ROUGHAM HALL, THE RUINS OF WHICH STAND NORTH OF THE ROAD FROM BURY ST EDMUNDS TO STOWMARKET, was the only country house in Suffolk whose demise is attributable to enemy action in World War II. The house that was bombed was the successor to an earlier Rougham Hall, which stood further south in the parish.

The manor of Rougham Hall was one of the many manors possessed by the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when it was granted to Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk. It was then acquired by John Drury, remaining in his family for a century. After two generations of Burwell ownership it passed by marriage to the father of Sir Robert Walpole and was then sold to Sir Robert Davers, who had made his fortune in Barbados. Davers’ son married the eldest daughter of Thomas, second Baron Jermyn of St. Edmundsbury. In the first decade of the eighteenth century, he sold Rougham to his son-in-law Clement Corrance. Nearly a century of Corrance ownership ended with its sale in 1792 to the Reverend Roger Kedington from whom it descended to Philip Bennet of Widcombe in Somerset who also had an estate at Tollesbury in Essex. His son, also Philip, built the new house in the 1820s: the old one was burnt down shortly afterwards. Philip Bennet II was succeeded by his son, another Philip.

THE NEW HOUSE was a brick-built edifice whose design reflected the style espoused by Regency period architects such as James Wyatt, Sir Jeffry Wyatville, Thomas Hopper and Robert Smirke for many of the mansions they designed. The architect of what was described as a large picturesque mansion in the Gothic and Tudor styles is not known.

On the west (entrance) front a three-storey single bay block at the north end was linked by a two-storey range with a large porte-cochère to a larger two-storeyed tower-like block which had an oriel window on the upper floor. On the south (garden) front this block had a two-storey projecting bay surmounted by pinnacles in Jacobean style. This block was connected by a lower five-bay two-storey range to an octagonal tower of three storeys at the eastern end of the house to which was attached a conservatory.