The flower arranger of this clever display was able to convey the idea of the river and water meadows near the site of Bardwell Place. 

Courtesy of Tony Stokes

Location:

Description:

The Name:

Lords of the Manor

The Bardwells

There is little evidence to support the suggestion that the 15th century Sir William de Berdewelle had a house on this site. However, Sir William, by the time he died, was lord of all three of the manors with land in Bardwell, so he may have chosen to live in this house when he retired from his military career. It stood close to the church where he was financing a considerable amount of new building, and may well have been the most substantial of the three manor houses. The three manors being Wykes, Wyken and Bardwell Hall, do not confuse the last with the present day houses called Bardwell Hall or Bardwell Manor. The manor house for the manor of Bardwell Hall at that time would have been on the site of the present day Moat House. Sir William’s first son and his children died before him so the second son Robert, inherited all of William’s estates although he continued to live at West Harling. When Robert died he left his estates to his grandson, his son having already died.

The Darcys

In 1484 in the reign of Richard III a partition deed was drawn up by which the Manors of Bardwell, Wykes and Wyken were given to Sir Thomas Darcy and his wife Margaret who was the daughter of Sir William’s half sister Margaret Harleston [nee Bardwell]. Thomas Darcy died in 1486 and Margaret Darcy in 1489 and when their son Roger died in 1504 it is documented that he held all three manors. Presumably the Manor of Wykes continued in the ownership of the Darcy family as in 1553 the Town Wardens were paying rent to Lord Thomas Darcy, lord of the manor of Wykes.

The Crofts and Reads

Sir John Crofts of West Stow Hall is known to have held the Manor of Wykes soon after the above mentioned payment of rent in 1553. On his death in 1558 he left "my parke and grounds called Bardwell Parke with all lyberties, profitts and appurtenances thereunto belonging." to his second son Thomas, thus beginning six generations of this family's residence in the village. Although no mention of a house or manor is made in Sir John's will, Thomas Crofts, either at this time, or shortly afterwards, became lord of the manor of Wykes, and occupied the now vanished house by the river. The subsidy return of 1568 lists Thomas Crofts as the wealthiest landowner in the parish, with £30 worth of lands. Thomas Crofts was clearly part of the village community, and not an absentee landlord; the parish register records the burial of his wife in 1560, following the birth of their younger son, Thomas, and the burial of his daughter Alice only a day after that. Two of his children married in Bardwell church, his grandchildren were baptized there, and he himself was buried in the chancel in 1595.
The inheritance went into the female line in 1660, so the name changed to Read, but in order to continue the Crofts name, all the sons of the family were given this as a second christian name. They were known as Read, however, not the hyphenated Crofts-Read that is sometimes assumed. Memorials to the family are in the chancel.
    The last of the family was Thomas Read, who inherited the estate in 1720. He died in 1769, at the age of 71, in his coach, near Place Farm, while on his way to go fishing. He never married, and not long before he died he had fallen out with the members of the Crofts family from West Harling who considered themselves his heirs. Mr. Read therefore changed his will, and apart from some bequests to his housekeeper, he left everything to a friend, Christopher Lofft, and his family, with instructions that the estate was to be sold. This caused a great deal of bad feeling, and a considerable amount of correspondence ensued between the Crofts and their solicitor, as they tried to dispute the will. They believed that Mr Lofft had manipulated Mr Read, and tried to establish that he had not been of sound mind, but to no avail. The will was upheld, the estate was sold, and within ten years the house had ceased to exist. A map of 1779 shows only the moat left in the field.

The Keppels

After Mr Reade's death, the estate was sold to the Honourable Augustus Keppel of Elveden, second son of the Earl of Albermarle. In 1782 Augustus became the first and last Viscount Keppel, but he died in 1786 without children, and his heir was the fourth Earl of Albermarle. Apparently some of the land and property in Bardwell was sold off following Augustus Keppel's death, and some of the tenants took the opportunity to purchase their farms. The Tithe Map of 1838 shows the Earl of Albemarle owning various parcels of land around Bardwell but these are all in different ownership today. Kelly’s Directory was still quoting the Earl of Albemarle as the Lord of the Manor of Wykes in the last Directory of 1837.

Present Owners

The field is now owned by Addisons Farms and in January 1960 an archaeological survey was carried out before the site was levelled and cleared by a bulldozer in preparation for changing what had been a grazing meadow to arable crops. The following unsigned report of the survey was found among some church documents and was reproduced in the July 1973 Bardwell Parish News. refernce is made to a sketch plan that is not included.   

 ‘This site was completely levelled December 27th 1959 – January 10th 1960, by a bulldozer. The plan to do this was known in September 1959, and Mr. Basil Brown of Rickinghall a professional archaeologist, and members of staff of Ixworth Secondary Modern School (Mr Douglas Compton) and some of the pupils, excavated part of the site before it was levelled. I have drawn the site and shown in dotted lines where the foundations of buildings were found. There may have been more buildings there at one time. There is a map dated 1769 which shows a large building stretching from A to B. This map is very interesting as it was made for Thomas Crofts Read, the last of the squires of Bardwell, who died later that year. His memorial is on the N wall of the sanctuary (Chancel) in Church. Cannon Warren wrote in his Parish Magazine in 1893 that the grandmother of one of his oldest parishioners worked for Thomas Crofts Read. The house had a drawbridge at the front (I have shown this with dotted lines) and it was drawn up at sunset every day, and no one could go in or out until the next morning. Thomas Crofts Read died in his carriage at Place Farm on his way to go fishing. We do not know what happened to the house after 1769. There was a rumour that it burned down, but Mr Basil Brown would not give any opinion on that. What is certain is that quite a lot of the bricks which must have come from the house were used to build the stockyard in the opposite corner of the field, and other walls in the village."

"We have some idea of what the house looked like. It was built of brick during the reign of Elizabeth I, and was similar to West Stow Hall which belonged to another branch of the Crofts family. There had been earlier houses on the same site, dating back to perhaps William the Conqueror. In one of these houses lived William de Bardwell who was a famous soldier, and who paid for the church porch and roof, whose portrait is said to be included in one of the stained glass windows. He died in 1434.There may have been a chapel on the site of the present sewage works, as a fine stone coffin lid was found by the workmen making it in 1954, which was unfortunately broken before Mr Brown saw it. Also Mr Brown found a bowl of a font being used as a cattle trough at Manor Farm (Spring Lane) which was said to have come from “down the meadows”. This is now in the church near the organ. (It is has been moved from this position for several years and was incorporated in the floral display for Bardwell Place). The coffin lid, and many other interesting items found on the site are now at Ixworth Secondary Modern School.”