Bury St Edmunds historian Martyn Taylor delves into the history of the town’s Horringer Court Estate

The estate’s name is indelibly linked to Horringer Court, a large house known to many now as Clarice House and the Bannatyne Health Club and Spa.

A former servant’s house (of the Hervey family of Ickworth) on this site was purchased in 1837 by prolific Bury builder William Steggles, who named it The Red House, strangely also the name of a nearby inn on the Bury to Horringer road. Though limekilns were on site, it is doubtful that Steggles was responsible for all the numerous tunnels used to extract chalk for these, as by the early 1870s the workings emanating from large pits at the rear were no longer in use.

A Reverend Robert Fox then bought The Red House until it was acquired by his former tenant, Edward Hawkins Esq JP, a gentleman who demolished it, building his fine Arts & Crafts Horringer Court residence.

Financially overstretching himself, Hawkins owned the property up to around the outbreak of World War One; then there were several subsequent owner occupiers/renters until a local automotive dealer, Rowland Todd, bought the property in 1947. Todd’s wife Edith was an accomplished artist.

The connection with the Todd family remained until Horringer Court was sold in 1983 and again in 1992, becoming a nursing home until 1999.

After a major internal refurbishment, new owners, the King family (a member collected Clarice Cliff pottery) commenced trading in 2001 advertising it as a residential and day spa and health club until purchased by TV’s Dragons Den entrepreneur, Duncan Bannatyne.

Around the time of the purchase by the Todds in 1947 bats were discovered hibernating in the Horringer chalk ‘caves’. The existence of Daubentons and the rare Barbastelle bat species would lead to the 500 metres of tunnels being designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Altogether, the site covers 3.8 hectares and, according to a survey carried out by a Brian Francis published in a magazine in February 1952, the main central tunnel in the west gallery is 60 metres long with lateral off-shoots. He described the geological components of chalk deposits and that chalk is the outstanding solid formation of East Anglia, the backbone of Norfolk and Suffolk! Another theory of his was that a further pit, as indicated on the map as the East Chalk pit, is connected albeit in a haphazard way to the West Chalk pit, perhaps an afterthought that the two of them should be joined – an idea, as he says, ‘put into practice with some negligence’.

Many a Bury resident can remember exploring these ‘caves’ as children, but since 1974 they have been sealed off not only to protect the bats from intrusiveness but those commonplace words ‘health & safety’ are now applied to the inquisitive. Which is probably a good idea, certainly for the bats!

-- Martyn Taylor is a local historian, author and Bury Tour Guide. His latest book, Bury St Edmunds Through Time Revisited, is widely available.