Stanfield Hall - A Beautiful Home With A Dark History!

Stanfield Hall is a 35-acre estate located in Wymondham, Norfolk, England. While the moated mansion may look like an idyllic place to live, the property has a very dark past…

The History Of Stanfield Hall

The ownership of Stanfield Hall can be traced back to 1249 when the first known reference to the property stated that it was owned by Richard Curson who had his house and chapel on the site.

Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the property was owned by the Curson family, then later the de Mouton and de Salle families, and then in 1448, it was purchased by the Appleyard family.

Sir Nicholas Appleyard, who was born in 1470, twenty-two years after his family purchased the property, was knighted by the Earl of Surrey in 1513 after the Battle of Flodden. The Battle of Flodden was a fight between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland after the Scottish invaded England, ending in an English victory.

From 1549 the property would change hands again several times, this included ownership by Sir John Rosbart, who was good friends with Queen Elizabeth I, James Altham Esquire, Baron of the Exchequer, and Lord Thomas Richardson, a judge and politician who sat in the House of Commons.

However, it wasn’t until 1792 that the Rev George Preston rebuilt the property as it is today, designed by William Wilkin, a successful local builder.

The bricks for the construction of the new Stanfield Hall were carted from Holkham, some forty miles away. While the staircase was said to have cost £1,000, the total build cost was estimated to be £7,000, the equivalent of £1.3 million today.

The grave of Rev George Preston is located in the church at Beeston St Lawrence, about 20 miles from Stanfield Hall.

In 1838, Isaac Jermy purchased Stanfield Hall at auction, Isaac Jermy, and his son, also called Isaac, would be murdered on the property ten years later…

The Stanfield Hall Murders

The Murders at Stanfield Hall was a notorious Victorian-era double murder that took place on November 28th, 1848, when Isaac Jermy and his son Isaac, were shot and killed on the porch and in the hallway of the mansion by James Bloomfield Rush.

James Bloomfield Rush was a tenant of the Stanfield Hall estate who had a dispute over money with Isaac Jermy. Around 8 pm on the evening of November 28th, James Blomfield Rush shot Isaac Jermy through the chest on the porch before heading inside and shooting his son Isaac in the hallway, also in the chest. Both father and son died from their gunshot wounds.

The porch where Isaac Jermy was shot.

After shooting the father and son, James Bloomfield Rush made his way further into the property where he stumbled across Mrs Jermy and a female servant, Eliza Chastney. He then fired two shots, hitting Mrs. Jermy in the arm and Eliza in the leg, both hit the ground, however, both women managed to survive the shooting.

After shooting the women, James Bloomfield Rush made his escape, however, he was spotted by a number of other staff while doing so. The police in Norwich were called, they reached the scene just after midnight, by the early morning, James Bloomfield Rush was arrested at his home on the Stanfiled Hall estate.

Rush would later defend himself in court, with a closing statement that lasted 14 hours, however, it took the jury only ten minutes to come to a desicion. Guilty.

In 1849, Rush was hanged on the bridge outside Norwich Castle before being buried on the grounds. His hanging, which was attended by 15,000 people including the author Charles Dickens, was carried out by William Calcraft, a prolific British executioner who is thought to have carried out around 450 executions.

The bridge at Norwich Castle where Rush was hanged.

A death mask was made of Rush’s head that was to be studied by phrenologists, a pseudoscience that involves the measurement of bumps on the skull to predict mental traits such as criminality. A waxwork of Rush was also displayed in the Chamber of Horrors of Madame Tussauds in London from 1849 to 1971.

Stanfield Hall In More Recent Times

After the Stanfield Hall murders in 1848, the property was purchased by Col. Reginald Thorsby Gwyn. In the decades after several tenants lived in the property, and at one time the property was even left empty.

In 1947, in the period after WWII, Stanfield Hall was in a bad state with many repairs and upgrades required. Dr Harold Hudson purchased the estate for £25,475, the equivalent of about £825,000 today. The property was completely refurbished by Dr Hudson, including a mains electricity supply to the mansion and other buildings on the estate.

Dr Hudson owned the property for almost forty years before being sold to the Stearn family in 1983, it was then sold again in 2004 for £1.5 million. The property went back on the market in 2023 with an asking price of £5 million (about $6.3 million USD).