Building record LRM 025 - Letheringham Lodge

Letheringham Lodge was built in 1472 by the powerful Wingfield family, it was designed as a hunting lodge or 'gloriette' from which high-status visitors could watch the hunt and admire the surrounding landscape. Surrounded by a water-filled moat the house lies n high ground 1km south of the Wingfields' principal seat at Letheringham Old Hall. The original building was a remarkable timber-framed structure with a jettied upper storey supported by massive, finely carved posts at all four corners. Similarly carved posts projected from the corners of the first floor to support an overhanging roof or cornice in a manner that has no known parallel elsewhere. The original layout of each storey was identical, with a wide gallery to the rear, two heated rooms of modest scale but with finely moulded ceilings on both sides of a central chimney, and a small, plain antechamber in the north-eastern corner. Further chambers lay in the roof space, which was probably lit by dormer windows. A rear extension with a massive gable chimney was added in 1610, along with an impressive new staircase, but the property has since remained little altered (S1).