Ancient ancestry and landscape with the beaters on Le Strange Estate shoot
By Nigel Housden.
NORTH Norfolk has been my home for over 25 years and I am just about entering the period when qualification as a ‘local’ is being achieved, although I do have family roots in the county. Even after a quarter of a century, the Norfolk landscape and countryside has an ability to surprise and confound expectations. And having spent significant time during these years, walking, cycling, on photographic commissions and generally being immersed within the rural area, I thought I had enjoyed everything the county could offer, as someone who has a deep affection for wildlife and habitats.
That was until I went out with the beaters on a day’s driven shooting held on the Le Strange Estate, barely two miles from the coastal tides of The Wash.
Hunstanton Hall was the ancestral home of the L’Estrange family. There is some debate around the earliest origins of L’Estrange; one source has Guy L’Estrange arriving with William the Conqueror as an officer, subsequently granted lands in Norfolk.
