Hidden gem brought back to full glory

Earlham Hall has recently undergone extensive resorations conducted by the UEA. The hall is home to the UEA's Law School. Gareth Thomas, Director of Law CLinic, Karen Morely, faculty Manager and Professor Peter Kunzlik, Head of Law School.

ROWAN MANTELL. Thursday, June 5, 2014 3:59 PM

Although it sits in one of Norwichs public parks, many passers-by barely notice historic Earlham Hall, half-hidden by trees. For three years it has been shrouded in sheeting and scaffolding too, but now a remarkable restoration is complete writes ROWAN MANTELL.

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Step inside Earlham Hall from the gardens and you are entering a country mansion. Surrounded by parkland it has the hushed, polished feel of a stately home or country house hotel. But from October it will once again be alive with hundreds of students, flowing from classrooms to common rooms and the lecture hall to admin offices.

It is the oldest part of the University of East Anglia, and home to its law school. But centuries before it was a university department in a municipal park, its elegant arched elevations and tall star-topped chimneys, were a lavish family home for the landed gentry.

The huge oaked-panelled, ornately-ceilinged great hall was at the historic heart of the house and it is beside its sturdy southern door that, three years ago, the wall began bowing and cracking and an immediate emergency evacuation was ordered.

That could have been the end of Earlham Hall, home to generations of the remarkable Gurney family, but this summer the law department is moving back into the three floors and almost innumerable corridors, staircases and rooms, after more than 8m-worth of restoration.

The 18th century books are back in the library. Undergraduate and graduate students each have their own large and ornate common rooms, which were once alive with the rustle of rich fabrics, rattle of fine china and chatter of Norfolk high society. On the top floor, bedrooms and dressing rooms, nurseries and storerooms, are filling up with the desks, filing cabinets and bookshelves of academic offices.

Three years after it looked as if the history of this hall, half-hidden among the trees of a Norwich public park, could be over, the beautiful listed building has been revitalised.

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Hidden gem brought back to full glory