From 1813 to 1839, The Pytches family owned Mount Pleasant (now Melton Grange) and the estate which surround it. The family can be traced back to the Norman Conquest and at one time the Pytches were Barons of Bourn in Cambridgeshire. The family also held many manors in Suffolk and other East Anglian counties.

The Pytches are decedents of William Pecche, who is listed in Domesday Book as holding the manors of Clapton and Balham in Suffolk. He held these lands, and lands in Gestingthorpe, Essex, from Richard FitzGilbert, the first Earl of Clare, whose father was Gilbert, Count of Brionne. It is very likely that William Pecche entered England in the retinue of Richard FitzGilbert during the Norman Conquest but there is no evidence to confirm this.

William Pecche married twice. His first wife was an English woman by the name of Alfwen and they had three sons. The second marriage was to Isilia de Bourges and their son Hamon was in the service of Robert FitzRichard who succeeded his father as Earl of Clare.

Robert FitzRichard was Steward to King Henry I and he introduced Hamon Pecche to the king. Hamon is reputed to have become one of the king’s favourites and this probably explains why he was made Baron of Bourn in Cambridgeshire. His eldest son Geoffrey only held the barony for a few years before he died and it passed to his brother Gilbert. He was a knight of the Abbot of Bury and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

When Hamon died his son and heir, Hamon II was a minor and he had to wait three years before he inherited the title Baron of Bourn. He joined the de Clares in the baronial revolt against King John and, because of this action, Hamon II's lands in Essex, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincoln were confiscated. These lands were later restored to him 1217 during the reign of Henry III.

Hamon II died while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, leaving six sons Gilbert, Hamon, Hugh, Robert, William and Thomas. They were a formidable gang, ‘powerful, prudent and strong’ according to a contemporary account. Gilbert Pecche, the eldest son, served in the Welsh campaigns of 1260’s and he remained loyal to King Henry III during the baronial rebellion. His son, another Gilbert, was the last to hold the title Baron of Bourn. He and the previous holders of the title were buried in Barnwell Abbey, Cambridge. Their monuments were destroyed following the dissolution of the monasteries.

There were only two further generations of direct male descendents in this line but, by then, there were so many other branches of the family that there was no danger of the name Pecche dying out. The Pecche family was spread across East Anglia but only those in Suffolk are covered here.

By the late thirteenth century there was a Pecche listed as lord of a manor in the eleven Suffolk parishes listed below. The number in brackets after each parish is the year in which the ownership of the manor passed outside the family. In 1333 only four manors in Suffolk had a Pecche as their lord. From 1365 the family was only left with Stowlangtoft and their tenure there ended in 1371.

Suffolk parishes where a Pecche held a manor

      East Suffolk               Central Suffolk              West Suffolk

   Alderton (1311)           Stowlangtoft (1371)           Posingford (1360)

   Bredfield (1307)           Felsham (1333)                 Dalham (1240)

   Easton (1365)              Kettlebaston (1283)          Thurlow (1360)

   Great Bealings (1310)

   Grundisburgh (1310)

The lords of the manor were the elite members of the Pecche family. The earliest documents which encompass all parts of the family are the Subsidy returns for 1327 and 1524. By then the name Pecche was being spelt Petche or Pechy and it subsequently evolved to Pytches.

In 1327 members of the family are recorded in six parishes which were within a band from Clare to Bury St Edmunds and on up to the Norfolk Border. Two of these families were lords of manor. The other four were not so affluent. They all paid less than the average tax for their parish.

By 1524 members of the family were only recorded in two adjacent hamlets just out side Mildenhall. There were five households and none of them was paying substantially more than the average tax for their parish. Clearly by 1524 the Pecches in Suffolk had lost their earlier status.

The ancestry of the Thomas Pytches who moved to Melton in 1831 can be traced back to Thomas Pyches who lived in Kirtland, Cambridgeshire from 1400 to 1480. The line of descent then passes through three men who continued to live in Kirtland. The last of them, Richard Pitches, was the first to be described as a yeoman, i.e. a freeman who had acquired a sizable amount of land. After his death in 1616 the line of descent continued through his son, John, who moved to Barnardiston, in Suffolk, and farmed land there and back in Kirtland. He died in 1636 and the line of decent continues through his son, John II.

John II of was a captain in the army of Charles I before settling down as a farmer in Hundon. When he died in 1660 his eldest son, John III, inherited his house, land, goods and personal estate. He carried on farming at Hundon and the estate was eventually inherited by his only son, John IV and subsequently by his son John V. By then the family’s name was being spelt Pytches.

John V eventually acquired Desning Hall, Gazely, which is on the edge of the chalk hills of west Suffolk. Beyond it the land falls away to the Fenland of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. He is described in a magazine article as an ‘opulent farmer’. He owned estates at Hundon, Southwood Park, Stoke next Clare, Barnardiston, Walsham le Willows and Bardwell.  The wealth he built up ultimately supported several generations of his family. When he died in 1793 he left £1,000 to each of his seven grandchildren and £1,500 to his wife. Desning Hall, and his outlying estates, were left to his only son, John VI.

John VI married Mary Westrope of Saffron Waldon. She brought two other estates to the marriage, one at Barnardiston and the other at Great Wratting.

Two years after death of his father, John VI moved across Suffolk from Desning Hall to Alderton where he purchased a 258 acre estate. This  estate is believed to have been associated with the house, now called Cedar Court, which is on the high ground due west of Shingle Street.

Eric Sandon, in his Suffolk Houses, describes Cedar Court as ‘a gentleman’s residence, with farm, in a favoured position sheltered from the east by woods, on the edge of the marshes and within a comfortable ride of the market town of Woodbridge.’ The earliest mention of the property is in 1688 and Sandon believes that the transformation from what would have been ‘a dull seventeenth century tenement to an impeccable small Georgian mansion’ occurred in the mid-eighteenth century.

The exact location of the 258 acre estate associated with the house is not known because, by the time the first detailed map showing land ownership was drawn up, most of the land in the area had been purchased by the trustees of Lord Rendlesham’s estate. However, it is likely, that the estate would have been on the high ground, on which the house stood, rather than on the adjoining marshes.

Desning Hall, Gazely, was near to the formal park of the imposing Dalham Hall which was built in 1707 and John VI may have decided to leave Desning Hall because he had either been under pressure to sell some of his land or was not able to expand his holding.  This does not explain, however, why he would want to move so far away from his other estates in west Suffolk to an area of much poorer soil on the east of the county.

John VI may have thought he could improve his social standing by going back to an area where his ancestors had once lived. Peche Manor, Alderton, was created sometime after Almaric Peche married Elizabeth, the fourth sister of Geoffrey de Glanville. She received, as her portion of the Glanville inheritance in Alderton, the manor henceforth called ‘Peche’s Manor’. After Almaric died in 1288 the manor remained in the hands of the Peche family until at least 1311. It was subsequently reabsorbed into the manor of Alderton.

John Pytches VI, 1737-1803

Another possible explanation for the move is that John VI realised that it would make it easier to split his assets fairly between his two sons. When he died seven years later the eldest son, received the remaining estates on the west of the country, while the younger son, inherited Alderton on the east. John VI’s wife, Mary, went to live in Holbrook but when she died she was laid to rest beside her husband in a vault at Alderton and they were later moved to Melton Church. Their five surviving children were already well provided for. Each of them had each received £1000 on the death of their grandfather ten years earlier.

To explain how the wealth of the family was subsequently dissipated and why one branch of the family moved to Melton it is necessary to describe the lives of all the children.   A family tree showing all the people who will be mentioned subsequently is given here.

Elizabeth and Charlotte, moved with their mother to Holbrook where they died spinsters. Henrietta Maria, the youngest daughter, married Dr William Henry Williams. He received his medical education at the Bristol Infirmary and at St. Thomas's and Guy's hospitals. He then became a surgeon to the East Norfolk militia and as such saw much home service. About 1797 he designed a tourniquet of such simplicity and efficiency that it was at once adopted throughout the British Army and was named 'Williams' Field Tourniquet'. In 1798 Williams entered Caius College, Cambridge and he graduated as a Bachelor of Medicine in 1803 and then as a Doctor of Medicine in 1808.

Henrietta Maria and William married in 1799. Soon after the couple settled in Ipswich and William established himself as a fashionable Physician. From, 1803 he also served as Physician to the Public Dispensary, a post he held for twenty-one years. The couple were childless and, after William died, Maria went to Holbrook to join her sisters.

Catherine was taken to France by her mother and family records state that she ‘had to be snatched by her aunt Charlotte who brought her up in an atmosphere of respectability in Holbrook’. Catherine married Charles Dean when she was 43 and they lived in a house which is now submerged under Holbrook reservoir. She was an intellectual and highly accomplished woman and was still studying languages when she died aged 80.

Her brother, John VIII, married Eleanor Argent of Halsted when he was only eighteen and she was nineteen. In 1820 he changed his name to Pytches-Revett in order to inherit the Manor of Brandeston from his maternal grandfather. The young family lived at Brandeston Hall for a while but eventually lost it as a result of inheritance disputes. The manor had been in the hands of the Revett family for 301 years but the old squire died deeply in debt and there was little else left of the Revett fortunes. John VIII quickly worked through the residue by gambling, mainly on dice.

In 1828 he was thrown into the King’s Bench Prison because he was unable to clear debts of £1,159. The debt must have subsequently been paid, and John released, because 4 months latter he was charged with assault and obtaining money by false pretences. Ten months later while awaiting trial he died, like his father, in the King's Bench Prison.

Thomas was born in 1775 at Gazely. On the death of his father in 1803 he inherited the Alderton Estate plus £3000 and an income from a joint trust with his sister Henrietta Maria. A year previously Thomas had married Elizabeth Susannah Rout the daughter of Rev Thomas Rout of Abbots Hall, Stowmarket.

Paintings of Thomas and Elizabeth, and their coat of arms, clearly indicate that they did not think of themselves as farmers yet, apart from inheritances, they appear to have had no other source of income.

In 1813 Thomas purchased Mount Pleasant, Melton, and went to live there with his family. It was advertised as being a substantial brick mansion with commodious detached offices. The mansion, now called Melton Grange, was on the side of a hill and commanded a fine view of the river. It was within extensive grounds which included orchards and plantations (woods). In addition there was a nearby farmhouse having a barn, stable and other outbuildings and about 80 acres of land. The extent of the estate will be described later when discussing the changes that occurred after the Pytches sold it.

The Rev. William Kett, who was Rector of Shottisham from 1781 to 1832, was the former owner of Mount Pleasant but is not known when it was built and whether he commissioned it. Access to the house was via the Processional Way which ran along the boundary between Woodbridge and Melton. This lane was improved, and possibly rerouted slightly, by Thomas in 1822 and renamed Pytches Road.

Alderton was retained as a working estate for three years until it was sold, in 1816, for £21,000. Within the Pytches family there is speculation that the sale was forced by the need to pay off a loan raised to secure the release of Thomas’s elder brother from debtors' prison in 1813. It is also known that Thomas sold much of his jewellery, plate and silver at about the same time.

In 1823 he joined the East Suffolk Militia and served with them until he retired in 1852 by which time he held the rank of Major.

In 1824, he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn but he never appears to have made a living from the law. Like his father he was a Magistrate on the Woodbridge Bench and served as a Deputy Lieutenant for the County of Suffolk. He was described as ‘a well respected man, extremely generous, light-hearted, polite, with an agreeable manner’.

Thomas Pytches II, 1803-1865

In 1842 Thomas II married Anne Carthew. He was aged 39 and she was 42. Anne was the daughter of the Thomas Carthew who was Rector of St Mary’s Church. She was said to be ‘well educated, well informed, and her conversation was marked with great general knowledge and accuracy of fact’. She was also known for her poetry. Where the couple moved to after the marriage is a matter of speculation but the Pytches family believe that it was to Hill House (now Graylands), Melton..

Until 1791 the Carthews had been lord of the Manor of Woodbridge late Priory and, some time later, Anne’s Uncle brought the Abbey back into the ownership of the family. The family viewed Thomas Pytches II with suspicion. One account of their history describes him as ‘a gentlemen who had spent a handsome fortune’ and he had to sign a pre nuptial agreement preventing him from accruing any Carthew inheritance that might come Anne’s way.

Thomas II died in 1866 aged 63 and his wife Anne followed in 1878. They are both buried at Melton Old Church. Their only child, John Thomas was born in 1843.

John Thomas Pytches, who was born in 1843, appears to have led a solitary life as a child. His journal indicates that he had few friends up to 15. His parents and their friends were old and most of his holidays were spent in Holbrook with his aunt Catherine. It is not known for certain where he went to school but there is a note that suggests that it was in Felixstowe.

John Thomas was 23 years old when his father died. His subsequent journal entries show how much he missed his father and indicate that he was at a loss to know what type of employment to take up. In the end he drifted and led the life of a gentleman, albeit on a reduced income. He was a competent artist and was a founder member of the Ipswich Fine Art Club which held their first exhibition in 1875. He performed in many amateur dramatics in the Woodbridge area and was Grand Master of the Doric Masonic Lodge. He sailed regularly and was a member of the Woodbridge Sailing Club and the Royal Harwich Yacht Club. His boat was an 8-ton, 25 ft cutter that had been built by William Garrard at Lime Kiln Quay in 1868.

John Thomas adored the River Deben. He recorded the wild life and went shooting over the marshes. It is not known where he was living up to 1869 when he purchased, at auction, a ‘substantial red brick cottage residence, of about ten rooms a stable and gig-house’ in Melton Street (now Station Road) nearly opposite the New Church. He called his house The Den and the trade directories indicate that he lived there with his mother.

John Thomas was Quarter Master of the 2nd Administrative Battalion Suffolk Rifle Volunteers until ill heath forced him to resign his commission when he was 35. In the same year his mother died and soon after he married the 25 year old Mary Elizabeth the eldest daughter of George Dickenson of Elserwick Hall, near Hull. He was a wealthy farmer and much of his fortune was made from cattle which he shipped by sea from Hull to London. The cattle arrived fat and ready for market.

John Thomas and Mary became friends of the translator Edward FitzGerald who was living in what used to be the farmhouse associated with Mount Pleasant. By that time the name of the latter had been changed to Melton Grange and FitzGerald, with his customary sharp wit, decided to call the former farmhouse the Little Grange. He had expanded it considerably and changed it from what he called a ‘rotten affair’ into an impressive building. FitzGerald also proceeded to buy up some of the surrounding land to prevent it being developed.

After FitzGerald died in 1883 the house and its estate was split up and auctioned. The lot comprising the Little Grange and its gardens was bought by John Thomas and Mary for £2,150 and for many years they were bedevilled by FitzGerald enthusiasts tramping over their garden and sketching the house.

John Thomas died in 1905 aged 62 after being an invalid for a long time. Mary died in 1934 aged 80. They are both buried in the family vault at Melton Old Church. George Julian, one of their two sons, moved back to the Little Grange when he retired. When it was sold in 1949 the Pytche’s connection with Melton was severed.

When Thomas Pytches II sold the Mount Pleasant Estate in 1839 its extent was as shown the map on the right. The green areas indicate the wooded area on the estate, and the light blue areas identifies the rest of the estate. The thin black lines are the boundaries of some of the fields adjacent to the estate. The names of these fields will be referred to in the subsequent discussion.  (The map and the field names are based on the 1837 tithe map and apportionment).

The Pytches’ estate lies within the area bounded by Pytches Road, Melton Road, Woods Lane and Bredfield Road. To the west of Woods Lane is Turnpike Lane which was created when the Melton to Woodbridge Turnpike was straightened in 1831. Turnpike Lane was linked to Pytches Road by Love Lane. For convenience the area bounded by the four main roads will be referred to as the Bury Hill area.

The other large houses within this area were The Hermitage (now called Cedar House), Melton Mead, Melton Hall and Prospect House. Melton Mead, was the home of John Buckingham who also owned the Coach and Horses Inn across the road. Melton Hall was the home of John Wood, a solicitor, whose family had lived there from the sixteenth century and Woods Lane is named after them. Prospect House was owned by William Mason. These families, along with the Pytches, owned most of the land within the Bury Hill area.

The Pytches’ estate was in two parts which straddled Taylor’s Valley and Whinny Hill. This area has been immortalised as The Valley of Fern by the poet Bernard Barton and by the artist Thomas Churchyard. At the bottom of the valley a number of springs created a stream which flowed through the bottom of the Pytches’ estate and across Melton Road. The area containing the springs was called The Fen.

Broom Hill on the north eastern side of Taylor’s Valley was called Whinney Hill. By the time the 1881 Ordnance Survey map was produced the area encompassing Whinney Hill and Broom Hill was being referred to as Leeks Hill after the landlord of the Green Man Inn which was at the bottom of Love Lane. He rented some of the Pytches’ meadow land near the Old Turnpike Road and used it for used for popular bullock sales.

There were two area of woodland in the lower part of the Pytches estate. The largest one was to the north of the mansion and the smaller one was along Pytches Road. There was also woodland in the grounds around Melton Hall, Melton Mead and Prospect House, and lines of trees marked most of the field boundaries.

The final features to mention are two footpaths which are still in use today. One ran along the eastern side of the grounds of Prospect House.  It then crossed to northern part of the Pytches estate and ran down the boundary of the southern part of the estate to Turnpike Lane. The other footpath linked Bredfield Road and Woods Lane.

Soon after Dr Bland acquired the Pytches estate in 1839 he added a wing to the back of the mansion and laid out a formal garden with extensive glasshouses. He also sold the northern part of the estate to John Wood of Melton Hall and bought the land between Love Lane and Melton Road. After Dr Bland died in 1864 his daughter Jane retained the land below Love Lane but the rest of the estate was auctioned in 8 lots.

The lot comprising the farm house and the land to the west of Pytches Road was sold to Edward FitzGerald.

The mansion and the rest of the land were purchased by William Phillips and shortly after he changed the name from Mount Pleasant to Melton Grange. In 1884 he sold the house and estate to Major John Howey. A plan of the estate at that time has two features which seem to have been added after 1839. These were a wing on the back of the mansion and a formal garden, with extensive glasshouses.

Major Howey, the new owner, made major changes to the mansion in 1893. He built large extensions on either side of the mansion, extensive detached stables and a coach house. Also, in the eastern corner of the estate, he built Oak Cottage (now Turnpike House) for his butler.

The Army occupied Melton Grange during the Second World War. In 1947 it was bought by a Major Brown who made it into a Country Club which, two years later, became a hotel. The building was expanded in 1958 to provide a dinning room and in 1960 the kitchen was extended. Further extensions occurred in 1974 and some of the estate was sold to housing developers. These alterations to the mansion, along with those which occurred earlier, are all summarised by the plan shown on the right.

Plan showing the various stages of development

of Mount Pleasant (now Melton Grange)

The 1881 Ordnance Survey map shows woodland, marked A, covering most of Broom Hill.  Because the 1837 tithe apportionment describes this area as being arable land it would thus appear that the trees were planted after Broom Hill was sold to John Wood. Only a 100m wide strip adjoining the estate of Prospect House was left without trees.

In 1898, a mansion called Spion Kop was built on the northern edge of Tailor’s Valley and its grounds encompassed the valley, Whinney Hill and the Fen. There was also a tree line avenue leading to mansion.  It went through the top of the area formerly known as Taylor's Valley.

Pines and exotic conifers, including some large cedars and silver spruce, were planted between existing oaks which had become established along the bracken-covered sandy slope of Whinney Hill.  The area marked B on the map.  Below a small round pond had been formed in the northern part of the marshy area and it was surrounded by rhododendrons, dogwood, bamboo, yellow flag irises, mimulus and alder.  The southern area of the marsh was not touched. It remained a water meadow flanked by osier beds.

The name Spion Kop was later changed to Bury Hill House. Neither name had any local roots.  It is thus rather odd that the whole area bounded by Woods Lane, Bredfield Road, Pytches Road and Melton Road is now called the Bury Hill.

By the time the 1927 Ordnance Survey map was produced housing and a water-works had been erected on in the area marked C.  The area was part of the land formerly called Phillpot Hill. The buildings abutted Bredfield Road and behind them the rest of Phillpot Hill was planted with trees. This plantation, marked D, was later called Godfrey’s Wood.

In the 1930s a road called Leeks Hill was put in around the back Prospect House which by then was called Fern Hill. This road provided access to that part of Broom Hill which had not been planted with trees and number of large houses were eventually built along it. The woodland on Broom Hill, which the runs along the back of the gardens of these houses, was purchased jointly by the residents. It is only in recent years that attempts have been made to show that this woodland is private property.

Fern Hill was used by the Agricultural board during WWII and was then left in a very poor condition. No buyer could be found so Fern Hill was demolished in 1951 and the estate became overgrown. At that time most of the Bury Hill area was still undeveloped. There were two large areas of woodland, a number of smaller ones and many trees lining the field boundaries. Between them were tracts of undulating meadow with a wealth of wild flowers and abundant wildlife. The area was, however, under threat.

In 1951 a outline planning proposal was produced for Woodbridge and Melton. This included additional residential development in the Bury Hill area. These proposals were further expanded in the 1967 Woodbridge Development Plan which subdivided the underdeveloped parts of the Bury Hill area into four zones and set a separate housing density for each. A simplified version of this map is shown on the left.  The map also shows two areas, marked PS, which were designated for primary schools. The one just below Melton Grange was for the rebuilding of the County Primary in New Street and the other, by the junction of Woods Lane and Bredfield Road, was for a new school. Only the recreation area given to the council by Sir Roland and Lady Burke was not designated for development.

Map showing the designated housing densities

for the Bury Hill area as set out in the 1967

Woodbridge Development Plan

The roads that have been laid out since 1966, in order to develop the Bury Hill area, are shown here by the map on the right. The numbers by the access roads will be used to describe the evolution of the housing development. The small gaps between some access roads indicate that they were laid out during different phases. The areas marked PS were designated for primary schools.

In 1966 an estate was built for the American servicemen and their families who were stationed at Woodbridge and Bentwaters airbases. The estate was at the end of a new road, Bury Hill (1), which linked it to Bredfield Road. The estate was built by a private company who leased the 150 houses to USAF. The lease came up for renewal in 1977 but terms could not be agreed and the properties were offered for sale in January 1978.

Most of the land used for the estate had previously been a nursery but the access road, was on the grounds of Bury Hill House which was sold to developers in 1965.

In 1974/5 houses were built on Orchard Close (2). Part of this development was on the land previously designated for a primary school.

In 1975 houses were built along Bury Hill (1), the road leading to the estate then occupied by American servicemen. By then planning permission had also been granted to build houses down into the valley along Saxon Way and Norman Close (3). The houses at the top of Saxon Way were completed in 1977 but then the builder went into liquidation. Work started again in 1978 and a year later this phase of the development had been completed.

Also in 1978, bungalows were built on a small plot of land abutting Turnpike Lane. This plot, which is marked JJ , had previously been used for allotments provided by the Melton Poors Estate Charity. The land had originally been given to the Church for the relief of the poor by John Jenner. It was sold 1973 and the Melton Poors Estate Charity invested the proceeds.

The next development phase started in 1983 on what had, at one time, been the grounds of Fern Hill. Fern Hill Close (4) was extended and houses were built along it. By then planning permission had also been sought to develop some of the land around Melton Grange. Despite public protest about the impact on flora and fauna, this application was eventually approved and the Melton Grange estate (5) was built between 1985 and 1989. Six years later Saxon Way was extended (6) to link up the developments at the top and bottom of the valley.

Simonds Close (7), a spur off Bury Hill, was laid out in 1986 and some land behind it was made into a small recreation area. Then, in 1996, houses were built along a road (8) which went into Godfrey’s Wood, the last untouched area of woodland.

Most of the land designated as a new site for Woodbridge Primary School, remained empty until 2005. This land abutted Pytches Road and Love Lane. Plans to relocate the school from New Street to the designated site were announced by Suffolk County Council in 2001 but they were opposed by local residents. They argued that the previous sale of some of the plot for residential development had reduced the viability of the site for a school. They also had concerns about (i) the impact of traffic delivering and collecting children from school and (ii) the lack of adequate footpaths along Pytches Road. After a number of public consultations a formal planning application was submitted in January 2004 and was approved by the Council's Development Control Committee in July of that year. A footpath was put in along Pytches Road in May 2007 and the school opened in July 2007.

Development of the area is now complete and, although much of the original woodland has gone, what remains is enjoyed by the many people who walk through the footpaths which run through it.

In 2005/6 major changes were made to the recreation ground below the main area of woodland. Nine new pieces of play equipment and improved safety surfacing were installed. This equipment was designed for three distinct groups, 0-5, 6-12 and teenagers. An all weather pitch was also laid down and the pond on the fringes of the wood was cleaned out.

Melton Grange Hotel was refurbished in 1998 but, a year later, it closed. Two years later it was sold to Charter Homes who, in 2003, made an outline planning application for change of use from commercial to residential. This application was rejected by Suffolk County Council on a number of grounds, he prime ones being that the loss of employment would be contrary to the Local Plan and that insufficient effort had been made to find a purchaser who would have a commercial application.

A revised application was made in 2004. It proposed the demolition of the twentieth century additions to the building and the conversion of the remainder to form 6 apartments. In addition 28 dwellings would be erected within the grounds. The application was largely supported by local residents and pressure groups who were concerned with the rapid degradation of the site, but was rejected by the planning authority. By then they were now prepared to accept residential development but were concerned about ‘the form, layout and type of housing proposed’.

The building had become derelict as a result of several acts of vandalism and in June 2005 a fire broke out. The developer subsequently filed a revised proposal which was acceptable to the council and demolition of the modern parts of the building started in August 2005. When this was completed the northern wing was rebuilt in a style which was more sympathetic to the older core and new housing was erected in the grounds.