[2] Between 964 and 975 King Edgar and his wife Ælfthryth granted Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester an estate at Sudbourne on condition that he translated the Rule of Saint Benedict from Latin into Old English.

[4] During World War II Sudbourne and the neighbouring village of Iken were used as a battle training area in advance of the D-Day landings in June 1944.

Under the Seymour-Conway family the estate comprised about 12,000 acres,[11] and in 1840 included almost the whole of the parishes and villages of Orford, Sudbourne, Butley, Chillesford, Gedgrave and Iken.

[13] The later family resided mainly in Paris (where Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford (1800-1870) was the British Ambassador and where he built up a great art collection) and at their principal English country seat at Ragley Hall in Warwickshire.

[15] When the 4th Marquess of Hertford died in 1870, without surviving legitimate issue, he appointed as his heir his illegitimate son Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet (1818-1890).

Thus Wallace inherited his father's art collection, then housed in Paris, but not the title, which passed by law to a male cousin, nor Sudbourne, which had been entailed[14] to descend to the new 5th Marquess.

He was a Francophile and a keen sportsman who created at Sudbourne a notable shooting estate (sometimes referred to as "the Holkham Hall of Suffolk"[17]) where the Prince of Wales was a guest in November 1879.

He commissioned three large oil paintings by the French artist Alfred Charles Ferdinand Decaen, depicting his shooting parties (On Sudbourne Hill (1874); Shooting Luncheon at the Great Wood Sudbourne (1876); Battue de perdreaux dans la comté de Suffolk (1880)), now displayed in Orford Town Hall.

[14] Lord Clark discusses Sudbourne, somewhat dismissively, in his autobiography "Another Part Of The Wood" (1974): It was one of Wyatt's typical East Anglian jobs, a large, square, brick box, with a frigid, neo-classical interior ... My parents wished to make it more comfortable and were advised to employ an architect named Fryer.

[30]As well as Sudbourne, Clark bought the 75,000 acre Ardnamurchan estate in Scotland, together with its two houses built by Charles Rudd, the main business associate of Cecil Rhodes, namely Glenborrodale Castle (used for deer stalking) and Sheilbridge (used for salmon fishing).

[31] He also built a house at Cap Martin[32] in the South of France, where he kept a succession of large yachts, three of which were named "Katoomba", after the place he had visited in Australia.

The great house demolished but wonderful stablings and outbuildings still, although the glass canopies for resting the cars and carriages are gone, like the huge greenhouses, although the walled garden perimeter is still intact.

[38] The next buyer in 1920 was Joseph Watson, 1st Baron Manton (1873-1922)[39] of Compton Verney in Warwickshire, a soap and munitions manufacturer from Leeds in Yorkshire, who had recently retired from business and was intent on devoting the rest of his life to sporting pursuits and research into industrialised agriculture.

[38] In 1936 Alastair Watson built the Chillesford Polo Ground, a private club open to family and friends where teams played by invitation only.

Spectators were encouraged and were admitted free of charge, with printed programmes with colour covers provided, a further innovation for a small polo club at the time.

[54] Following the death of Lord Manton in 1922, Sudbourne Hall together with 196 acres of land and seventy-six acres of woodland was purchased by (Jeremiah) Malcolm Lyon, of Jewish origin,[55] who having been divorced by his first wife Maria Eliza Soper[56] in 1913, had lived with his second wife during World War I and until 1920 at Heywood House near Westbury in Wiltshire which they operated as an "auxiliary hospital for wounded soldiers where they could rest, recover and recuperate from injuries and trauma".

His heir was his son Sir Peter McClintock Greenwell, 3rd Baronet (1914–1978), who served as High Sheriff of Suffolk in 1966–67 and who in 1969 resided at Butley Abbey Farm.

[64] During World War II the 3rd Baronet served in the army and in 1940 was captured at the Battle of Dunkirk when he became a prisoner-of-war, during which time the Sudbourne estate was run by an agent.

[66] One of the first units to be stationed there was a battalion of the Highland Light Infantry, and "on summer evenings when the skirl of the bagpipes could be heard approaching the village, a crowd would gather on the Market Square (Orford) and the pipe and drum band would entertain the villagers for maybe an hour marching and counter marching up and down the square and then with the skirl of the bagpipes fading into distance they returned to Sudbourne Hall".

In 1946 the Earl of Cranbrooke spoke as follows in the House of Lords concerning residents evicted from Battle Training Areas: Two days ago I heard a plea on behalf of these unfortunate men and women which I thought was rather effective.

"[69] In 1948, when the War Department released the Orford Battle Training Area,[70] Sudbourne Hall was in such poor condition that in 1953 it was demolished by the 3rd Baronet[71] and the Italian gardens were abandoned.

[73] He continues to own Butley Abbey, let out as a wedding venue and as holiday accommodation,[74] and the Gedgrave estate, "containing houses and workshops for rent, including the recent conversion of a Victorian dairy into a range of small, high-quality offices".