THE MANOR HOUSE, MILDENHALL, STOOD TO THE NORTH OF THE PARISH CHURCH OF ST MARY, near the centre of the town. In the medieval period the manor of Mildenhall was, like many other manors in Suffolk, held by the Abbey of St Edmunds. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries it passed through a number of hands, including those of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, until it was acquired by Henry, son of Roger, second Lord North, in 1586. Thereafter it passed by descent until the final sale of the estate in 1933.

The date when the house was built is uncertain. One account of its history suggests that it was built about 1570 before its acquisition by the North family. However there is no record of Sir Nicholas Bacon (a prolific builder of large houses) erecting a house at Mildenhall, and in 1608 ‘the King Majesty's manor house called Mildenhall Hall’ was described as ‘ruined and in decay’. The Norths’ tenure of Mildenhall appears originally to have been in the nature of a lease, and it was not until 1614 that Sir Henry North obtained a grant of the ‘site of the Manor and Grange of Mildenhall’ from the Crown. It seems likely that the house was built shortly after Sir Henry North secured his tenure of the property. On the death of his son, the second baronet, the property passed to his sister, the wife of William Hanmer whose son, Sir Thomas Hanmer, was Speaker of the House of Commons. From him it passed to the Bunbury family whose other Suffolk seat was Barton Hall but who also had landed interests in Cheshire.

THE NORTHS’ original house was the subject of considerable alteration and extension over succeeding centuries. On what was originally its entrance front there were three gables, the right-hand one projecting forward of the other two and having a lower roof height and retaining its mullioned and transomed window on the first floor. This appears to have been the original building to which the other two gable-ended wings were added, probably later in the seventeenth century. The fenestration of these wings was subsequently changed to sashed windows and a gable was added to the flank of the left-hand wing. All three of these wings were of two principal storeys with garrets in the gabled roofs.