Purton Green is one of the many lost villages of Suffolk, where generations spent their lives, but which are now just patches of lime and fragments in the plough. It lies on an old road running south from Bury St Edmunds, today hardly a path. All that remains is this house. Inside its late medieval walls survives a hall of 1250 – a great rarity. Aisled on both sides, with scissor-braced trusses and a highly ornamental arcade at the low end, it must once have been an important place.

When we bought it in 1969 it was little more than a ruin. As with almost all medieval houses, a floor and central chimney stack had later been inserted, but these additions were so derelict that we felt justified in removing them, to return the hall to its original open state. Part of the house – the high end – was rebuilt in about 1600. Our conversion of this end into living quarters in the 1970s has now also become a part of the building’s history.

These can only be reached through the hall, which you must cross and recross if you stay here, as your predecessors have done for 700 years. The house now stands surrounded by fields, with unchanging Suffolk countryside in all directions. After crossing a ford, you leave your car 400 yards from the house; but we provide a wheelbarrow for the rest of the journey.

View our history sheet for this Landmark

Sleeps: 4