About Baconsthorpe Castle

The extensive ruins of a late medieval and Tudor fortified manor house, its knapped flint walls reflected in the lake enlarged from its original moat. Baconsthorpe is the work of several generations of the locally powerful (but somewhat disreputable) Heydon family. Sir John Heydon probably built the strong inner gatehouse and curtain wall, equipped for artillery, during the Wars of the Roses. In more peaceful times a descendant converted part of the house into a textile factory, and in c. 1560 Sir Christopher Heydon added the turreted outer gateway, inhabited until 1920.