Welcome to Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk.
As you can see there's a huge building project going on here at the moment
but we are still open for visitors.
I'm going to take you inside and show
you some of the rooms that are on display
and then I'll take you behind the scenes
to show you some of the work that's
going on underneath the scaffolding.
Oxburgh Hall was built around 1482
by Sir Edmund Bedingfeld
who had inherited the Oxburgh estate
in 1476
and the Bedingfeld family have lived here ever since.
In the house at the moment we have an exhibition that we've called "Endurance"
that looks at the ups and downs of the property's history
through the eyes of key characters from the family.
So i'm going to take you inside now to
have a look.
This is the first room you'll encounter
as a visitor to Oxburgh Hall.
It's normally shown as a dining room but
as part of the "Endurance" exhibition
we're focusing on Sir Henry Bedingfeld.
Sir Henry was a great favourite in the Tudor court
and was a strong supporter of Mary I
When Mary was on the throne she asked Sir Henry to keep Princess Elizabeth in captivity
so when Elizabeth became Queen this became an issue for Sir Henry.
In 1559 Queen Elizabeth I issued the act of uniformity
which outlawed Catholic Mass.
Sir Henry Bedingfeld refused to sign the
act and this meant a significant decline
in fortunes for the Bedingfeld family
from that point onwards.
Oxburgh Hall was put up for sale in 1951
together with most of its contents.
Sybil, dowager Lady Bedingfeld, her
daughter and her niece
bought it and she gave it to the
National Trust in 1952.
We continue to care for it but today it
needs some special attention
so I'd really like to show you what we're doing.
We're spending just over £6 million on a major conservation project
to repair the roof the dormer windows and the chimneys here at Oxburgh Hall.
As you can see, we're well into the project
and getting stuck into the work we need to do
but the project is going to run until autumn 2021.
It's a really exciting once-in-a-generation opportunity
for us to access these areas that you can see behind me.
We are going to be moving all across this roofscape and tackling any decay
and problems where we find them
in order to safeguard the future of this
magnificent building.
It's an amazing feeling to be up here
with the roof stripped off,
it's a view that not many people will get,
and it's a real treat for us to be able to come up here every day and explore it.
We're in the King's Room now and ordinarily this would be presented as a high status bed chamber
but as you can see it's also affected by our roof project.
We're going to be doing major works to the window on this side of the room
so we've had to build this tent around the window
so that when the work happens
all the dust is contained within it and
doesn't spoil the room.
Some of the pieces of furniture in the
space were so big
that we couldn't manoeuvre them down the little staircases
so we've had to box them in in situ whilst the work happens.
One thing that visitors might know about this room is that it gives access to Oxburgh's Priest's Hole
which is just through a door behind me.
it's a really small confined space
and with coronavirus restrictions in place I can't go in there with the camera operator
so the camera is going to go in without me whilst I tell you about it.
During the later years of Elizabeth I reign
she came down really hard on Catholics.
Not only had she outlawed Mass but she
imposed fines and restrictions on them
and it was illegal for English Catholic priests to be in the country.
So if you harboured a priest or there
was a priest in your neighborhood
and you were a Catholic, you needed somewhere to hide them
in the event that your house was searched.
The one here at Oxburgh Hall was created we think in around 1590
and it was created in a void underneath Oxburgh's garderobe
Which is its loo.
I hope you've enjoyed what we've shown
you here at Oxburgh today.
We are open, do come and visit, we're looking forward to welcoming you.
Without your support we just wouldn't be able to do this kind of work
or deliver projects on the scale of the roof project at Oxburgh
so thank you very much.
