(also known as White House)
(majority of house demolished 1950)
Parish: BREDFIELD
District Council: EAST SUFFOLK (previously Suffolk Coastal)
TM 265 513
Not open to the public
The site of Bredfield House, or Bredfield White House as it was called towards the end of the nineteenth century, is c. 3km (1.8mls) north of Woodbridge and c. 1.6 km (1ml) south of Bredfield village. It lies in a rolling clayland landscape of arable fields and is west of the main A12 road between Ipswich and Lowestoft. With seventeenth century and earlier origins and later eighteenth century alterations and additions, much of the house was demolished in 1950 leaving only the rear service wing, stable block, separate garden house and two walled gardens standing in a small park with the remains of an eighteenth century garden including an ornamental canal.
OWNERS AND OCCUPIERS
Believed to be on the site of an earlier house, Bredfield House was built in 1665 by Robert Marryott, a lawyer from Woodbridge. At the end of the seventeenth century it passed to the Jenny family who had earlier been lords of the manor and prominent lawyers. During their ownership Dr John Purcell, who had married Mary Frances Fitzgerald, tenanted the house and its small park. After the death of Mary’s father, John changed his name to Fitzgerald. Their third son Edward was born in 1809, later going on to find fame as the translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The family stayed at Bredfield House until 1835 when Mary inherited the extensive family estates including nearby Boulge Hall, which they moved to and where she lived until her death twenty years later.
At the time of the tithe apportionment in 1838 Edmund Jenny owned the Bredfield House Estate, although Bredfield House and park were occupied by Frederic Manning and George Smyth farmed the surrounding fields from Manor Farm. In 1859 the Jenny family sold Bredfield House to Joseph White, it staying in the White family until after the death of Captain J. H. Lachlan White in 1946 when it was put up sale. Group Captain and Mrs Hyde were the purchasers, but they concluded that damage caused during its requisition in World War II was too extensive and so most of the house was demolished in 1950 and the estate, remaining house buildings, parkland and gardens were broken up into separate ownership.
BREDFIELD HOUSE
The brick house built by Robert Marryott was on the classic H-plan with Dutch gables on the projecting wings, but incorporated an earlier timber-framed building to the rear that was used as a kitchen and dairy. In the eighteenth century alterations were made to the house and an orangery was added to the rear of the southern wing, with further alterations made in the nineteenth century that enlarged the house. At the time of its demolition in 1950 the site included the eight-bedroom house with attached orangery, a seventeenth century brick stable block with Dutch gables that matched the house, a garden house, two walled gardens to the rear and a formal garden to the south.
The seventeenth century timber-framed service wing survived the demolition and was extended to form today’s Fitzgerald Cottage (Grade II). Now taking the name Bredfield House (Grade II), the separate eighteenth century garden house, is possibly on the site of an earlier structure described in an estate inventory for Robert Marryott in 1675 as a ‘banquetting house’. This was also enlarged to create a separate residence, including one of the walled gardens, the house and walls of the garden being jointly included in the Historic England listing. The seventeenth century stables (Grade II) also survived and a single storey house, adapted from farm buildings in the twentieth century, adjoins the east wall of the second walled garden.
PARKLAND
Kirby’s 1736 map shows a house on the site but with no detail of parkland or surrounding trees. By 1783, when Edmund Jenny owned Bredfield House, Hodskinson’s 1883 map shows the house and an orchard beside a road running south to the centre of Woodbridge, with an avenue of trees beyond this road to the east aligned on the centre of the east-facing house front and leading towards Melton. This may be the ‘green way to his [Mr Marryot’s] house’ referred to in D. E. Davy Manuscript of 1663. In 1808, a year before Edward Fitzgerald was born in Bredfield House, the road to Woodbridge was diverted further east and away from the house so that the avenue now stood within the curtilage of the 26.3ha (65a) of parkland around the house. However, by the time of the 1887 OS map there is no trace of the avenue nor isolated trees within the parkland that may have formed part of it.
Sometime between the tithe map of 1838 and 1887 a lodge had been built at the south-east entrance to the park beside a roughly-circular depression, probably a clay pit but covered in shrub and trees. From here the drive led to the east-facing front entrance of the house. In 1838 this drive had continued northwards, swept around an area of garden to arrive at the stable block to the north-west of the house or continued northward to pass Manor Farm and join the road to Bredfield village. However, by 1887 this carriage link between the house and Manor Farm seems to have been downgraded to a path or track that survives today.
In 1887 the parkland extended around the house except for one field to the west that was kept for arable use, but this became part of the parkland soon after with further western expansion over the following forty years. Throughout this time, no doubt as traffic increased on the road between Ipswich and Lowestoft, a shelterbelt of trees was developed to give the house and parkland some privacy. Beside this and east of the house there was a rectangular pond that pre-dates the tithe map and may be the result of an early clay pit, but which appears to have been converted to an ornamental feature.
Very little change took place over the following sixty years until the site was broken up after World War II. Today, the area of parkland has contracted with the western and southern sections replaced by arable fields, the remainder mostly attached to Fitzgerald Cottage. After the conversion of the remaining original Bredfield House buildings to four properties, the route of the drive now divides westward as it nears the site to give access to the newly-formed properties. Damaged by enemy fire during World War II, the lodge has been replaced by a more modern house slightly away from the road and now in separate ownership.
GARDENS
To the south of the original house are the remains of an early-eighteenth century formal garden that links to the separate garden house of that period. This is likely to be the work of Arthur Jenny (d. 1729) or his son Edmund (d. 1745). The area is separated from the parkland to the east by a section of brick-lined ha-ha. A surviving canal c. 80m (263ft) x 10m (33ft) runs east to west, with a short avenue continuing the canal alignment to the east that is clearly shown on the 1887 OS map. The canal has the remains of a walkway on its south side, today covered by trees and bushes, flanked by a bank that rises to a flat-topped ‘mount’ in the middle where there is a bow-shaped projection to the south. A map of 1834 shows this to have a structure on it, which probably represents a summerhouse, although there are no remains today. There is some evidence of a terrace that once ran between the west end of the canal northwards and linking to the eighteenth century garden house.
At the end of the nineteenth century the area north of the canal was laid out in the fashionable way with flowerbeds and paths in a formal geometric pattern. This was flanked to the east by an area of lawn up to the ha-ha, although by 1905 the formal structure had gone to be replaced by lawn with a planting of coniferous and deciduous trees around the canal that continues today.
Two walled gardens with walls c. 3m (10ft) high are joined to the original garden house, now called Bredfield House, and extending northwards. Adjoining the eastern wall to its eastern side is a single storey house that was adapted from farm buildings in the twentieth century, taking the northern most walled garden as its outside space. The southern walled garden today serves both as outside space for Bredfield House and an access/parking area for both properties. During the nineteenth century a lean-to glasshouse was attached to the eighteenth century orangery that has not survived. The glasshouse has also been lost but its back wall appears to survive as a screening wall between the gardens and the drive.
SOURCES:
Barker, H., R. East Suffolk Illustrated, 1908.
Birch, Mel, Suffolk’s Ancient Sites Historic Places, 2004.
Burke, John, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 3, 1836.
Copinger, W. A., The Manors of Suffolk, Vol. 7, 1910.
Kelly’s Handbook of the Titled, Landed and Official Classes, 1895, 1918.
Kirby, J., The Suffolk Traveller, 1735.
Martin, Edward, ‘Garden Canals in Suffolk’ in East Anglia’s History: Studies in Honour of Norman Scarfe, 2002.
Page, Augustine, Topographical and Genealogical, The County of Suffolk, A Supplement to the Suffolk Traveller (of J. Kirby), compiled 1811 and published in 1847 by Page, Joshua.
Pevsner, Sir Nikolaus, The Buildings of England, Suffolk, 1974.
Roberts, W. M., Lost Country Houses of Suffolk, 2010.
Terhune, Alfred, McKinley, The Life of Edward Fitzgerald, translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1947.
Information from Edward Martin for the Suffolk Local History Council Day Meeting, Bredfield, 22 May 2010.
Census: 1881, 1901, 1911, 1911.
Hodskinson’s Map of Suffolk in 1783.
1838 (surveyed 1838) tithe map and apportionment.
1887 (surveyed 1881) Ordnance Survey map.
1905 (revised 1902 to 1903) OS map.
1928 (revised 1925) OS map.
c. 1949 (revised 1938) OS map.
2013 Google Earth
Heritage Assets:
Suffolk Historic Environment Record (SHER): BFD 006, BFD 028, BFD 029, BFD 030.
Fitzgerald Cottage (Grade II), Historic England No: 1183399.
Bredfield House and Walls of Walled Garden (Grade II), Historic England No: 1030748.
Stables North-east of Bredfield House (Grade II*), Historic England No: 1030747.
Suffolk Record Office (now Suffolk Archives):
SRO Suffolk Archives HD2448/6/11/39, Drawing of Bredfield House in 1770s.
SRO Suffolk Archives B/106/5/39, Highway Diversion Order for Bredfield and Melton, 1808.
SRO Suffolk Archives HD11/475/Bredfield/2080a, Plan of Bredfield House showing lawn and summer pasture, fish pond, artificial lake and A12 passing house, 18 June 1834.
SRO Suffolk Archives HD1409/3, Misc. documents related to Bredfield House including 1852 Inventory, 1860 Insurance certificate, Abstract of title to Bredfield House and Estate (1765–1859), 1859 Plan of estate.
SRO Suffolk Archives HD11/475/Bredfield/222, ‘E Jenny esa’ List of contents of the estate, nd [probably c. 1830s to 1859].
SRO Suffolk Archives HD/11/475/Bredfield/220, Plan of Brefield House Estate, 1865.
SRO Suffolk Archives K681/1/64/15 Photograph of Bredfield House south elevation, pre. 1939.
SRO Suffolk Archives Catalogue of the contents of the residence by exors of Mrs F. M. Lachan White, deceased to sell by auction, 30 Sept. 1942.
SRO Suffolk Archives K681/1/64/16 Photograph of Bredfield House east elevation partly demolished, c. 1945.
SRO Suffolk Archives HE402/2/1946/114, Sales Particulars for residential and agricultural estate known as Bredfield House, 9 July 1946.
SRO Suffolk Archives HD2833/1/SC068/10, Bredfield House Sales Particulars, 1992.
Site ownership: Private
Study written: September 2025
Type of Study: Desktop and 2010 visit
Written by: Tina Ranft
Amended:
