Layer Marney Tower in Essex

Layer Marney Tower is an incomplete early Tudor country house, with gardens and parkland, dating from about 1523, in Layer Marney, Essex, between Colchester and Maldon. The building was designated Grade 1 listed in 1952.
The large gatehouse tower is much the most striking element to be completed and to survive.
Constructed in the first half of the reign of Henry VIII, Layer Marney Tower is in many ways the apotheosis of the Tudor gatehouse, and is the tallest example in Britain. It is contemporaneous with East Barsham Manor in Norfolk and Sutton Place, Surrey, with which latter building it shares the rare combination of brick and terracotta construction. The building is principally the creation of Henry 1st Lord Marney who died in 1523, and his son John who continued the building work but died just two years later, leaving no male heirs to continue the family line of the construction. What was completed was the main range measuring some 300 feet long, the principle gatehouse that is about 80 feet tall in array of outbuildings and a new church.