Thorpe Hall

Thorpe Hall is a small country house originally built in 1584 for Sir John Bolle. It underwent alterations in the 17th century, substantial enlargements in the 18th century, and further changes in the early 19th and 20th centuries. The house is constructed of red brick with ashlar dressings and has old plain tiled roofs with brick coped gables and lead dressed hips. It features three large ridge stacks with diamond set shafts.

The front of the house, dating from the early 18th century, has a hipped roof with a modillioned cornice and is arranged over two storeys plus attics, with seven bays, the central bay slightly projected. A central half-glazed door is flanked by three glazing bar sashes. The first floor has seven glazing bar sashes, and three dormer windows with sliding sashes, moulded gables, and rendered cheeks are set into the roof. An early 19th-century block adjoins the right side of the main house. At the rear, a steeply gabled projecting block has three diapers in dark brick headers to the gable, likely forming part of the original 1584 structure. A further gabled block, although altered, retains a pattern of late 17th-century windows. An ashlar datestone inscribed "1584" is set above a small entrance porch on the right side, and a further gabled block is located on the left.

The interior features a Jacobean overmantle, probably imported and reset in the 19th century, within the entrance hall which is lined with 17th-century oak panelling. A late 17th-century dog leg staircase has a moulded handrail and bulbous balusters. The dining room contains reset full-height 17th-century panelling, some panels with semi-circular heads featuring decorative pilasters and leaves in the spandrels. The first floor has early 19th-century decorated cornices and elliptical arches, and two rooms contain early 18th-century fielded panelling and bolection moulded fireplace surrounds. The original kitchen has a large three-centred arch with a keystone and imposts, flanked by single brick arches with keystones. The roof over the main range is staggered butt purlin construction, incorporating reused timbers from an earlier roof.

The house sits within grounds designed by Gertrude Jekyll in 1906. The terraces utilize stonework taken from Sir Christopher Wren’s church of St. Mildred in the Poultry. Sir John Bolle participated in the Battle of Cadiz in 1596, capturing a Spanish woman whose story inspired a ballad, "The Spanish Lady's love for an Englishman," and a poem by Shenston, "Love and Honour." His son, Sir Charles Bolle, was a significant Royalist. John Lewis Fytche, Tennyson's uncle, resided at Thorpe Hall in the 19th century.