Parish: YAXLEY
District Council: MID SUFFOLK
TM 124 735
Not open to the public except for booked events
Lying on the clayland plateau of Suffolk, Yaxley Hall (Grade II*) is c. 1.6km (1ml) west of Eye and east of the A140 Ipswich to Norwich road, once the Roman Pye Road. The site sits on the upper slope of a shallow tributary valley that joins the River Dove in Eye and south-east of the village centre of Yaxley.
The original house was built c. 1580 for W. Yaxley, but probably had earlier origins. The Catholic Yaxley family made several further additions during the seventeenth century. In 1736 it was bought by Margaret Seymour, the mistress of the Fourth Earl of Scarsdale, as a home for his illegitimate children and described at the time as having ‘mansion house…stables, outbuildings, dove house, gardens and orchards’. In 1772 the main range was replaced by a projecting Gothic block for the Revd S. Leeke. It appears to have been a site of some importance as it is named on Hodskinson’s 1783 map, although with no further detail.
The map accompanying the tithe apportionment of 1842 shows a series of enclosures and buildings immediately to the south-east and east of the house with paths leading out across areas of parkland and wood to the north, west and south. To the south of the house an L-shaped pond lay in woodland that is thought to be the remains of a moated rectangular enclosure, part of its north arm appearing as irregularly-shaped ponds incorporated into the gardens of the house. A small building on the edge of this wood, probably a summerhouse, overlooked the western parkland. Beyond the woodland and about 300m (984ft) south of the house is a surviving folly gazebo (Grade II) built in the form of a small church tower. It is said to have had an 1852 datestone and was probably built for P. R. Welch of Yaxley Hall as an ornamental feature to be viewed from the parkland to the west of the house, although this area of parkland has now been turned to arable use and the folly sits in the corner of a field within a belt of trees.
By 1885 the enclosures south-east and east of the house had been replaced by orchards and pleasure gardens. Only one arm of the moat appears to have been water-filled at this time and the irregularly-shaped ponds and summerhouse had gone. North of the house the wood had winding paths to a surviving mound of unknown origin called Beacon Hill and in the western parkland there was a wide avenue of trees on the central axis of the house that was probably contemporary with a much earlier phase. This gave an open vista from the west front of the house. A narrow shelterbelt of trees surrounded the southern parkland area.
Yaxley remained with the Earl of Scarsdale’s descendants into the twentieth century when it was acquired by Lord Henniker of nearby Thornham Hall as a base for shooting parties and guests. During this period the only changes to the site were the expansion of the parkland taking in a field north of the mound and a track from the west. The majority of the southern parkland was lost to arable. Following a fire in 1923 the northern wings of the house were demolished leaving an eighteenth century main range with earlier cross-wings to the south. The much-reduced house passed to Blanche Broadwood who stayed until the early 1970s when it was acquired by the renowned architect Sir Basil Spence. He made some internal alterations before his premature death at the Hall in 1976.
After buying Yaxley Hall in 2002, Dominic Richards set about a restoration programme to create a private home and exclusive events venue such as for weddings, which is still available over twenty years later. Today most of the parkland has been lost to arable. New properties have been built off the track from the west along the northern boundary of the old western park area with a new belt of trees planted immediately west of the Hall for privacy, resulting in an area of 3.2ha (8a) of gardens, including a gazebo by Spence known as ‘The Teahouse of the August Moon’, near the house.
SOURCES:
Barker, H. R., East Suffolk Illustrated, 1908.
Birch, Mel, Suffolk’s Ancient Sites Historic Places, 2004.
Copinger, W. A., The Manors of Suffolk, Vol 3, 1909.
Farrer, Revd E., ‘Yaxley Hall. Its owners and occupiers Part I’ in Proceedings of Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 1917.
Fairclough, John and Hardy, Mike, Thornham and the Waveney Valley. An historic landscape explored, 2004.
Farrer, Revd E., ‘Yaxley Hall. Its owners and occupiers Part II’ in Proceedings of Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History, 1917.
Invitation to View leaflet, date unknown.
Page, Augustine, Topographical and Genealogical, The County of Suffolk, A Supplement to the Suffolk Traveller (of J. Kirby), compiled 1811 and published in 1844 by Page, Joshua.
https://canmore.org.uk/site/284742/yaxley-yaxley-hall?display=collection&GROUPCATEGORY=2 (accessed April 2022).
Census 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911.
Hodskinson’s Map of Suffolk in 1783.
1842 (surveyed 1839) tithe map and apportionment.
1885 (surveyed 1885) Ordnance Survey map.
1905 (revised 1903) OS map.
1927 (revised 1925) OS map.
2022 Google aerial map (Imagery © Bluesky, CNES / Airbus, Getmapping plc, Infoterra Lts & Bluesky, Maxar Technologies, Map data © 2022).
Heritage Assets:
Suffolk Historic Environment Record (SHER): YAX 008 and YAX 009.
Yaxley Hall (Grade II*), Historic England No. 1284876.
Folly Tower about 300m south-east of Yaxley Hall, (Grade II), Historic England No. 1033117.
Historic England Research Record, Yaxley Beacon. Hob Uid: 389083.
Suffolk Record Office:
SRO (Ipswich) HA 116/5/10/16. Survey and valuation of the Yaxley Hall Estate, 1866.
SRO (Ipswich) HA 116/4/1/275. Draft Conveyance of the Yaxley Hall Estate, 6 April 1885.
SRO (Ipswich) HA 116/6//3/3. Correspondence concerning the work at Yaxley Hall for Lord Henniker, 1923.
SRO (Ipswich) HA 116/6//3/5. Plan of a proposed garden wall at Yaxley Hall, 1923.
SRO (Ipswich) HA 116/6//3/6. Plan of alterations at Yaxley Hall, 1923.
Site ownership: Private
Study written: March 2023
Type of Study: Desktop
Written by: Tina Ranft
Amended: April 2025
