The Octagon

The Octagon is a garden building dating from around 1640, constructed for Sir Hamon Le Strange, the 3rd Baronet. It is possibly designed by William Edge, a stonemason who worked for Sir Roger Townshend at Raynham Hall. The building is made of squared, coursed carstone with galletting, featuring cut stone details and rubble brick, and it has a 20th-century flat roof made of temporary materials.

The structure is octagonal in shape and consists of a single storey with a classical frontispiece. The entrance, made of cut stone, occupies an entire bay and includes a stone plinth and smooth drafted rustication above. The central arched doorcase has a simple architrave surround with a central voussoir keystone, topped by a more elaborately moulded closed pediment with a modillion cornice and console brackets. The entrance currently has a temporary boarded door.

Rustication continues into the adjoining bays, which feature either blocked or open mullioned and transomed cross windows, each with pediments and rusticated surrounds made of either cut stone or chamfered brick, originally stuccoed but now partly exposed. The building has smooth rusticated quoins at the corners and a battlemented parapet with a stone string course and copings.

It is said that The Octagon was built to help reduce the noise of Sir Hamon's violin playing from Hunstanton Hall. H.M. Colvin described it as "a notable reflection of the Court style of Inigo Jones in a remote country setting."