SUDBOURNE HALL, ONE MILE FROM ORFORD, IS NOTABLE FOR ITS ASSOCIATION WITH SIR RICHARD WALLACE whose considerable wealth and artistic taste were engaged in building up what became the Wallace Collection, bequeathed to the nation by his widow.

The manor of Sudbourne belonged at various times in the Middle Ages both to the Bishop of Norwich and to the priory and convent of Ely from which it passed to the Crown at the Dissolution and was granted again to the Bishop of Norwich. In the time of Queen Elizabeth I it reverted to the Crown, and in 1600 was bought by Sir Michael Stanhope, who was a courtier to both Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. Following his death in 1621 it passed to his daughter and co-heir Jane who that year married Sir William Withipole. Their daughter and heir married Leicester Devereux, sixth Viscount Hereford, and the property descended to the tenth Viscount, who died in 1748. In 1753/4 Sudbourne was sold to Francis Seymour Conway, first Marquess of Hertford. It remained in his family until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

The fourth Marquess of Hertford died in 1870 when the title and the family's estates at Ragley in Warwickshire and at Sudbourne entailed to the marquessate passed to a cousin. His residuary estate was left to Richard Wallace, who is believed to have been his illegitimate son (his name was originally Richard Jackson) and who was brought up in Paris by the third marquess's widow with whom he enjoyed a close relationship. Wallace's parentage has never been unequivocably determined, the fourth marquess never publicly acknowledging that he was Wallace's father, and he was thought at one time to have been his illegitimate half-brother.

For many years Wallace acted as secretary to his putative father who was a connoisseur of the arts and amassed a large collection of paintings and other works of art. In addition to buying on behalf of his employer Wallace also collected on his own account until 1857, but thereafter devoted himself to buying only for the Marquess. Living in Paris, Wallace enjoyed an opulent lifestyle, being paid £1,000 a year for his services and from time to time having his debts paid off by his employer. He lived with Julie Castenau, the daughter of a French army officer, whom he married in 1871 after the death of the fourth Marquess.