Rebuilding the Hall, 1545-54

REBUILDING THE HALL, 1545-'54
an account from Sir Nicholas Bacon's Building Book

Nicholas Bacon's Building Book for Redgrave still exists. He began in 1545 by clearing the site. It is known from the bill of sale that the monks had left some kind of park and "a mansion house, sore decayed". Enough remained in the way of a hunting lodge for Bacon to incorporate a little of it in his house as a source of raw material. Workmen were employed at 5d a day to "beat down the walls", and the going rate for dismantling 20,000 tiles was 3d a thousand. Freestone was no problem when monasteries and hospitals had just become surplus stores. In 1546 Bacon had bought St Saviour's Hospital in Bury St Edmunds with this building in mind: "To Knight and his man for takinge downe fre stone at the hospital iiis iiid; for the carriage of vii loods of stone from the hospital at Burye to Redgrave at iis the loode xiiiis".

Other loads of stone were also brought from local priories and nunneries: "Paid to Bugg the xxiii of Marche for carriage of iii Altur-stones, thre are from Wortham at viii the lood, and one from Hinderclay at viii, one from Reykynghall, and one other from Redgrave, at eyther of them vi the lood iis iiiid". The government of King Edward VI had ordered the removal of altars from parish churches, and as patron of Wortham, Hinderclay, Rickinghall and Redgrave, Bacon was able to put the altar stones to a Protestant use. He no doubt paved his hall with them, and one can imagine what the Catholic peasantry had to say about it.

The bricks were manufactured on the estate and used as required. Ther timber came out of the woods at Redgrave, Hinderclay and Rickinghall. The small red tiles that were used to roof the house, and are still the mark of an old building today, came from a nearby kiln at Wyken. Many items were manufactured on or near the site - the lead gutters and conduits, the laths and some of the ironwork. Local craftsmen were used for the jobs within their skills, while experts were brought from further afield and boarded. Some free-masons were sent by Edmund Wythepool, who was building the Christchurch Mansion which is now a museum at Ipswich. Others, together with glaziers and the best of the carpenters, came from Norwich and London. Contracts, or "bargains" as they were called, were made with the master craftsmen, and the terms meticulously incorporated in legal indentures. We know from his correspondence that the business-like Bacon left nothing to chance when hiring workmen. The overseer must have been carefully picked. For the early years it was a cousin John Bacon; later a capable Redgrave man from a family of well-to-do yeomen.

Year by year the Hall began to take shape; the house with its red tiles and tall chimneys, its crow-stepped gables and ogee turret; the pilastered doorway with a scupltured emblem and motto MEDIOCRIA FIRMA above it; the wainscoted chambers and their mullioned windows - some twenty for the family, as many more for the household officers and servants; the thatched stable, preserved perhaps from the Abbot's days; the dairy, brewery, barns and mill; the fish ponds; the extended park with its deer and cattle and new fence.


Figures from building books, receivers' and bailiffs' accounts, executors' records and correspondence
1545	£17	1550	£171
1546	£104	1551	£200
1547	£268	1552	£195
1548	£101	1553	£113
1549	£28 *	1554	£103
	* Kett's Rebellion suspended activities
				£1300
Further improvements were made:
1560	£172	1568	£10
1561	£202	1569	£155
1562	£47	1570	£27	£613
				£1913 TOTAL

Queen Elizabeth seems to have registered some surprise when she visited Bacon. "My Lord", she said, "what a little house you have gotten". He replied, "Madam, my house is well, but it is you that have made me too great for my house". This anecdote, which was included in Francis Bacon's 'Apophthegmes New & Old" was referred to Redgrave in the first edition, and then by a later correction to Gorhambury.

From notes written by Christopher Piers Holt Wilson