

On route we would drive through the village of Sproatley and see this massive house on the left called Burton Constable Hall. Some sixty years later and I have just made my first visit to look around the grounds and surrounding parkland.

We parked the car in the car park at about 11.30am and with the dogs called in to the reception area to pay and have a look round. It was mid-March and the house was still closed, but the coffee shop was open. It was a beautiful sunny day although you still needed a light jacket on to give some protection from the cool wind.

The house is set in over 300 acres of parkland so with map in hand we found our bearings and had a very pleasant hour or so walking around the grounds before making our way back to the courtyard café for a lovely late brunch, where we sat outside watching the Archers practising their sport in front of the main hall.

Records show that the medieval system of farming called ‘ridge and furrow’ was used during the Middle Ages at Burton Constable, which was typical of the open field system. By 1517 a deer park was created.

The landscape architect Lancelot Capability Brown was commissioned to transform the parkland between 1772 - 1782 which included landscaping the fishponds into two lakes separated by a bridge. He also planted many of the tree clumps on the parkland as well as ha-ha’s.

Much restoration work has been carried out since 1999 which has involved planting thousands of trees to re-create the tree clumps originally started by Capability Brown as well as replenishing the avenues to both the southern and western aspects of the hall. Many of the surviving ‘ha-ha’s’ have been restored along with work to the beautiful Capability Brown bridge.

We will definitely be coming back in a few weeks’ time to have a look around the hall and another walk around the grounds.