Kesgrave Hall

Kesgrave Hall is a country house located in woodlands north of the suburban village of Kesgrave, which itself is on the eastern outskirts of Ipswich, in Suffolk. It was constructed in 1812 by William Cunliffe-Shawe, and has been extended since, notably by the addition of a northern extension. The building has five large rooms downstairs, with another two in the northern extension, with another seven upstairs. The building is set in 38 acres (150,000 m²) of grounds, which includes woodlands, marsh and fields; a stream, which rises on Playford Heath, north of Kesgrave village, and joins the River Fynn, itself a tributary of the Deben, at Martlesham, runs west to east through the grounds.

The Hall has had several uses during its life, including housing five different boarding schools. Since late April 2008, the building has been used as a restaurant and hotel and owned by the Hills Building Group ^[1] and the Milsom Hotel Group,^[2].

Kesgrave Hall until 1939

Kesgrave Hall, 1907

According to British Isles Genealogy,^[3] the hall was purchased around 1814 by William Cunliffe Shawe, and by 1844 was inhabited by his son, Robert Newton Shawe,^[4] a magistrate and joint Chairman of the Woodbridge quarter sessions, who at one point represented Suffolk in Parliament; the Shawes were descended from "an eminent merchant of Liverpool" according to the British Gazetteer.^[5] According to a report published in 1846 by the Committee of Council on Education^[6] Robert Shawe funded the local school, which educated 238 pupils between ages 7 and 14 (11 in the case of boys), where discipline was said to be good but not as strict as was usual in "good national schools", and that the pupils' knowledge of "Holy Scripture" was particularly notable.

The building has been used for five boarding schools in its history, two in the 19th century and three in the 20th and 21st. Of the first two, little is known; the National Archives has records of a diary by one Francis Aldous Kent, headmaster resident in the nearby village of Little Bealings, from 1860 with "accounts of Kesgrave Hall School", which is deposited in the Suffolk Record Office (Ipswich branch).^[7] In the 1920s, the hall was inhabited by a Colonel Barnes, whose daughter Mary, later Mary Goodman, formed the Kesgrave Guide Group; Goodman Grove, in Kesgrave, is named after her.^[8]

Second World War (1939-1945)

During the war the Hall was used by the RAF, and by the pilots of the USAF 359th Fighter Squadron, part of the 356th Fighter Group, who were involved in aerial operations over France, Belgium, Holland, Germany and Central Europe out of the nearby RAF Martlesham Heath.^[9]

St. Edmund's School (1946-1975)

The third school to use the Hall was St. Edmund's School, a boys' preparatory boarding school. This school was originally founded in 1936 in a large house on the corner of St. Edmunds Road and Henley Road (No.57) in Ipswich, hence the name, but was evacuated to Dursley during World War II. At the end of the war, the school returned to Ipswich and moved to Kesgrave Hall in 1946 after outgrowing its original premises. The school was founded by the Marshall family, and was under a headmaster by the name of McClintock in the 1950s. The school was taken over by the Mills family in 1958 and took on many improvements, including its own swimming pool (now filled in) and the draining of the marsh at the front of the main building for playing fields. Major John Mills was headmaster until the school closed in 1975.

Kesgrave Hall School (1976 - 1993)

Main article: Kesgrave Hall School

Kesgrave Hall, 1988

The fourth school at the Hall, known as Kesgrave Hall School opened in 1976. This was also a boys' boarding school and was founded by teachers from a boys' junior boarding school, Heanton in Devon. The teachers found that boys from that school were ill-served by their secondary schools.

As with Heanton, Kesgrave Hall School was established for boys with a strong academic ability but with perceived emotional or behavioural problems. It had a strong academic focus, but also taught vocational subjects such as woodwork.

The school closed in 1993, at a time when a number of similar establishments in the UK were closing.

Shawe Manor (1993)

Immediately after Kesgrave Hall School closed a new school opened; the fifth school based at the Hall was run by different owners, they purchased the fixtures and fittings from the old school and continued to lease the building from the founder of Kesgrave Hall School.

The headmaster, most of the staff and most of the pupils from Kesgrave Hall School transferred to the new school. According to one ex-pupil of both schools, Shawe Manor was run along the same lines as it predecessor. The school remained open less than a year before itself closed.

It is sometimes mistakenly asserted that the school was known as Grange Farm (headmaster John Williams even said, at the summer prize-giving in 1993, that he had received mail so addressed, and the error is repeated on some websites), but this is in fact the name of a nearby housing development.^[10]

KDM (1995-2004)

In 1995, the timber trading company KDM^[11] moved into the building. According to their history page,^[12] they converted the dining hall into "the first hi-tech timber trading room of its kind in the UK". KDM also developed an internet business, COUNTYWeb, which it sold in 2003, and also launched BT Global WoodTrader, a joint venture with BT, to trade timber over the Internet. KDM moved out of the building in 2004 into a purpose-built building at Ransomes Europark, on the southern outskirts of Ipswich.

Ryes School (2004-2007)

After KDM left, the Ryes School^[13] organisation moved into the building. The Ryes is a special residential school for children with behavioural problems and other complex needs, based near Sudbury, Suffolk. Kesgrave Hall was used to house senior pupils. However, in 2007, local educational authorities decided that the site was too big and obliged the school to move the youths to smaller premises. As of 2 October 2007, a plan to house them in Pettaugh, near Stowmarket, was the subject of objections from locals who feared that they would have nothing to do outside school times.^[14]

Milsoms Restaurant and Hotel (2007-present)

Hills Building Group and the Milsom Hotel Group bought the building in autumn 2007, and the East Anglian Daily Times reported on 16 October 2007 that Milsom was investing 4 million GBP in a new "restaurant with rooms" called Milsoms at Kesgrave Hall, along similar lines to the milsoms establishment in Dedham, Essex. Among the favourable conditions was the location between Ipswich and the picturesque riverside town of Woodbridge, Suffolk. On 28 November 2007, the East Anglian Daily Times reported that Milsom's had received planning permission from Suffolk Coastal District Council^[15] for their change of use and for their alterations.^[16][17] The new restaurant and hotel, 'Milsoms at Kesgrave Hall', opened in April 2008. In the first phase of works the hotel had 15 rooms, sports hall and a 100 seater restaurant. The second stage included the construction of eight extra rooms, both in the main Hall and in the outbuildings, and two further meeting rooms^[18] and they were opened in July 2009.

References

1. ^ "Hills Building Group". http://www.hillsgroup.com. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
2. ^ "Welcome to Milsom Hotels and Restaurants". http://www.milsom-hotels.co.uk. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
3. ^ "British Isle Genealogy". http://www.bigenealogy.com/. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
4. ^ "Kesgrave". British Isles Genealogy. http://www.bigenealogy.com/suffolk/kesgrave_parish.htm. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
5. ^ Kesgrave. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Cs4HAAAAQAAJ&printsec=titlepage&dq=%22kesgrave+hall%22. 
6. ^ Committee of Council on Education. Google Books. p. 193. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=k1WMaMET-ZEC. 
7. ^ "Kent, Francis Aldous, headmaster of Little Bealings". National Register of Archives. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=D4278. 
8. ^ "Street Naming in Kesgrave". Kesgrave News. December 2006. http://www.kesgrave.org.uk/faqs/kesgrave-town-council-reference/steet-naming/kesgrave-news-dec-2006.htm. 
9. ^ Miller, Kent David (2003). "The 356th Fighter Group in World War II: in action over Europe with the P-47 and P-51". Schiffer Military History. p. 8. 
10. ^ "Streetmap". streetmap.co.uk. http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=622540&y=245465&z=3&sv=622540,245465&st=4&ar=Y&mapp=newmap.srf&searchp=newsearch.srf. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
11. ^ KDM "KDM timber and forest products". http://www.kdm.co.uk KDM. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
12. ^ "Corporate History". http://www.kdm.co.uk/History.aspx. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
13. ^ "Welcome to the Ryes". http://www.theryesschool.org.uk/. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
14. ^ "Villagers' concerns over new school bid". East Anglian Daily Times. 2 October 2007. http://www.eadt.co.uk/content/eadt/news/story.aspx?brand=EADOnline&category=News&tBrand=EADOnline&tCategory=News&itemid=IPED01%20Oct%202007%2017%3A36%3A41%3A623. 
15. ^ "Suffolk coastal". Suffolk Coastal District Council. http://www.suffolkcoastal.gov.uk. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
16. ^ "Restaurant and hotel scheme approved". East Anglian Daily Times. 28 November 2007. http://www.eadt.co.uk/content/eadt/businessnews/story.aspx?brand=EADOnline&category=Business&tBrand=EADOnline&tCategory=Business&itemid=IPED28%20Nov%202007%2016%3A52%3A20%3A577. 
17. ^ "Listed Building Consent". https://apps3.suffolkcoastal.gov.uk/planningonlinedocuments/83268_1.pdf. Retrieved 7 October 2010. 
18. ^ "Milsome Hotels homepage". http://www.milsomhotels.com/news/default.aspx?naid=50. 

External links

• Kesgrave Hall restaurant website
• Geograph.org.uk photo

Coordinates: 52°04′15″N 1°15′24″E / 52.070771°N 1.256759°E / 52.070771; 1.256759