Thwaite is based on and around the A140 road, midway between Suffolk's county town of Ipswich and the city of Norwich, in Norfolk.

The village consists of a Public House (The Bucks Head) which has recently undergone a radical refurbishment, a redundant church, a recently restored 'school room' (used for small gatherings and parish meetings), and a post box.

Homes include several thatched cottages interspersed with a number of individual houses, seemingly built during each decade right up to the early 2000s.

In 1910, Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes dismantled a large timber-framed house, formerly the Queens Head, located next to what is now the A140.

He transported it in 688 crates from Tilbury docks to the US, where it was reconstructed using the timbers of a wrecked English ship, on a hill overlooking Long Island Sound near Greenwich, Connecticut.