Hengrave Hall is a Grade I listed Tudor era manor house in Hengrave near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, England and was the seat of the Kitson and Gage families 1525–1887. Both families were Roman Catholic recusants.
The chapel contains 21 lights of Flemish glass commissioned by Kitson and installed in 1538, depicting salvation history from the creation of the world to the Last Judgment. This is the only collection of pre-Reformation glass that has remained in situ in a domestic chapel anywhere in England. In the dining room is a Jacobean era symbolic painting over the fireplace that defies interpretation, bearing the legend 'obsta principiis, post fumum flamma
The house was altered by the Gage family in 1775. The outer court and the east wing were demolished, and the moat was filled in. Alterations on the front of the house were begun but never completed, and Sir John Wood attempted to restore the interior of the house to its original Tudor appearance in 1899. He rebuilt the east wing and re-panelled most of the house in oak. One room, the Oriel Chamber, retains its original seventeenth-century paneling, in which is embedded a portrait of James II painted by William Wissing in 1675. It is thought that some of the original panelling found its way to the Gage's townhouse in Bury St. Edmunds, now the Farmers' Club in Northgate Street. The ornate windows and mouldings at the front of the building feature on the coverpiece on the Suffolk edition of Nikolaus Pevsner Buildings of England.
During the Stour Valley anti-popery riots of 1642, Sir William Spring, Penelope Darcy's cousin, was ordered by Parliament to search the house, where it was thought arms for a Catholic insurrection were being stored. The Jesuit William Wright was arrested at Hengrave Hall.
King James II visited Hengrave throughout the 1670s and attended the wedding of William Gage and Charlotte Bond in 1670. The lawyer and antiquarian John Gage was the brother of William Gage, 7th Baronet, and wrote 'The History and Antiquities of Hengrave in Suffolk' in 1822. It is said that the greengage was named after a tree first grown in England at Hengrave, but the tree was actually named after the Viscounts Gage of Firle, Sussex who were cousins of the Hengrave Gages.
Hengrave eventually passed down the female Kitson line, and on the death of Elizabeth Kitson in 1628 the music collections and the house was inherited by her daughter Mary Darcy, who had married Thomas Darcy, 1st Earl Rivers. Her granddaughter Penelope Darcy's married Sir John Gage, 1st Baronet, but the house remained her property. She married again in 1642 to Sir William Hervey. The house became home to a wide range of catholic relatives as there was a lot of anti-catholic hatred. Riots had attacked properties in the south and the family had been fined £20 a month for not attending church. Penelope passed the house not to her first husband's heir but their third son Sir Edward Gage, 1st Baronet who became a baronet.
The house was used as a refuge by the English Augustinian Canonesses of Bruges from 1794 to 1802, led by their Prioress Mother Mary More. The Canonesses ran a school. In 1887, on the death of Lady Henrietta Gage, the house was bought by John Lysaght, one of the founders of the Australian steel industry. In 1895 it was bought by Sir John Wood, and on his death sold to the Religious of the Assumption, who ran a convent school until 1974.
On 14 September 1974 the Assumptionists founded the ecumenical Hengrave Community of Reconciliation, originally a group of families of different Christian denominations. Later, the Community came to consist of long-term members, who remained in the Community for up to seven years, and short-term members, many of whom came from countries in Central and Eastern Europe for periods ranging from one year to three months. Although strongly inspired by other ecumenical communities like Taizé and the Iona Community, the Hengrave Community had a distinctive character owing to the Sisters' continued presence. The Hengrave Community was dissolved in September 2005, closing its Christian and conference centre at the site, after failing to fund £250,000 for improvements. Mounting debts force Hengrave Hall to close, Bury Free Press, 20 May 2005 The current owner of the hall is David Harris who has submitted plans to convert the existing building into private housing. It is currently used for wedding receptions and other functions.
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