The Hall provides holiday cottage accommodation, a restaurant café, a farm and gift shop and has garden tours.

He says he was a wealthy man who owned Barton House in Cirencester, Gloucestershire and in 1647 stood for election to Parliament.

After his interests in some iron works in the Forest of Dean foundered he decided to move to Norfolk and bought from Edmund Britiffe the Wiveton Estate.

In his will which was proved in 1661 John left the Wiveton estate to her and other property in Cley and Blakeney to his son Thomas.

There is a death notice in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” which says that Ann Fleming died at Wiveton Hall.

He was educated at the school in High Street, Walsingham[15] and when he inherited the hall at the age of 20 he became a farmer cultivating 400 acres of the estate.

He did not sell it however and instead for the next fourteen years he leased the property sometimes renting the house and farm separately.

[17] The 1896 Kelly Directory shows that Herbert Ward, the African explorer, was the tenant of the Hall at about the same time.

In 1899 Stephen Burroughs invited an agricultural journalist to visit the farm and a detailed description of the place was published in the newspaper which can be read at this reference.

In 1903[20] both the hall and the farm were sold to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Francis Archibald Watson-Kennedy (1856-1935).

He joined the Black Watch in 1874 and served in Egypt in 1882-1884, the Sudan 1884 - 1885, the Nile Expedition, and South Africa.

In 1886 she married the extremely wealthy yachtsman Sidney Clemens Watson who had been left a fortune by his father.

They commissioned the famous architect Sir Guy Dawber to build the West Wing of Wiveton Hall.

The structure was applauded by the architectural community at the time and the drawing (which is shown) was featured in several of their Journals.

It was then inherited by their grandson Desmond MacCarthy but as he was only 15 at the time his mother Chloe ran the farm until he could manage.