EASTON PARK, ALSO KNOWN AS THE WHITE HOUSE, LOCATED BETWEEN FRAMLINGHAM AND WICKHAM MARKET, belonged in medieval times to the Charles family of nearby Kettleburgh and passed in the sixteenth century to the Wingfield family of Letheringham. Sir Anthony Wingfield Bt is said to have begun building a new house in 150 acres of parkland near Easton church in 1627 to replace a medieval house, but it is not clear whether Wingfield's house was on the same site as its predecessor or was on the site where the White House was subsequently erected. Later in the seventeenth century changes in the family's fortunes led to its sale to an illegitimate descendant of one of the Princes of Orange, William Henry Nassau, who came to England with William of Orange by whom he was created Earl of Rochford.

In the second half of the eighteenth century Easton Park was the residence of the Hon. Richard Nassau, son of the third Earl of Rochford, who married as her second husband Anne, co-heiress of Edward Spencer of Rendlesham and widow of the fifth Duke of Hamilton who was also second Duke of Brandon. On the death of the last Earl of Rochford in 1830 Easton passed to the Dukes of Hamilton and Brandon. It was during the tenure in the second half of the nineteenth century of the twelfth Duke, who spent much of his time in Suffolk, that the estate was considerably extended and the house enlarged.

THE ROCHFORDS’ house, probably dating from the middle years of the eighteenth century, was a plain classical brick built building of two storeys. There were fifteen bays on what was in the later years the house’s garden front, the central three bays projecting forward with a pediment supported by pilasters. The house was described in 1833 as