Blickling Hall. Blickling Hall is a stately home which is part of the Blickling estate. It is located in the village of Blickling north of Aylsham in Norfolk, England and has been in the care of the National Trust since 1940. In the 15th century, Blickling was in the possession of Sir John Fastolf of Caister in Norfolk, who made a fortune in the Hundred Years' War, and whose coat of arms is still on display there. Later, the property was in the possession of the Boleyn family, and home to Thomas Boleyn, later Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife Elizabeth between 1499 and 1505. Although the exact birth dates of their children are unknown, historians including Eric Ives are confident that all three surviving children were likely born at Blickling-Mary in about 1500, Anne in about 1501, and George in about 1504. A statue and portrait of Anne may be found at Blickling Estate which carry the inscription, Anna Bolena hic nata 1507, based on earlier scholarship which assigned Anne a year of birth of 1507. The house of Blickling seen today was built on the ruins of the old Boleyn property in the reign of James I, by Sir Henry Hobart, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and 1st Baronet, who bought Blickling from Robert Clere in 1616. The architect of Hatfield House, Robert Lyminge, is credited with the design of the current structure. The Lord Chief Justice married Dorothy, the daughter of Sir Robert Bell of Beaupre Hall, Outwell / Upwell, Norfolk, Speaker of the House of Commons 1572-1576. A grand display of heraldic material is present throughout the estate. In 1698 the estate passed down Sir John Hobart, the 5th Baronet who was created Earl of Buckinghamshire in 1746. He was responsible for creating the ha-ha and building the Doric Temple in the grounds, as well as extending the park by the purchase of adjacent land. His son the second earl remodelled the hall between 1765 and 1785. Although the estate then passed down to his youngest daughter Caroline, who was married to Lord Suffield, the couple died childless and it thus devolved to Caroline's nephew William Kerr, the 8th Marquess of Lothian, who remodelled the west front. It thereafter passed down in the Kerr family. After the death of Philip Kerr, 11th Marquess of Lothian in December 1940, the Blickling estate passed into the care of the National Trust as part of his bequest. During World War II the house was requisitioned and served as the Officers' Mess of nearby RAF Oulton. It was at this time that the house and its estate passed to The National Trust, under the terms of the Country Houses Scheme. RAF servicemen and women were billeted within the grounds in Nissen huts, whilst RAF Officers were housed within Blickling itself. The adjacent lake was used by RAF service personnel to practice dinghy drills during the Second World War. The National Trust has created the RAF Oulton Museum on site in tribute to the RAF pilots and ground crew who served in the Second World War, and this may be visited for no additional entrance fee. At the end of the war, the house was de-requisitioned. The National Trust again let it to tenants until 1960, when the Trust began the work to restore the house to a style reflecting its history. The house and grounds were opened to the public in 1962 and remain open under the name of Blickling Estate. In 2015 the National Trust marked the 75th anniversary of Philip Kerr's death with a celebration of his life and times. Work began in October 2015 to introduce a heat pump system, using residual warmth from the lake. A raft of tubes, filled with a plant-based glycol, would be sunk into the lake and the liquid pumped into the main boiler-room for conversion to a higher temperature to heat the hall and west wing of the building. The new system would allow the removal of two oil tanks, and produce an annual saving of more than 25,000 litres of oil, and E16,000. The library at Blickling Estate contains one of the most historically significant collections of manuscripts and books in England. The library's estimated 13,000 to 14,000 volumes span 146 linear feet. The core collection was formed by Sir Richard Ellys, a cousin of the Hobarts of Blickling.The most important manuscript associated with the house is the Blickling Homilies, which is one of the earliest extant examples of English vernacular homiletic writings. The Blickling homilies were first edited and translated in the 19th century by Richard Morris, whose work is still considered definitive. A more recent translation and edition by Richard J. Kelly was widely panned by scholars and critics upon publication.