Building Thorney Hall
This detail from a late 18th century map shows the location of Thorney Hall on the eastern bank of the River Gipping. When it was built it looked across the river to the churches of St Peter and St Mary. The manor associated with Thorney Hall was the principal manor of Stowupland but over the centuries their were other sub-manors.
The following was written by Neil Langridge to support Val Dudley and Cliff Ward’s detailed article on their research into the Building Of Thorney Hall for SIAH Procedings Volume 45, Part 1 (2021)
Establishing its importance, the very first entry in the volume of the Domesday Book for Suffolk tells us that “King William holds Thorney which King Edward held as one manor”.
At this time Thorney included much of Stowmarket, Stowupland and probably portions of neighbouring parishes but soon became divided into half a dozen or more small manors leaving the manor of Thorney Hall centred on the manor house of that name. Most of the settlement that became known as Stowmarket focused on the marketplace area was granted to the Abbey of St. Osyth in Essex before 1120 and became the manor of Abbots Hall or Stowmarket. However, ownership of the lucrative market rights was to lead to conflict in the late 14th century.
A number of the other smaller manors that formed the original Thorney were formed probably during the 12th to 13th centuries, a lack of early manorial records for most of these means that they remain obscure. We know that Thorney Campsey manor was granted to the Augustinian canonesses of Campsey Ashe priory, this manor was linked or identical with Thorney Kebles, the manor house was on the site or near the present Stowupland Hall built in 1820 (now Plain English Design Ltd.). Thorney Mumpliers and Braziers manor was presumedly centred on the site of the present Braziers Hall in Creeting St. Peter.
The de Amoundevilles appear as small but aspiring landowners in the county in the 13th century. Robert de Amoundeville inherited the manors of Oakenhill in Badingham as well as Thorney Hall through his wife Nichola. She inherited these manors from her father William le Breton who died in 1258. Robert de Amoundeville died before 1300 and Nichola married a second time to Roger de Huntingfield. The manors passed to Robert’s son Richard who died in 1322 being succeeded by his son also Richard. On his death about 1350 the de Amoundeville male line ended and Oakenhill was settled on a daughter Margery, during her father’s lifetime she married Nicholas Fastolf. Thorney Hall now passed out of the family eventually being granted to the Priory of Ingham in Norfolk in 1390/91 and remained in those hands until the reformation.
The Amundeville family were Lords of Thorney Manor in the medieval era. There are various spellings of their name. Their coat of arms is a gold fret on a blue background { Carder,J. Dictionanry of Suffolk Arms}They were associated with other properties e.g. Sternfeild and Bedingfield. (Details by Ena Carter)
The fact that Oakenhill and possibly Thorney Hall included a deer park is established by the park breaking incident of 1314, when a group of landowners local to Badingham broke into both of Richard de Amoundeville’s estates carrying off game. The fact these sites were some 20 miles apart by road indicates that these raids were targeting Richard de Amoundeville rather than being a case of casual poaching, The siting of the park at Thorney is not known for sure however the present Park Farm in the area situated on the high ground rising from the Gipping valley and between Church Road Stowupland and Creeting Lane which here followed the parish boundary with Creeting St. Peter would conform with Rosemary Hoppitt’s description of a typical location for a deer park as “within the area of the high clay-land interfluves …… often on or adjacent to parish boundaries and often peripheral to the main centres of population”. There is no mention of a park at Thorney in Richard de Amoundeville the elder’s inquisition post mortem of 1323 while Oakenhill retained its park.
Richard de Amoundeville also claimed, “half of a certain market in Stowmarket”. In 1338, Richard de Amoundeville the younger obtained a charter from Edward III for a market and fair in Stowmarket. Ten years later the Abbot of St Osyth petitioned the King claiming that Richard de Amoundeville had obtained the market and fair by false suggestion as he was not Lord of the Manor. de Amoundeville was summoned to the Chancery to prove his claims, the result being the Abbot of St Osyth obtaining the rights to market and fair in Stowmarket in a new charter.
The building described was most likely modified or rebuilt more than once in the following centuries but remained the residence of the lord of the manor unto the early 1840s. A reminiscence by the Reverend Cyprian Rust published in 1889 but looking back to his younger days in Stowmarket describes the then hall. “A beautiful green pasture lying between the bank of the river and Creeting Road, Through the whole length of it ran a fine avenue of trees, leading to Thorney Hall. … The house was a new one” this would suggest that the house was rebuilt or at least modernised in the early 19th century.
The opening of the Gipping Navigation in 1793, connecting Stowmarket to Ipswich meant that the area around the head of the navigation began to attract industries, initially malting but with the arrival of the railway in 1847 other new and malodorous industries such as a chemical fertilizer works, gas works, and a paper mill grew up making Thorney Hall no longer the attractive residence it must once have been. The last Lord of the manor Martha Diggons Marriott to reside at Thorney Hall received £7000 compensation from the railway company and moved to Needham Market and for a few years the hall was let out to local farmers as a farmhouse but then was adapted as a maltings eventually being demolished in the early 20th century. The site of the hall is now just north of Stowmarket Station.
Neil Langridge (2021)
This detail from a 1904 map of the area around Stowmarket Station shows (bottom centre) ‘the Maltings On Site of Thorney Hall.
