“A great place to start if you want to understand China … an intelligent and humorous show”, Cindy Yu, The Spectator

“Beguiling … fascinating. This is a show to see”, Libby Purves

Mark Kitto’s exciting and interesting one-man play Chinese Boxing is coming to Raynham.  Preceding the drama guests are invited to get into the mood of the era by walking through the ground floor of Raynham Hall to look at Chinese artefacts which are in the personal collection of of Lady Townshend acquired when living in Peking  during the early years of Mao.  There are also fine examples from the Raynham Collection of Chinese armorial plates sourced by the 3rd Viscount Townshend to celebrate his marriage to Audrey Harrison, an heiress from Hertford, a descendant from an eminent and generous Royalist supporter of Charles I. In the Music Room are some fine examples of furniture made in China in the C18th in the European style which arrived at Raynham some 50 years later via a young Townshend who had made the journey to China with his uncle at the age of 15 sailing in his ship The Augusta, under the flag of the East India Company.