Hardwick House

Hardwick House was a manor house near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, owned by Sir Robert Drury, Speaker of the House of Commons, of Hawstead Place. It was subsequently purchased in the seventeenth century by Royalist Robert Cullum, a former Sheriff of London. Experts in Suffolk county history as well as noted authorities in antiquarian and botanical matters, the Cullum family of eight successive baronets authored works on the county and its fauna and flora. Sir Thomas Gery Cullum, a Charterhouse graduate, medical doctor and member of the Royal Academy and the Linnean Society, was a well-regarded author on science and botany.

Lords of the manor of Hardwick, the Cullum family lived at Hardwick House for almost three centuries, from 1656 until the 1920s, producing a line of baronets who were physicians, botanists, antiquarians, authors, horticulturalists, ministers and two of whom served as Bath King of Arms for the Order of the Bath for nearly 60 years. Ultimately, the Cullum family estate was sold during the Depression of the 1920s when the last family member died without direct heir, and it was later dismantled for building materials in 1926-1927.

More information

Comments Statistics

| | Public