EDWARDSTONE HALL STOOD NORTH OF THE ROAD FROM SUDBURY TO HADLEIGH two miles north-west of Boxford. It was located in parkland near Edwardstone Church and was approached through a massive arched gatehouse which survived the demolition of the major part of the house.

In the early Middle Ages the manor of Edwardstone belonged to the Montchesney family but it passed in the fifteenth century to the Waldegraves. At the end of the sixteenth century it was purchased by John Brand, a clothier, whose family’ ownership lasted for over a century. In 1662 Susanna Brand married Sir John Morden, a Levant merchant and the founder of Morden College in Blackheath, originally a home for merchants who ‘were down on their luck’. The connection between Edwardstone and Morden College has survived for more than three centuries. By the marriage of the heiress of the Brand family to Sir Robert Kemp the estate passed into his family, but it was sold in 1714 to William French, a draper of London.

In 1794 Edwardstone was sold by French's eventual heir, William Sheldon, to Thomas Dawson of Easington in Co. Durham from whom it descended to the family of the Earls Belmore, passing to the third Earl’s fourth son, the Hon. Henry William Lowry-Corry. The family increased their landholdings in the vicinity of Edwardstone by the purchase in 1897 of the Dawson family's Groton estate. The house was to remain the seat of this branch of the family until it was pulled down.

THE HOUSE demolished in 1952 was the successor to an earlier house, which, when it was owned by John Brand in 1674, was recorded as having fourteen hearths. The later house appears to date from the time of Charles Dawson, who lived from 1777 to 1853. It has been described as being in Victorian Mock Tudor style. At the entrance to the park in which it stood is a red-brick archway and lodge of two storeys also in ‘Tudor’ style known as Temple Bar. This is believed to date from 1840 and the rebuilt house may be of the same date. To what extent the house was a complete replacement or incorporated elements of its predecessor is not known.

On the entrance (west) front the brick-built house was a four-bay twostoreyed building with the entrance door in the second bay from the left, which projected forward slightly, as did the fourth bay.