Blyth Maltings House sits at the western end of Walberswick, on the south bank of the Blyth estuary, half a mile west of the foot-ferry to Southwold. The property is a converted 1762 reed-thatched barley maltings — a long brick-and-flint malting house with the original kiln-room building still attached — built by the Halesworth brewer William Smithson and worked in the Smithson family until 1948. We are Robert Easton-Garrett and Helena Garrett, two cousins who inherited the property from our grandfather Edward Easton, and we took the present generation's stewardship in 2018.
Who runs the house
The day-to-day is run by Helena's sister Alice Garrett, who took over as manager in 2024 after eleven years at the Crown at Southwold. Mrs Edith Crowe has been the head housekeeper since opening; her daughter Annie runs the breakfast service. The kitchen is run by Tom Lambert, who came to us from the Butt & Oyster at Pin Mill, and Robert himself is the porter and the driver of the long-wheelbase Defender from Halesworth station.
Robert and his wife Caroline still live in the small cottage at the head of the kitchen garden; Alice has the front room above the taproom; reception is generally staffed by Alice, by Robert in the evenings, and by Mrs Crowe on Saturdays.
The maltings, 1762 to the present
The property first appears in the Suffolk Maltings Survey of 1738, then under tenancy on a Blyth Hundred holding. William Smithson built the present maltings in 1762, and the Smithson family worked it for four generations — making the dark Southwold ales as well as supplying Adnams at Southwold once that brewery was founded in 1872 — until production ceased in 1948 and our grandfather bought the property from the receiver. The building is Grade II* listed under Historic England 1029487, listed in 1974, and any external alteration is reviewed by the Historic England East regional office at Cambridge before work begins.
The 2019–2023 restoration was carried out under planning approval East Suffolk Council ref. DC/19/2841/FUL, and the conservation report by Helena Garrett herself is held in the house office and available for inspection by guests on request. Helena qualified as a conservation architect from the University of York in 2009 and worked with Caroe Architecture at Bury St Edmunds for nine years before taking over the practice.
Walberswick and the Blyth estuary
Walberswick is a small Suffolk coastal village on the south bank of the Blyth, with the foot-ferry across to Southwold running from Easter to October and a long-distance bridge upriver at Blythburgh open year-round. Population around four hundred and forty, an old fishing-and-mending economy now turning quietly toward the marsh walkers, the painters, and the bird-watchers. The Cathedral of the Marshes at Blythburgh, two miles inland, is one of the finest medieval churches in England; the National Nature Reserve at Westleton Heath is twenty minutes by foot.
The land here is flat: the salt marshes of the Blyth estuary, the brackish reed-beds, the long shingle bank that the sea took in 1953 and has been rebuilding since. Marsh harriers nest in the upper reed-bed behind the property; a pair of bitterns has wintered on the Bell Marsh since 2019 by the RSPB count; and the curlew can be heard from the upper rooms most evenings between October and March.