Kentwell Hall

Summary

A moated Tudor manor house in Long Melford, Suffolk, dating from the mid-16th century, known for its annual Tudor re-enactments, used as a filming location for Witchfinder General (1968, director Michael Reeves, starring Vincent Price) and a series of subsequent film and television productions.

About this location

Kentwell Hall stands at the northern end of the village of Long Melford in Suffolk, surrounded by a moat and approached by an avenue of lime trees planted in the 17th century. The earliest recorded reference to the manor is in the Domesday Book of 1086. The present redbrick house was built primarily for the Clopton family in the mid-16th century and retains a largely Tudor exterior form — an E-shaped plan with projecting wings, gabled facades, and diaper-pattern brickwork. The hall passed through numerous owners after the last Clopton died in 1661 and fell into significant disrepair. Patrick Phillips purchased the estate in 1971 in a deliberately semi-derelict state and undertook a long programme of structural repair and interior restoration over the following decades.

The moat surrounding the house — still complete and water-filled — encloses the main house and walled gardens. The walled kitchen garden has been restored to full production. Kentwell holds a summer re-enactment programme that has run since 1979, reconstructing life in Tudor and other historical periods with large casts of volunteers. These have attracted several hundred participants in a single season. The hall also hosts an annual Halloween event called Scaresville.

Witchfinder General (1968, directed by Michael Reeves, starring Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins and Ian Ogilvy as Richard Marshall) filmed at Kentwell Hall. The film, set during the English Civil War, used Kentwell for several of its period exterior sequences. Subsequent productions include The Woman in White (BBC, 1982, two episodes, adapted from Wilkie Collins, starring Ian Richardson and Jenny Seagrove), The Agatha Christie Hour (Thames Television, 1982, episode “In a Glass Darkly”), and The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding The Legend (2005, a Channel 5 documentary hosted by Richard Hammond, produced to reconstruct and test the feasibility of the 1605 plot).