There was a messuage here from at least 1471 when it belonged to Thomas Wood with 3 roods of land (a rood being a quarter of an acre) and an acre of land owned by the Prioress of Campsey. Together this filled in the area between the road and the river. This land seems to have included what later became Hardings tenement and Wayside.
The first mention of an inn was in the will of owner Daniel Wenden when he died in 1850. It first appears in the commercial directories in White’s Directory of 1855 as The New Inn with George Borrett brewer and victualler. He was not tied to any brewery. (His cousin John kept the alehouse The Mayd’s Head on the opposite side and further west on the High Street, in the 1840s and ‘50s).
Adnams Brewery of Southwold purchased the inn on George’s death and by 1900 Frederick Tuthill was the publican. After his death in 1934 his son-in-law Herbert Closman succeeded him until at least 1949.
Various documents mention garden, orchard, stables, meadows, outbuildings. At the river end of the land, to the west of the property, there was also a group of cottages known as Blackball Alley. In 1913 there was a court of five cottages, of lath and plaster with red pantile roofs and leaded casements. They would originally have been thatched. In 1945 they were condemned and demolished. The owner then was Mrs Closman, wife of the tenant of the New Inn and daughter of his predecessor. Apparently the cottages ‘should never have been condemned as they were very difficult to demolish, they were so strongly put together’. (Robert Parr. Yoxford Yesterday).
The property has been rebuilt and extended at least twice. The entrance to the inn would have been at the west side, down an alley. Originally there were two lath and plaster, thatched-roof cottages adjoining to the east but these were demolished and a grey brick extension built around 1900, with the entrance from the street. The windows looking east (before the cottages were demolished) had blinds painted in Chinese figures, probably done in the 18thC, which was very fashionable at that period. These are thought to have been too grand for a village inn so may have been discarded from Cockfield Hall and purchased by George Borrett in the mid-19thC.
Adnams purchased the New Inn in 1911. It received a full licence in 1955 and Adnams obtained permission from Sir Gervaise Blois to re-name it The Blois Arms.
It closed in 2007 and was sold in 2009.
It was renovated as a private house and re-named Angel House.
Sources
Parr, Robert. Yoxford Yesterday
Property deeds
New Inn – publican Mr Grove. When???? Originally a beerhouse. Collection of old bottles, many dug from the river.