Special wedding memories of The Depperhaugh

So ahead of the couple’s 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday their daughter Clare Burgess had the idea of taking her family back to The Depperhaugh, in Hoxne, Suffolk, to re-shoot all the photographs in the magnificent gardens where the wedding reception had been held in 1978. The former 19th century admiral’s house had been the family home of her mother’s parents, Mavis and John White, who ran what was quaintly referred to in the EDP wedding report of the day as a “country home for the retired”.

Joining Miss Burgess and her parents back at The Depperhaugh, now run as a nursing home by Kingsley Healthcare, were her mother’s sisters Sarah White, Kate White and Anne White. For one of the shots, Miss Burgess, 30, of Sunnyfields, Lowestoft, ushered her father, a carpenter, and mother, a treasury and payroll administrator, into exactly the same position in front of a timeless backdrop of trees.

She said: “The idea of recreating the pictures came out of a conversation with my mum. It started about how we were going to celebrate our 30th and 60th birthdays, which were both in September, and moved on to what we were going to do for my parents’ 40th anniversary. “Mum had me after my grandparents sold The Depperhaugh so I never got to see it. However, she and my aunts have always talked fondly about their former home and all the dogs they had there. “My grandparents were really caring people and proud of what they did there.

My nan only died in 2015 and some of her former staff at The Depperhaugh came to her funeral.” Miss Burgess said they had great fun on the photoshoot and it brought back lots of memories for her mother and aunts. She said: “The family lived in the coachhouse, next to the main building. They were excited to rediscover their old bedrooms and, outside, the structure of their old greenhouse.”