The Plantation Garden - Italianate terraces Cosseyware

Image: © Evelyn Simak Taken: 13 Jun 2018

At the southern end of the garden, these can be walked up where a path continues at a higher level. Like all other walls in the garden, the walls of the terraces > https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5807833 contain many examples of Cosseyware. The upper two terracotta tiles with shields of arms depicted here show arms belonging to the Amherst, Daniel, Tyssen and Mitford families and were perhaps commissioned by William Amhurst Tyssen-Amherst of Foulden Hall, Didlington, who married Margaret Mitford in 1856, and became MP for Norfolk in the 1880s. Gunton Bros perhaps made this tile for when the hall was enlarged, as they are documented to have made other heraldic tiles, for instance for the Bedingfield family at Oxburgh Hall and which can also be found in the garden. From the 1830s to 1915, George Gunton and from 1868 onwards his sons William and George, made a range of ornamental bricks which they called Cosseyware, at their brickyard in Costessey (pronounced Cossey). Among a number of brickyards in the area, the Guntons' perhaps had the greatest effect on Norwich housebuilding in that two of Norwich's foremost architects, Edward Boardman and George Skipper, both used Cosseyware in their buildings.

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