HUNSTON HALL STOOD SOMETWO MILES TO THE EAST OF THE ROAD FROM IXWORTH TO STOWMARKET. This small country house, unoccupied at the time, was destroyed by fire in 1917.

It appears that the manor of Hunston belonged in the later Middle Ages to the Priory of St Mary at Ixworth before passing at the Dissolution of the Monasteries into lay hands and, it seems, becoming merged with the manor of Hunston Hall. The original Hunston Hall was on a different site from the house destroyed in 1917. It lay to the west of the parish church near to the parish boundary, but there is now no trace of that house and its moats are so mutilated that their plan can no longer be traced.

The Heigham family from Rougham owned Hunston from the eighteenth century when it came to them through marriage. Their house was situated nearer the centre of the parish to the east of the church. Whether there was a house on this site when they inherited is not clear, but the presence of four tall brick chimneys serving the rear (presumably service) wing suggests that this part of the house may have survived from an earlier building.

THE HEIGHAMS’ house was a plain Georgian building of six bays on the entrance front and three bays on the flank. The windows on the ground floor were arched, and the entrance portico consisted of a canted bay supported at ground level on two pillars with accommodation above. The height of the open portico was less than that of the ground floor of the house and the upper floor height correspondingly greater than that of the rest of the upper floor. The windows were sashed. On the garden flank there was a canopy stretching the whole width of the house.

THE HEIGHAM family's residence at Hunston Hall seems to have been somewhat sporadic in the nineteenth century. John Henry Heigham was living there in 1844 but eleven years later he was resident at another property on the estate, Hunston Cottage, a seventeenth-century building, and the hall was let. In 1885 Clement Henry John Heigham, who was Chief Constable of Suffolk, lived in the hall, but three years later he was living in Ipswich and two other members of the family were at the hall.