Seckford Hall is a

Tudor period The Tudor period occurred between 1485 and 1603 in England and Wales and includes the Elizabethan period during the reign of Elizabeth I until 1603. The Tudor period coincides with the dynasty of the House of Tudor in England that began with t ...

house in Seckford Hall Road,

Great Bealings Great Bealings is a small village in Suffolk, England. It has about 302 people living in it in around 113 households. Its nearest towns are Ipswich ( away) and Woodbridge (). Nearby villages include Little Bealings, Playford, Culpho, Hask ...

, near Woodbridge,

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 L ...

. The hall is now a hotel. The hall was constructed in the 1530s as the family home of

Thomas Seckford Thomas Seckford Esquire (1515 – 1587) was a senior lawyer, a "man of business" at the court of Queen Elizabeth I, a landowner of the armigerous Suffolk gentry, Member of Parliament,M.K. Dale, 'Seckford (Sakford), Thomas (1515/16-87), of Gra ...

. It is built of local brick in two storeys to an E-shaped plan with a 9-bay frontage. The hall passed down in the Seckford family until 1673, when it was bequeathed to Seckford Cage, after which it passed through several hands by purchase. A wartime stay after leaving school in 1915 inspired a teenage

Enid Blyton Enid Mary Blyton (11 August 1897 – 28 November 1968) was an English children's writer, whose books have been worldwide bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Her books are still enormously popular and have be ...

. In May 1940 Sir Ralph Harwood purchased the neglected building from a demolition contractor, but it was soon afterwards commandeered by the Army for the duration of the Second World War. The property was returned after the war and early in 1946 Sir Ralph began to restore and modernise the property using materials rescued from other stately homes and churches. In 1950 the property was acquired by the Bunn family and converted to a hotel. The hotel is said to contain furniture that was once used in Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, including the chair that King Henry VII is said to have died on. The hotel again changed hands in September 2012.

References

External links

Seckford Hall websiteSeckford Hall, Images of England
Grade II* listed buildings in Suffolk Suffolk Coastal Country houses in Suffolk {{Suffolk-geo-stub