Sudbourne is a village and civil parish in Suffolk, England, located approximately north of Orford.
All Saints' Church dates from the 14th century but was much restored in 1879. It is a grade II* listed building.
Between 964 and 975 King Edgar and his wife Ælfthryth granted Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester an estate at Sudbourne on condition that he translated the Rule of Saint Benedict from Latin into Old English.
According to Sam Newton, Sudbourne was the location of the almost forgotten Battle of Newmouth between the English and the Danes in the early eleventh century.Suffolk Institute, "THE BATTLE OF NEWMOUTH AND THE LOST VIKING HISTORY OF SUDBOURNE, WITH A POSTSCRIPT ON THE PLACE-NAME ORFORD"
During World War II Sudbourne and the neighbouring village of Iken were used as a battle training area in advance of the D-Day landings in June 1944. The inhabitants were relocated returning sometime after the war finished.
Sudbourne has Captain's Wood, a nature reserve owned by Suffolk Wildlife Trust, and Crag Farm Pit which is listed as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in Suffolk. Sudbourne is also the birthplace of Sir Thomas Rush.
Sudbourne Hall Stanhope
Sir Michael Stanhope (1549-1621), of Sudbourne, MP and a Groom of the Privy Chamber to Queen Elizabeth I purchased the manor of Sudbourne from the Crown, together with the manor house then known as "Chapmans", which later became Sudbourne Hall. He made improvements to the estate which increased its annual income by £200, including building a sea wall almost a mile long, at a cost of £1,500, and draining the coastal marshes which had made the air "very corrupt and contagious". He married Anne Read, the daughter and heiress of Sir William Read of Osterley in Middlesex, by whom he left four daughters and co-heiresses, including Jane Stanhope, whose share of the paternal inheritance was Sudbourne, who married Sir William Withypoole of Christchurch House in Ipswich Suffolk. Stanhope's monument with his kneeling effigy, erected during his lifetime as he mentioned in his will, survives in Sudbourne Church.
Devereux Leicester Devereux, 6th Viscount Hereford (1617–1676) (whose funeral hatchment survives in All Saints' Church, Sudbourne) married as his first wife Elizabeth Withypoole, the daughter and heiress of Sir William Withypoole, by his wife Jane Stanhope, the heiress of Sudbourne, and thus Sudbourne passed into the ownership of the Devereux family. A further hatchment survives in the church to the 10th Viscount.
Seymour-Conway
The Sudbourne estate was sold in 1753 by Edward Devereux, 11th Viscount Hereford to Francis Seymour-Conway, 1st Marquess of Hertford (1718–1794), who in 1784 commissioned the architect James Wyatt to re-built Sudbourne Hall,"Land Tax redemption certificates relating to the Sudbourne estate. - 1799, 1802; Mortgage of extensive lands and tenements in the parishes of Iken and Sudbourne by the Marquis of Hertford to the Archbishop of Armagh, Earl Spencer and the Earl of Upper Ossory for £24,000, and reconveyance. - 1807, 1828" Warwickshire Archives, 00302 - SEYMOUR FAMILY OF RAGLEY HALL, ARROW, Second deposit (CR 114A) situated about one mile south-west of All Saints' Church, Sudbourne and about one mile south of the village of Sudbourne and one mile north-west of Orford Castle in the village of Orford. Under the Seymour-Conway family the estate comprised about 12,000 acres,Mark Fairweather, "The Sudbourne Hall Estate", Rendlesham Parish Magazine, Issue 113, March 2021, pp.6-8 and in 1840 included almost the whole of the parishes and villages of Orford, Sudbourne, Butley, Chillesford, Gedgrave and Iken.Suffolk Archives, Ipswich, ref:HD 628/1, Title: "Folder of maps of the Sudbourne Estate, the property of the Marquis of Hertford. Description: Covering the parishes of Butley, Chillesford, Orford, Gedgrave, Iken and Sudbourne, surveyed by Bland H. Galland" Thirteen maps, each 48" x 26½" Field names, adjacent owners, tenants; woodland, buildings; Date: 1839-1841 The funeral hatchments of the 2nd and 3rd Marquesses survive in Sudbourne Church. The later family resided mainly in Paris (where Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800-1870) was the British ambassador and where he built up a great art collection) and at their principal English country seat at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire.Fairweather Whites Directory of 1855 stated of Sudbourne Hall: "It is used as a sporting residence, the park and neighbourhood abounding in game".
Wallace When the 4th Marquess of Hertford died in 1870, without surviving legitimate issue, he appointed as his heir his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet (1818-1890). Thus Wallace inherited his father's art collection, then housed in Paris, but not the title, which passed by law to a male cousin, nor Sudbourne, which had been entailed to descend to the new 5th Marquess.
However, with his new fortune, in 1872 Wallace was able to buy Sudbourne from the 5th Marquess, for £298,000."Draft conveyance, 1872, with draft agreements, correspondence and rentals relating to the whole Sudbourne estate, conveyed by the Marquis of Hertford to Sir Richard Wallace for £298,000. - 1870-1872" ( Warwickshire Archives, 00302 - SEYMOUR FAMILY OF RAGLEY HALL, ARROW) After the Siege of Paris in 1870-1 Wallace removed his father's art collection for safe-keeping to London, where it survives on public display as the Wallace Collection in Hertford House, Manchester Square. He was a Francophile and a keen sportsman who created at Sudbourne a notable shooting estate (sometimes referred to as "the Holkham Hall of Suffolk"Catalogue, Holts Auctioneers, Wolferton, Norfolk, FINE MODERN & ANTIQUE ARMS - JULY 2022, Lot 1376 ) where the Prince of Wales was a guest in November 1879. He employed 24 liveried gamekeepers and "a small army of domestic servants" to cater for his shooting guests. He commissioned three large oil paintings by the French artist Alfred Charles Ferdinand Decaen, depicting his shooting parties (On Sudbourne Hill (1874); Shooting Luncheon at the Great Wood Sudbourne (1876); Battue de perdreaux dans la comté de Suffolk (1880)), now displayed in Orford Town Hall.
In 1878-9 Wallace restored Sudbourne Church at his own expense, and in 1884 sold the Sudbourne Estate to Arthur Heywood.
Heywood
Arthur Heywood (1834-1920), a son of Sir Benjamin Heywood, 1st Baronet (1793-1865), MP and banker, was born at Orsett in Essex and formerly resident at Mill Lane, West Derby, Lancashire. He was a banker in the family firm, being a partner in Heywood's Bank in Manchester and Liverpool, which in 1883 was sold to the Liverpool Bank for about £240,000, At West Derby in 1863 he married Frances Harriet ThompsonBurke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th Edition, ed. Pirie-Gordon, H., London, 1937, p.1108 "Heywood of Pentney House" (1838-1908) of Liverpool, by whom he had issue including the artist Eleanor Mary Heywood. Arthur Heywood founded the Sudbourne Cricket Club and in 1891 served as High Sheriff of Suffolk. In 1897 he sold Sudbourne to Arthur Herbert Edward Wood. To replace it he purchased another nearby famous shooting estate, Glevering Hall, near Wickham Market, in Suffolk, where he resided (with an indoor staff of seventeen) until his death in 1920, leaving an estate of over £350,000.
Wood Arthur Herbert Edward Wood,Kelly's Directory of Suffolk (1900), re Gedgrave, Suffolk "Arthur Herbert Edward Wood esq. of Sudbourne Hall, is lord of the manor and principal landowner" of Raasay, Inverness,Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th Edition, ed. Pirie-Gordon, H., London, 1937, p.1108 "Heywood of Pentney House" Scotland, was the brother of Heywood's future daughter-in-law Helen Grace Wood, the wife of Richard Heywood of Pentney House, Narborough, Norfolk. He was a keen shot and famous salmon fisherman, known as the "father of greased line fishing", who invented the floating line.
Clark
In 1904 Sudbourne was sold by Arthur WoodClark, Kenneth, "Another Part Of The Wood", 1974, p.4: "By the time my father came to Sudbourne - he bought it from an intervening proprietor named Wood ..." to Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (1868–1932), a wealthy Scottish industrialist whose fortune derived from cotton thread manufacturing conducted by the family firm of Clark & Co Ltd, of Paisley, established in 1755. It operated from Anchor Mills in Paisley and used an Anchor as its trademark. The invention of the sewing machine in 1846 increased the demand for the strong thread made by Clark & Co which was the first to sell thread wrapped onto a wooden spool. In 1864 an American branch was established, called the Clark Thread Co.
In 1896 J and P Coats, another cotton thread firm established in Paisley, acquired controlling interests in the firms of Clark and Co, Jonas Brook and Brothers and James Chadwick and Brother,Grace's Guide To British Industrial History, quoting "The Stock Exchange Year Book 1908" and today the firm is represented by the multi-national conglomerate Coats Group.
Flush with money from the sale of his shareholding to J and P Coats, Kenneth Clark bought Sudbourne for the shooting, "which had replaced yachting as his chief occupation; he was an excellent shot and he was determined that his guests should have the opportunity of shooting more pheasants than anywhere else in Suffolk".Clark, Kenneth, "Another Part Of The Wood", 1974, p.4 His son Kenneth Clark, 1st Baron Clark (1903-1983), the art historian, was brought up at Sudbourne Hall until May 1918, when the estate was sold. Lord Clark discusses Sudbourne, somewhat dismissively, in his autobiography "Another Part Of The Wood" (1974):
Wood's library of books came with the house, and his bookplates were pasted over with the Clark bookplates.Clark, Kenneth, "Another Part Of The Wood", 1974, p.5
He describes the park:
As well as Sudbourne, Clark bought the 75,000 acre Ardnamurchan estate in Scotland, together with its two houses built by Charles Rudd, the main business associate of Cecil Rhodes, namely Glenborrodale Castle (used for deer stalking) and Sheilbridge (used for salmon fishing). The Clarks used Sheilbridge and let Glenborrodale to "a grim old Scottish financier named Fleming".Clark, Kenneth, "Another Part Of The Wood", 1974, pp.88-9; seemingly Robert Fleming (1845-1933), founder of merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. and grandfather of the novelist Ian Fleming, who "wrote in 1946 that he spent some of the unhappiest years of his youth at Glenborrodale. Curiously there is an echo of this in Skyfall. As the lodge burns down, Bond says, 'I always hated this place.'" He also built a house at Cap MartinClark, Kenneth, "Another Part Of The Wood", 1974, pp.21-2 in the South of France, where he kept a succession of large yachts, three of which were named "Katoomba", after the place he had visited in Australia.Clark, Kenneth, "Another Part Of The Wood", 1974, p.2
Lord Clark's son the MP Alan Clark, wrote in his diary in 1996:Alan Clark, "The Last Diaries, In and Out of the Wilderness", entry for 13 October 1996
Boynton In 1918 the greater part of the Sudbourne estate was sold by Clark to Walter Boynton, described by Lord Clark as "a speculator",Clark, p.41 who was mainly interested in the value of the timber and felled much of the woodland.Peppy Macdonald, "Rural Settlement Change in East Suffolk, 1850-1939", August 2017, Thesis for Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, University of East Anglia, School of History, p.101 , quoting "4 SROI (1918), EE5/10/144 Sales Particulars for the Sudbourne Hall Estate, for sale by auction on Friday and Saturday 31st May and 1st June 1918; SCDC, (2010), Historic Landscape Appraisal for Sudbourne Park prepared by The Landscape Partnership, May 1, 2013"