For 2026, we have an exciting calendar of events planned that showcase the best of our county. Including talks by Suffolk-based authors, visits to unique and unusual heritage attractions, exclusive access to private houses, and engaging activities with experts in their field who call Suffolk home – there is something for everyone. Find out more below, including links on how to book.
A Private Tour of Columbine Hall, a historic moated manor house, restored by the owner, with beautiful landscaped gardens
On Wednesday 16th September, from 2.30pm to 5pm, join us for a private tour of Columbine Hall and its beautiful landscaped gardens, followed by afternoon tea.
Hew Stevenson and his late wife, Leslie Geddes-Brown, bought Columbine Hall in 1993 and it has been a labour of love over more than 30 years in restoring the house, the gardens and the landscape. Unlike National Trust houses, Columbine Hall is constantly evolving. The furniture in the house changes and the gardens have new schemes and new plants every year.
Kate Elliott came straight from school to become gardener at Columbine Hall in 1997 when she was sixteen. The garden was then in its infancy and she has developed it so well it has been awarded a star in The Good Gardens Guide. In 2009 Kate was one of the three shortlisted in Horticulture Week’s Professional Gardener of the Year Awards for her colour-themed walled vegetable garden project at Columbine. She is a member of the Professional Gardeners’ Guild and the Institute of Horticulture.
- Columbine Hall, Stowupland, Stowmarket, Suffolk, IP14 4AT
- Wednesday 16th September, 2.30pm to 5pm, to include a tour of the manor house and grounds, followed by afternoon tea.
- Tickets: £30 non members. Please book your ticket in advance.
THE SCAPEGOAT – The Brilliant Brief Life of the Duke of Buckingham, a talk by prize-winning author, Lucy Hughes-Hallett,
Followed by a Drinks Reception
- John Lambton Rooms, National Horseracing Museum, Newmarket, CB8 8EP
- Arrival from 5.45pm, talk at 6pm, drinks reception 7pm-8pm
- Tickets £40 non-members,
- Please book your ticket in advance.
On Wednesday 14th October at 6pm, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize and the Costa Biography of the Year Award, will give a fascinating talk on the extraordinary story of the meteoric rise and fall of King James I’s favourite, George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham.
With a novelist’s touch, Lucy transports us into a courtly world of masques and dancing, exquisite clothes, the art of Rubens and Van Dyck, gender-fluidity, brutal warfare and appallingly rudimentary medicine. These were dangerous and complicated times, an era where witch hunts coexisted with the beginnings of empirical science. Buckingham stood at its centre until his spectacular fall from grace.
Ranging from tempestuous scenes in Parliament to the emergent political force of public opinion, The Scapegoat is a rich and compelling story about sex, misogyny, diplomacy and power, with deep resonance for today’s world. Hughes-Hallett’s extraordinary recreation of the period delves into love, war-fever and pacifism in a society on the brink of cataclysmic change.
