HOLTON HALL WAS SITUATED SOME DISTANCE NORTH OF THE PARISH CHURCH IN THE VILLAGE OF HOLTON ST PETER, east of Halesworth. It stood in parkland of nearly ninety acres, the whole estate extending in the late nineteenth century to over 450 acres.

Holton's medieval manor house is thought to have been at a different site from that on which Holton Hall was built in the eighteenth century. The date when the house was built is not known, but it has been suggested that the survival of woodland with intersecting ‘rides’ indicates that it was erected in the early part of the century when this was a fashionable mode of landscaping. No picture of this house appears to have survived nor has any record been located giving the names of those who owned it in the first century of its existence. By 1832 the estate had come into the possession of the Reverend John Brewster Wilkinson, a parson with substantial property interests. The house was not his principal residence, and in 1841 was occupied by Mrs Harriett Lloyd, the rest of the estate being let separately. By 1844 the house was let to the Reverend Richard Day, Vicar of Wenhaston.

Nine years later the property was sold to Andrew Johnson, who was Agent for the Halesworth Bank (which later became part of Barclays Bank). On his death in 1862 Holton passed to his son of the same name and became a tenanted property again. By 1874 Charles Easton was living in the house, which in that year was ‘being enlarged and improved’. Easton is stated to have bought Holton in 1871. However, the nature of his initial interest in the property is unclear as the estate was put on the market in 1886 by order of the mortgagee and the house was not conveyed to Charles Easton until 1887. His family was to live there until the late 1930s.

IN 1882 the original Georgian house was badly damaged by fire. Easton employed the architect Charles Smith of Reading to rebuild the house. The new house was built on the foundations of its predecessor, but how much of the old house survived the fire and was retained is not known. The new building has been described as a Georgian house dressed up and made to look slightly ridiculous with a Frenchified roof and oddly placed balconies.