A historic hall's links with China are to be explored during a night looking at the Boxer Rebellion and a collection of artefacts from the Far East
Raynham Hall is hosting the one-man show Chinese Boxing, based on the Boxer Rebellion and written and performed by Norfolk actor and writer Mark Kitto.
The November 25 evening event will also include a tour of the Chinese artefacts found at the hall, which has close links with the country.
The event is called North Norfolk’s Rare China Connection.
The hall, home of the Townshend family, has many connections to China, including a 4,000-piece collection of armorial plates specially commissioned by the third Viscount Townshend.
There is also furniture collected by Roger, a grandson of the second Viscount ‘Turnip’ Townshend, who travelled to China on his uncle’s ship The Augusta in the late 18th Century.
But the most direct and recent China connection is the hall's current occupant, Lady Townshend.
She spent her childhood in Peking in the diplomatic quarter, known as The Legations, in the early days of the Communist regime in the 1950s.
Her family purchased the items people can view on a tour of the hall before the evening’s entertainment, a performance of the one-man play Chinese Boxing by Mr Kitto.
Lady Tonwshend’s childhood home was next door to the official residence of Sir Claude MacDonald, British ambassador at the time of the Boxer Uprising in 1900 and the lead character in the play.
The play begins as a lecture to a local Royal Asiatic Society given by Sir Claude, who commanded the defence of the Legations when they were besieged by the Boxers’ peasant rebel army.
After the play, Mr Kitto will host a question and answer session where he will share some of the moments he spent ‘engaged in intimate co-operation and intense conflict with the Chinese Communist Party’, while he lived and worked in the country for 18 years.
The evening begins with a personal tour led by Lady Townshend of the hall’s China collection, followed by the presentation in the marble hall.
Tickets via www.ticketsource.co.uk For more about the show go to www.chineseboxing.co.uk and for Raynham Hall, www.raynhamhall.com
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