MY INTEREST IN ‘LOST HOUSES’ stems back to the ‘Destruction of the Country House’ exhibition in London's Victoria and Albert Museum in 1974 and the accompanying book of the same name. Looking back over more than thirty years, I think that there were two things that fascinated me when I saw the photographs in that exhibition and in the book.

The first was that so much of the country's heritage had been lost. Of course, I recognised that some of the houses were not architectural gems and many were so large as to be economically unsustainable in the twentieth century. Nevertheless I wondered how anyone could have destroyed some of the houses depicted, houses designed by the great builders and architects of past centuries often with magnificent interiors by master craftsmen. The second was the knowledge that the houses portrayed had, in their hey-day, played an integral part in the life of the communities in which they were situated, employing large numbers of people both in the houses and on the surrounding estates. I wondered what the impact of the destruction of the ‘big house’ had been on the people who owned them and worked in them.

My interest in the subject remained but was rekindled by the publication in 2002 of the late Giles Worsley's book England's Lost Houses and the related exhibition at Sir John Soane's Museum. My wife and I were, at that time, contemplating moving from north-west Essex to Suffolk, and the idea of engaging in some research into Suffolk's lost houses appealed to me. I wrote to Giles Worsley, who responded encouragingly and made the point that it would be particularly worthwhile to seek out information on the reasons why specific houses were demolished. These have proved difficult to ascertain: whether I have in any way succeeded is for others to judge.

Most of the research has been undertaken using local sources particularly archive material in the branches of the Suffolk Record Office at Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and Lowestoft. I am indebted to the staff of those offices, too many to name individually, for their assistance. Their help in guiding me through the catalogues and suggesting sources of information has been invaluable, and their services (which have included the provision of many of the illustrations) have been offered with unfailing courtesy and forbearance. Without their assistance this book could never have been written.

RUSHBROOKE HALL, WHICH STOOD SOME THREE MILES SOUTH-EAST OF BURY ST EDMUNDS, belonged to the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds in medieval times but is said to have been occupied from late in the twelfth century by ancestors of the Rushbrooke family to whom the property passed again in 1808. The memorial in Rushbrooke Church to Robert Rushbrooke, who died in 1829, records that he ‘after it had been successively possessed during a period of six centuries by the families of Jermyn and Davers became the proprietor of this seat of his ancestor’. The house, which survived until 1961, is believed to have been built by Edmund Jermyn about 1550 or some twenty-five years later by Sir Robert Jermyn.

The Jermyn family was prominent in Suffolk and Norfolk, various members of it serving as Sheriffs of those counties. Queen Elizabeth I was entertained at Rushbrooke during her East Anglian progress in 1577. Members of the family were notable in the next century for their support of the Royalist cause. Henry Jermyn, who was created Baron Jermyn of St Edmundsbury in 1643, Earl of St Albans in 1660 and a Knight of the Garter in 1672, served in the Court of Queen Henrietta Maria and lived in exile as head of her household after the execution of King Charles I. He is reputed to have been clandestinely married to the Queen, and one unproven account alleges that he fathered King Charles II. There are accounts of him as a gamester, bully and coward, ‘an adventurer of a base type’ and ‘a coarse and brutish libertine’. His nephew, another Henry, is said to have married Mary, Princess of Orange, daughter of King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria, but there does not appear to be any evidence to support this suggestion. A portrait of William, Prince of Orange (later King William III) as a boy holding an arquebus was included in the 1919 sale of the contents of Rushbrooke and can be seen in the photograph of the staircase (illustration 60). This Henry was a Roman Catholic and, being a supporter of King James II, went into exile with his monarch.

The Jermyn male line came to an end in 1708 with the death of Henry, third Lord Jermyn. He had succeeded his brother Thomas whose son (also Thomas) had been killed aged 16 by the falling of a ship’s mast in 1692.

CARLTON HALL STOOD IN A LARGE PARK BETWEEN SAXMUNDHAM AND KELSALE, facing across a low valley to Carlton Parish Church. The main block was destroyed by fire on Christmas Day 1941, the service wing being converted into a house after the war. At the beginning of the twenty-first century the remaining wing and its environs were developed with new housing including a new mansion.

The original Carlton Hall appears to have been on a different site from the building burnt down in 1941. Its owner in 1655 bore the name Osborne, described as ‘a Kentish man his estate between £200 and £300 p. annum’. This hall may have been the seat of the lord of the manor of Carlton but the manor belonged to the Bence family of Thorington and was held separately from the estate from the early eighteenth century.

In the middle of that century Carlton was owned by Osborn Fuller of Tottenham High Cross in Middlesex who acquired it in 1753 from the mortgagees of William Fuller of Saxmundham and his wife. Whether Osborn and William Fuller were related and whether Osborn's name reflects relationship with the Osborne who owned Carlton Hall in the previous century are matters for speculation. Osborn Fuller died in 1794, having increased the size of the estate by a number of purchases both in his own name and that of his son Edward, who was born about 1782. Edward Fuller also made a number of purchases to increase the size of the estate, but it was subject to mortgages and various parts were sold off in 1837 to Lionel Dove. In 1850 the estate was purchased by Edward Walter Bonham, who lived in France, and was transferred to the marriage settlement of his son Henry, who married Augusta Musgrave. Following Henry Bonham's death in 1856 his widow, who in the following year married the second Earl of Stradbroke, became the effective owner of Carlton until it formed part of the marriage settlement of her son, Henry Walter Musgrave Bonham, in 1875.

MOULTON PADDOCKS, UNLIKE MOST OF THE LOST COUNTRY HOUSES OF SUFFOLK, WAS NOT ORIGINALLY THE HOUSE AT THE HUB OF A LARGE COUNTRY ESTATE. Situated between the village of Moulton and Newmarket, it was, in the middle of the nineteenth century, a small house with only a small acreage of land. Its expansion into an estate with a substantial country house in over 1,000 acres arose from its proximity to Newmarket and its development as a racing establishment.

At the time of the enclosure of Moulton in 1841 the property, then known as Fidget Hall, with sixty-four acres was owned by George Samuel Ford. A year later at redemption of the tithes the property, now with a further eight acres, was owned by William Webber. By 1850 it had passed into the hands of Sir Robert Pigot, was known as Moulton Paddocks and was described as his ‘occasional seat’. In 1868, when Col. Frederick Daniel Fryer occupied the house, it was again described as Fidget Hall, but by the early 1870s the old name finally seems to have been dropped in favour of Moulton Paddocks, presumably reflecting the owner's interest in racing. The next thirty years saw a number of owners; by 1879 Col. Fryer's son, by 1888 Lord Gerard and then George Alexander Baird following whose death the property was put up for sale by auction in 1895. Having failed to sell in 1895 the estate was marketed again in 1898, and in the next year was bought by Sir Ernest Cassel.

Cassel was born in Cologne in 1852, the son of a banker. His initial training in his home city was followed by periods with banking businesses in Liverpool and Paris. Moving to a London financial house in 1870 at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, he established the foundations of what was to become an immense fortune. Alongside his work for his employers, Bischoffsheim and Goldschmidt, he engaged in ventures on his own account and in 1884 became wholly independent. He became one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in the City of London, and at his death left over £7 million, having reputedly given over £2 million to charities during his lifetime. Cassel was a confidant of King Edward VII who was a frequent visitor to Moulton Paddocks.

DOWNHAM HALL STOOD ON LOW GROUND ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE LITTLE OUSE RIVER, three miles from Brandon in the village of Santon Downham, a parish created by the merger of Santon across the river in Norfolk and Downham in Suffolk. In 1668 the village was subject to what was described as a ‘sand-flood’, when a wave of sand (believed to have originated near Lakenheath) overwhelmed the village where ‘many houses were overthrown and buried, and their pastures and meadows which for so small a town were considerable were over-run and destroyed’.

In the late Middle Ages the village was held partly by the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds and partly by the Priory of Ixworth. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the manor was granted to Sir Thomas Kytson. From the middle of the seventeenth century Downham Hall was owned by the Wright family. Thomas Wright's house had twelve hearths in 1674. The last member of his family to own it was Ann Wright from whom the estate was acquired in 1778 by Charles Sloane, first Earl Cadogan (of the second creation). He died in 1807 and the estate subsequently, in 1830, was bought by Lord William John Frederick Powlett, later Duke of Cleveland. On his death in 1864 the estate was left for the use of his widow, Caroline, a daughter of the first Earl of Lonsdale, but it was put on the market in 1870.

The purchaser was Edward Mackenzie of Fawley Court near Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire. Edward Mackenzie's father was a Scottish-born engineer and the family had been heavily involved in canal and railway ventures. It was, no doubt, from these that their wealth derived. Downham became the residence of Edward Mackenzie's second son Edward Phillipe who also had property in Kirkcudbright. Edward Mackenzie bought the Downham estate (which included the Home and three other farms) of 5,921 acres for £81,500. His elder son William inherited the property with Edward Phillipe having the right to live there as long as he wished.

THEWRIGHT family's original house was replaced by, or remodelled as, a Georgian building in the late eighteenth century either by the last Wright owner or more probably after Earl Cadogan's acquisition of what was then the 3,134-acre estate.

FLIXTON HALL STOOD FOUR MILES SOUTH-WEST OF BUNGAY near the River Waveney on the border with Norfolk. It was the seat of the Tasburgh family until the estate was sold in the middle of the eighteenth century to the Adairs for whom the house was rebuilt a hundred years later and subsequently extended.

The Tasburgh family originated in Norwich but first acquired, probably by marriage, property in South Elmham St Peter near flixton in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. They enlarged their estates over the succeeding two hundred years and, in 1544, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, acquired flixton Priory, having previously leased land from the Priory. It is not certain whether the house was built by John Tasburgh (1533–97) or by his son Sir John (1576–1629). Nor is it certain whether flixton Hall stood on the site of the Priory or on that of a ‘capital mansion’ in 500 acres purchased in 1607 by Sir John from his cousin Thomas Bateman. The latter, of course, could only be the case if Sir John was the builder. However, Sir John's ‘newe parke’ is referred to in 1611, and a nineteenth-century account states that the hall was built about 1615. The probability is therefore that Sir John's acquisition of the Bateman property was followed by the rebuilding of the house there on what was a moated site. The extent to which it may have incorporated elements of an earlier building on the site is not known.

The Tasburgh family's tenure of flixton lasted until the last male member died in 1719. The wealth and influence of the family had reached its peak in the time of Sir John, and the decline in the family fortunes in the years after his death has been attributed to his marriage to Lettice Creasy, a member of a Roman Catholic family. Fines for recusancy and sequestration of the estate took their toll. On the death of a later John Tasburgh in 1719 the estate passed to the Wyborne family into which his sister, another Lettice, had married. On the failure of the Wyborne male line the estate was sold around 1750 to Alexander Adair whose family originated in Scotland but which had settled in Ireland in the first half of the seventeenth century. The house remained the Adair family’s Suffolk seat until shortly before its demolition.

ROUGHAM HALL, THE RUINS OF WHICH STAND NORTH OF THE ROAD FROM BURY ST EDMUNDS TO STOWMARKET, was the only country house in Suffolk whose demise is attributable to enemy action in World War II. The house that was bombed was the successor to an earlier Rougham Hall, which stood further south in the parish.

The manor of Rougham Hall was one of the many manors possessed by the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when it was granted to Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk. It was then acquired by John Drury, remaining in his family for a century. After two generations of Burwell ownership it passed by marriage to the father of Sir Robert Walpole and was then sold to Sir Robert Davers, who had made his fortune in Barbados. Davers’ son married the eldest daughter of Thomas, second Baron Jermyn of St. Edmundsbury. In the first decade of the eighteenth century, he sold Rougham to his son-in-law Clement Corrance. Nearly a century of Corrance ownership ended with its sale in 1792 to the Reverend Roger Kedington from whom it descended to Philip Bennet of Widcombe in Somerset who also had an estate at Tollesbury in Essex. His son, also Philip, built the new house in the 1820s: the old one was burnt down shortly afterwards. Philip Bennet II was succeeded by his son, another Philip.

THE NEW HOUSE was a brick-built edifice whose design reflected the style espoused by Regency period architects such as James Wyatt, Sir Jeffry Wyatville, Thomas Hopper and Robert Smirke for many of the mansions they designed. The architect of what was described as a large picturesque mansion in the Gothic and Tudor styles is not known.

On the west (entrance) front a three-storey single bay block at the north end was linked by a two-storey range with a large porte-cochère to a larger two-storeyed tower-like block which had an oriel window on the upper floor. On the south (garden) front this block had a two-storey projecting bay surmounted by pinnacles in Jacobean style. This block was connected by a lower five-bay two-storey range to an octagonal tower of three storeys at the eastern end of the house to which was attached a conservatory.

EASTON PARK, ALSO KNOWN AS THE WHITE HOUSE, LOCATED BETWEEN FRAMLINGHAM AND WICKHAM MARKET, belonged in medieval times to the Charles family of nearby Kettleburgh and passed in the sixteenth century to the Wingfield family of Letheringham. Sir Anthony Wingfield Bt is said to have begun building a new house in 150 acres of parkland near Easton church in 1627 to replace a medieval house, but it is not clear whether Wingfield's house was on the same site as its predecessor or was on the site where the White House was subsequently erected. Later in the seventeenth century changes in the family's fortunes led to its sale to an illegitimate descendant of one of the Princes of Orange, William Henry Nassau, who came to England with William of Orange by whom he was created Earl of Rochford.

In the second half of the eighteenth century Easton Park was the residence of the Hon. Richard Nassau, son of the third Earl of Rochford, who married as her second husband Anne, co-heiress of Edward Spencer of Rendlesham and widow of the fifth Duke of Hamilton who was also second Duke of Brandon. On the death of the last Earl of Rochford in 1830 Easton passed to the Dukes of Hamilton and Brandon. It was during the tenure in the second half of the nineteenth century of the twelfth Duke, who spent much of his time in Suffolk, that the estate was considerably extended and the house enlarged.

THE ROCHFORDS’ house, probably dating from the middle years of the eighteenth century, was a plain classical brick built building of two storeys. There were fifteen bays on what was in the later years the house’s garden front, the central three bays projecting forward with a pediment supported by pilasters. The house was described in 1833 as

SUDBOURNE HALL, ONE MILE FROM ORFORD, IS NOTABLE FOR ITS ASSOCIATION WITH SIR RICHARD WALLACE whose considerable wealth and artistic taste were engaged in building up what became the Wallace Collection, bequeathed to the nation by his widow.

The manor of Sudbourne belonged at various times in the Middle Ages both to the Bishop of Norwich and to the priory and convent of Ely from which it passed to the Crown at the Dissolution and was granted again to the Bishop of Norwich. In the time of Queen Elizabeth I it reverted to the Crown, and in 1600 was bought by Sir Michael Stanhope, who was a courtier to both Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. Following his death in 1621 it passed to his daughter and co-heir Jane who that year married Sir William Withipole. Their daughter and heir married Leicester Devereux, sixth Viscount Hereford, and the property descended to the tenth Viscount, who died in 1748. In 1753/4 Sudbourne was sold to Francis Seymour Conway, first Marquess of Hertford. It remained in his family until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

The fourth Marquess of Hertford died in 1870 when the title and the family's estates at Ragley in Warwickshire and at Sudbourne entailed to the marquessate passed to a cousin. His residuary estate was left to Richard Wallace, who is believed to have been his illegitimate son (his name was originally Richard Jackson) and who was brought up in Paris by the third marquess's widow with whom he enjoyed a close relationship. Wallace's parentage has never been unequivocably determined, the fourth marquess never publicly acknowledging that he was Wallace's father, and he was thought at one time to have been his illegitimate half-brother.

For many years Wallace acted as secretary to his putative father who was a connoisseur of the arts and amassed a large collection of paintings and other works of art. In addition to buying on behalf of his employer Wallace also collected on his own account until 1857, but thereafter devoted himself to buying only for the Marquess. Living in Paris, Wallace enjoyed an opulent lifestyle, being paid £1,000 a year for his services and from time to time having his debts paid off by his employer. He lived with Julie Castenau, the daughter of a French army officer, whom he married in 1871 after the death of the fourth Marquess.

RENDLESHAM HALL, FROM 1796 UNTIL AFTER THE GREATWAR THE SUFFOLK SEAT OF ONE BRANCH OF THE THELLUSON FAMILY, was situated five miles north-west of Woodbridge. The house, which was demolished in 1949, replaced in the 1870s an earlier and ‘far more important’ house burnt down forty years previously.

In 1552 the manor of Rendlesham and various properties in that and neighbouring parishes were purchased from John Harman by James Spencer of Bexwell in Norfolk. The family also owned other manors in the parish notably that of Naunton Hall held by the Harman family since the late fifteenth century, which appears to have been one of the most important, having annexed to it a house of that name which became part of the Rendlesham estate. The property passed through succeeding generations of the Spencer family until it was inherited by Anne Spencer, co-heiress of Edward Spencer, who died in 1727. In 1737 Anne Spencer married as his third wife the fifth Duke of Hamilton, bringing Rendlesham into the hands of the Hamilton family. The sixth Duke sold it to Sir George Wombwell from whom it was acquired by the Thelluson family.

Peter Thelluson, a London banker with West Indian commercial interests, was the son of Isaac de Thelluson, Swiss ambassador to the Court of Louis XV of France. He settled in England in the 1760s, amassed a large fortune from his financial and commercial ventures, and in about 1790 acquired the manor of Brodsworth in Yorkshire. In 1796, the year before he died, the Rendlesham estate was bought in the name of his son, Peter Isaac Thelluson, although on Peter Thelluson's death it appears to have been part of his estate. By his extraordinary will Peter Thelluson left £100,000 to his widow and children and the remainder of his fortune, some £600,000, to accumulate until the death of his last surviving grandson, when it was to be divided between the eldest male descendants then living of his three sons. The will was contested but upheld by the courts, although concern that property could be left to accumulate in the hands of trustees for a long period led to the Accumulations Act 1800 (the ‘Thelluson Act’), which imposed restrictions on the length of accumulation periods in trusts.

HENHAM HALL, SOME FOUR MILES INLAND FROM SOUTHWOLD, replaced an earlier house on the estate which in late medieval times had belonged to the de la Poles, Earls of Suffolk. After the execution of Edmund de la Pole in 1513 the property passed to Charles Brandon, Earl of Suffolk and after his death was granted to the Hoptons from whom the Rous family, previously living at Dennington, acquired it in 1545.

THE ELIZABETHAN house, with its walled entrance courtyard and frontage embellished with towers at each corner and a central towered entrance, was destroyed by fire in 1773 (apparently through the carelessness of a drunken butler), but it was not until 1792 that the building of the new house commenced. Shortly after the fire James Byres had produced plans for a new house but these were never executed. Instead Sir John Rous (later the first Earl of Stradbroke) employed James Wyatt as his architect. Wyatt had previously designed houses for Sir Charles Kent at Fornham and the Marquess of Hertford at Sudbourne and interiors for Sir Gerard Vanneck's house at Heveningham. To redesign the landscape Rous employed Humphrey Repton whose Red Book survives.

Wyatt's house was built on a site adjacent to that of its predecessor. It was a plain three-storeyed building of seven bays on the entrance front and five bays on the flank. The central three bays on the entrance front projected forward and were surmounted by a pediment. The portico with two columns provided a balcony at first floor level. At the rear was a courtyard in which the domestic offices were situated. The principal rooms – drawing room, eating room, library and Sir John and Lady Rous’s private rooms – were on the first floor together with the saloon in the centre of the entrance front between the drawing and eating rooms. The saloon had a central window flanked externally by pilasters and with a pediment. The house was described in the nineteenth century as having been designed without any pretensions to architectural effect. It took eight years to build and cost a little over £21,000.

Wyatt's house was remodelled by Edward Middleton Barry who converted it into an Italianate building in 1858 and subsequent years.

ACTON PLACE, SITUATED FOUR MILES NORTH-EAST OF SUDBURY, is best remembered for its connection with the Jennens family for whom in the 1720s a substantial house was built but never completed. In 1708 Robert Jennens had acquired Acton Place with an estate of 200 acres from the Daniel family, which had owned two manors in the parish since the first part of the sixteenth century but of whose house no record now remains.

Jennens, who died in 1725/6, was a member of a Midlands family, his father being, reputedly, Humphrey Jennens, a very prosperous Birmingham ironmaker, of Erdington Hall in Warwickshire. Robert Jennens was succeeded by his son, William, who was baptised in 1701 and was a godson of King William III. He lived until 1798. William had an Exchequer annuity of £3,000 a year but lived as if penurious, reputedly occupying three rooms in the basement although the family apartments in the house had been furnished before he succeeded to the estate. It is said that he left £2.5 million, with £19,000 in notes being found in the house on his death and a bank balance of £50,000. Allegedly the richest commoner in England, he died intestate without leaving any record of his family, giving rise to speculation that the Robert Jennens who built Acton Place was neither the son of Humphrey Jennens nor the father of William. Litigation ensued as to the rightful heirs to his estate, but eventually in 1816 Acton Place passed to the Hon. Richard William Penn Curzon who was created Earl Howe in 1821.

‘THE LARGE dwelling house with offices built by Mr Jennings [sic] near Stowmarket’ was designed by James Gibbs but had not been finished by the time of Robert Jennens's death. His son never completed it, the staircase and one wing, which was to have been a ballroom, being left unfinished. The house has been described as ‘magnificent country seat, which for the grandeur of its hall, and the massive elegance of its marble chimney pieces, as well as the beauty of its stables and other offices was totally unrivalled in that part of the country’.

It is depicted in the painting of the entrance front (illustration 1) as having a central block of eleven bays with the two outer sections of two bays each divided by pilasters and the central three bays pedimented.

HARDWICK AND ITS NEIGHBOUR HENCOTE WERE MANORS HELD BY THE ABBEY OF BURY ST EDMUNDS from 945 until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Hardwick was granted to Sir Thomas Darcy, Lord Darcy of Chiche, and Hencote to the Drury family of nearby Hawstead. Hardwick was owned by a number of families in the latter part of the sixteenth century, until in 1610 it was purchased by Sir Robert Drury, thus bringing into common ownership the Hardwick, Hencote and Hawstead estates. In 1656 Sir Robert's wife's nephew, Sir Christopher Wray of Ashby, Lincolnshire, sold the property to Sir Thomas Cullum, first baronet (who had been Sheriff of London in 1646) for £17,787. The Cullum family owned Hardwick House for the remainder of its existence.

The Drury and Cullum families were associated with a number of other Suffolk houses which have been lost. Sir Robert Drury's wife was a daughter of Sir Nicholas Bacon of Redgrave. The second Cullum baronet, also Sir Thomas, married Dudley, daughter of Sir Henry North of the Manor House, Mildenhall. Her sister, Peregrine, married William Hanmer whose son Thomas's marriage to Elizabeth Folkes brought Barton Hall into his family. Hawstead Place was abandoned as the Cullum residence in the 1730s, and was gradually reduced in size over the next ninety years until it was finally demolished. Redgrave, Mildenhall and Barton have also disappeared.

Hardwick House, which stood some one and a half miles south of Bury, was a Jacobean house of about 1612 thought to have incorporated the medieval Abbey Lodge. The portico surmounted with the Drury arms in stonework survived until the demolition of the house. Sir Robert Drury was, it is said, responsible for the installation in 1612 of panelling with sixty-eight painted panels which were removed from Hawstead. These were included in the sale of the contents of the house in 1924, when they were described as having been in the Painted Closet, which was ‘probably the Oratory of the last Lady Drury’.

The Cullum family was distinguished for its historical and scientific interests: plants and gardening particularly were a continuing passion over many generations. Sir Thomas Cullum, the second baronet, was the noted gardener who built a greenhouse fifty-eight feet by fourteen feet (very large for its time) at Hawstead.

STOKE PARK STOOD SOUTH OF THE ROAD FROM IPSWICH TO BELSTEAD in the parish of Stoke St Mary, which was within the Liberties of Ipswich. It was described in 1918 as lying ‘upon an easy acclivity rising from the Western bank of the River Orwell, and commands exceedingly beautiful prospects of the scenery along the River Banks’.

The manor of Stoke was held before the Reformation by the Abbey of Ely, and on the Dissolution of the Monasteries passed to the Dean and Chapter of Ely Cathedral. By the early seventeenth century an interest in Stoke Park was held by William Acton, who left it to his cousin, the William Acton who acquired property in Bramford from 1595 onwards. The 1829 edition of The Suffolk Traveller refers to ‘the manor of Stoke-hall, by which word we do not mean the modern house by the church but what is now called Stoke-park’, stating that it was held by Nathaniel Acton of the Dean and Chapter of Ely. A map dating from 1787 shows an unnamed building located near the site of Stoke Park, and one dating from 1801 shows Stoke Hall on the north side of the Belstead road near the church of St Mary near the Orwell. These are presumably the two different buildings to which reference is made in The Suffolk Traveller.

In 1840 Stoke Park was acquired by the Honourable Merrick Lindsey Peter Burrell, a member of a family whose seat since the late seventeenth century had been at Langley Park, Beckenham in Kent. It seems likely that the estate came on the market following the death of Nathaniel Lee Acton in 1836.

Burrell was the younger son of the first Lord Gwydyr who married the eldest daughter of the third Duke of Ancaster (also Lord Willoughby de Eresby), joint hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain, a position which she inherited. Burrell died in 1848, to be succeeded at Stoke by his eldest surviving son, Peter Robert Burrell, who became the fourth Lord Gwydyr, succeeding a cousin in that barony but not inheriting the office of Lord Great Chamberlain, which passed in the female line. He died at the age of 99 in 1909, and on the death of his only son six years later the barony became extinct and the Stoke Park estate was inherited by his granddaughter, the wife of Sir John Henniker Heaton.

EDWARDSTONE HALL STOOD NORTH OF THE ROAD FROM SUDBURY TO HADLEIGH two miles north-west of Boxford. It was located in parkland near Edwardstone Church and was approached through a massive arched gatehouse which survived the demolition of the major part of the house.

In the early Middle Ages the manor of Edwardstone belonged to the Montchesney family but it passed in the fifteenth century to the Waldegraves. At the end of the sixteenth century it was purchased by John Brand, a clothier, whose family’ ownership lasted for over a century. In 1662 Susanna Brand married Sir John Morden, a Levant merchant and the founder of Morden College in Blackheath, originally a home for merchants who ‘were down on their luck’. The connection between Edwardstone and Morden College has survived for more than three centuries. By the marriage of the heiress of the Brand family to Sir Robert Kemp the estate passed into his family, but it was sold in 1714 to William French, a draper of London.

In 1794 Edwardstone was sold by French's eventual heir, William Sheldon, to Thomas Dawson of Easington in Co. Durham from whom it descended to the family of the Earls Belmore, passing to the third Earl’s fourth son, the Hon. Henry William Lowry-Corry. The family increased their landholdings in the vicinity of Edwardstone by the purchase in 1897 of the Dawson family's Groton estate. The house was to remain the seat of this branch of the family until it was pulled down.

THE HOUSE demolished in 1952 was the successor to an earlier house, which, when it was owned by John Brand in 1674, was recorded as having fourteen hearths. The later house appears to date from the time of Charles Dawson, who lived from 1777 to 1853. It has been described as being in Victorian Mock Tudor style. At the entrance to the park in which it stood is a red-brick archway and lodge of two storeys also in ‘Tudor’ style known as Temple Bar. This is believed to date from 1840 and the rebuilt house may be of the same date. To what extent the house was a complete replacement or incorporated elements of its predecessor is not known.

On the entrance (west) front the brick-built house was a four-bay twostoreyed building with the entrance door in the second bay from the left, which projected forward slightly, as did the fourth bay.

THE RED HOUSE WAS SITUATED ONE AND A HALF MILES FROM THE CENTRE OF IPSWICH on land between the roads leading out of the town to Westerfield and Tuddenham. Its tree-lined entrance drive led northwards from the Tuddenham road. It was the seat of the branch of the Edgar family which traced its descent from William Edgar of Great Glemham.

William Edgar's grandson, Lionel, acquired a newly built messuage and sixty-seven acres of land in the parish of St Margaret's Ipswich in 1641. This purchase was the first in the parish by the Edgar family of which documentary evidence has survived. Over the succeeding two centuries the family acquired additional land in St Margaret's and substantial holdings in villages around Ipswich. Members of the family appear to have had a propensity for marrying heiresses, a fact that may account for the extent of the property they acquired.

Lionel Edgar's grandson Thomas, who died in 1692, was Recorder of Ipswich and Reader of Gray's Inn. His son, also Thomas, died in 1677, having married Agatha, heiress of Borodaile Mileson of Norton, the name Mileson being thereafter used as a Christian name in succeeding generations of the family. Thomas and Agatha Edgar's son, Mileson, is the first described as being ‘of Red House Park’, although the house was almost certainly built before his time.

The estate then passed in the direct line through two Mileson Edgars to Reverend Mileson Gery Edgar, who died childless in 1853, leaving the property to his widow, Elizabeth. She outlived her husband by thirtyseven years, dying in 1890.

THE RED HOUSE's central block (to which wings were added at a later date) is thought to have been built in 1658, although some sources have attributed it to the early eighteenth century. Although no archaeological evidence of activity on the site prior to the eighteenth century has been found, the 1937 sale particulars stated that the hall contained ‘a Jacobean Oak Staircase … with twisted and carved balusters and tread spandrels’. Moreover Thomas Edgar is recorded in 1674 as having a house with thirteen hearths in St Margaret's Parish, and the evidence therefore points to the house being of mid-seventeenth-century rather than eighteenth-century date.

The house’s central block was of five bays with the outer bays projecting forward. It had three storeys (with a semi-basement containing the domestic offices) with string courses, a plain parapet and plaintile roofs.

CHEDISTON HALL WAS LOCATED ON HIGH GROUND TO THE NORTH OF THE ROAD FROMTHE VILLAGE OF CHEDISTONTO HALESWORTH. In the middle of the nineteenth century its estate extended to over 2,000 acres.

The house was originally a Tudor house, probably built by the Norton family, who had acquired Chediston in the late sixteenth century. An archaeological survey has not revealed any evidence of medieval remains on the site, suggesting that it was a new house on a fresh site. In the following century it was owned by Sir John Pettus and then by the fleetwood family, from whom it was bought in 1722 by Walter Plumer. Plumer is said to have ‘lately rebuilt the Hall in a beautiful Manner and made it his seat’, but it is not known what work he undertook. His family remained the owners until 1833 when the estate was purchased by George Parkyns. In 1819 the house was described as ‘now a farmhouse’.

George Parkyns bought Chediston from Robert Plumer Ward who had inherited it from his wife, the widow of the last Plumer in the male line. It is recounted that Plumer Ward had mortgaged the property to a chartered company with limited powers to hold land, and these having been exceeded the estate was forfeited to the Crown. The Crown regranted the property and the sale to Parkyns was completed. However, after Parkyns’ death it was discovered that his title was defective as he was the son of his father's second marriage in France, where he was born. Under English law as it then was he was an alien and, as such, incapable of holding land in England. In 1846 the Crown regranted the property to Parkyns’ daughter, Madame Marie Claire Leguen de Lacroix. It then descended through her family.

GEORGE PARKYNS rebuilt the house, commissioning Edward Blore to prepare the designs, but the work actually executed was at variance with his plans. The basic rebuilding was in ‘Jacobean’ style, the footprint of the house remaining a traditional East Anglian rectangular U. The entrance was through a projecting porch, which rose to the full height of the building.