REDGRAVE HALLWAS SITUATED IN THE NORTHERN PART OF SUFFOLK NEAR THE NORFOLK BORDER, seven miles west of Diss. The first house on its site is thought to have been built early in the thirteenth century by the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds to whom the manor belonged. Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries Redgrave was granted by King Henry VIII to Sir Nicholas Bacon, who became Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under Elizabeth I and was the father of Sir Francis Bacon.

Redgrave remained in the Bacon family until 1702 when it was bought by Sir John Holt, Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench. On his death without children in 1709 the estate passed to his brother Rowland (1652–1719) and subsequently to his son Rowland II (1698–1739) and his grandson Rowland III (1723–86), whose mother was a cousin of George Washington, first President of the United States of America. On his death, unmarried, in 1786 the estate passed to his brother, Thomas, who bequeathed it to his sister Lucinda's son, Admiral George Wilson, in whose family (later Holt-Wilson) it remained until the house was demolished.

THE HOUSE that Bacon acquired was described in 1542 as ‘sore decayed’, but some part of it was incorporated in Sir Nicholas's new house. Parts of Bacon's building survived the rebuilding of the house in the eighteenth century, and the last part of Redgrave to remain standing was the crosswing of the house he built.

Lord Keeper Bacon's house was one of the earliest examples of the Uplan houses built in this part of England and was more sophisticated than both Hengrave and Little Saxham, further south in the county, which ‘were both firmly in the English late mediaeval tradition’. It was begun in 1545 and completed in its original form nine years later. It was a rigidly symmetrical house with crow-stepped gables and a central octagon turret. Its symmetry reflected the influence of Renaissance architectural ideas and extended not only to the front but also to the inner faces of the side wings. The hall of the house was to the left of the central block off a screens passage with private accommodation in the wing. The kitchens and service rooms were to the right of the passage, and in its planning therefore the house continued the medieval tradition.