Otley Hall, Suffolk: Grade I Listed 15th Century Gem

Otley Hall in Suffolk in an enchanting Grade I listed, 15th century hall set in Suffolk.

Otley Hall is described by historian Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘perhaps the outstanding Tudor House in east Suffolk’.

Simon Jenkins, meanwhile, writing in his England’s Thousand Best Houses, described it as ‘an immaculate Tudor house with no edge untrimmed and no dust on any shelf.’

The Hall has long been regarded as the oldest house in Suffolk to have survived largely intact, with many rooms remaining unchanged for 500 years.

The site of Otley Hall was settled in the 12th century and the present house dates from 1500.

It’s an impeccable example of late medieval architecture.

The Gosnold family owned or tenanted the land in the area in 1401 and were living in Otley in around 1440, although they built much of what you see today during the 16th century.

The Gosnolds were educated and well connected lawyers with links to Cardinal Wolsey, the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Southampton, the 17th Earl of Oxford and Francis Bacon.

Robert Gosnold III was secretary and Master of Requests to the Earl of Essex from 1599 to 1601.

Colonel Robert Gosnold VI fought through three sieges during the Civil War and was reputed to have seen Charles I leave Oxford in disguise one midnight.

In 1588 the ‘Plahouse wing’ was added and was used as an occasional theatre.

This may have been inspired by one of the Gosnold’s cousins Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who some regard as the author of Shakespeare’s plays.

Some believe that The Tempest was based on Bartholomew Gosnold’s voyage to the New World in 1602.

In the course of this voyage Bartholomew Gosnold named Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard, but failed to establish a settlement.

On his return to England, he started planning another voyage. Much of the planning and recruitment of settlers is reputed to have been done in the Great Hall at Otley Hall.

In 1606, in command of the Godspeed and with two other vessels, he left England and in 1607 was the prime mover in establishing a settlement known today as Jamestown, Virginia.

Bartholomew Gosnold died in 1607 and Otley Hall was sold by the Gosnold family in 1674.

In 1910, it was sold to Dorothy Sherston who employed the Edwardian architect Morley Horder to refurbish the hall and Francis Inigo Thomas, the famous Edwardian landscape gardener, to design a formal garden.

The gardens and grounds of Otley Hall are of particular note and have been listed in the Independent’s Top 50 Best British Gardens to visit.

The gardens are both formal and informal and provide a wonderful setting for the house.

The layout blends artfully between the herber, orchard, a nuttery, formal croquet lawn, rose garden, vine tunnel and woodland.

Enjoy the tranquillity of the knot garden, labyrinth or sit atop The Mount which offers views across the surrounding Suffolk countryside.

Two sides of the hall are moated and an H-shaped canal has been created to the original design of Francis Inigo Thomas from part of a third side of moat and stew pond.

The gardens offer a sense of the continuous nature and development of gardening spanning nearly eight centuries.

There are peacocks both Indian blue and white along with a whole host of wildlife including ducks, moorhens, green woodpeckers, herons as well as rudd, carp and crayfish.

There’s also many other fish in the moat.

There are two thatched summerhouses and a dovecote overlooking the croquet lawn to the north of the Hall and a pavilion and barn to the south-west of the Hall.

In 2019, it went on sale through Savills and Jackson-Stops at a guide price of £2.25m.

The photos in this article were courtesy of Savills and Jackson Stops estate agents.

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