West Stow Hall is a Tudor

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals w ...

in West Stow,

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, near

Bury St Edmunds Bury St Edmunds (), commonly referred to locally as Bury, is a historic market town, market, cathedral town and civil parish in Suffolk, England.OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – ...

. It was begun in around 1520 for Sir John Croftes, Master of the Horse to Mary Tudor.

History

In 1526 Sir John Croftes leased the remainder of West Stow from the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds, which he purchased from the Crown after the dissolution of the

Abbey An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christian monks and nuns. The conce ...

for £497. The gatehouse was an independent building from the house before it was connected to the main house with a colonnade built by Sir John's grandson, in about 1580. In the 19th Century restoration of the house, in a room above the entrance a wall-painting, known as the 'Four Ages of Man', was found, thought to date to around 1575. The house's original moat was filled in by 1840, and it was bridged by the gatehouse, passing under two arches beneath it, the tops of which can still be seen in the shrub border of the south side

References

{{Reflist Grade I listed houses Tudor England Bury St Edmunds Manor houses in England