Le Grice, Le Grys et al.

BLOCKA HALL FARM this ancient and attractive house was built in the time of Elizabeth 1 and stood on the old smugglers' route from Yarmouth to St. Olaves. Local tradition has it that for services rendered at Ashby Church, the priory canons who had fishing rights in Fritton Decoy, had the use of Blocka Hall cellars. If this is so, the it argues for a house on the site before the Elizabethan one. The present house received its Dutch gabling at the same time as the Jacobean Somerleyton Hall and the old Manor House - the Dutch builders coming from Beccles. At the end of the 16th century it was owned by the Symonds family, lords of the Manor of Browston (in the adjacent parish of Belton). It was held c. 1670 by Edward Taverner of Herringfleet and occupied by John Perry whose wife Judith is buried in the west end of Herringfleet Church. He was followed by his son Charles Perry, who held the "liberty of fishing and fowling on the SW of Fritton Decoy and the rights and commons and heathes in Herringfleet". From the Perry family, Blocka Hall passed to Charles le Grys of Browston Hall, an old Elizabethan family of Great Yarmouth, and then later Hill Mussenden acquired it from the