Chef Lee Bye on the reinvention of Tuddenham Mill

Article by Tessa Allingham for The Caterer

“Tuddenham Mill is proof that the wheels of progress keep turning, with the 250-year-old Suffolk hotel having refined its offer during the pandemic. Chef-patron Lee Bye tells Tessa Allingham how he's had the confidence to ring the changes.

Towards the end of July, a new hashtag popped up on the Tuddenham Mill Instagram feed – #newangles. Instead of the familiar picture of this watermill-turned-hotel in rural Suffolk, taken through a voluminous weeping willow towards the mill's sky-scraping chimney and weather-boarded walls, the photograph was taken from the other side of the reed-edged millpond, from a house with a scarlet front door and elegant Georgian proportions.

Agellus Hotels, Tuddenham Mill's parent company and owner of the Lifeboat Inn and the Chequers Inn, both in Thornham, North Norfolk, bought the Mill House mid-pandemic for an undisclosed sum. The owners of 45 years wanted to see it reconnected with the rest of the 250-year-old mill; back in the day, it would have been home to the miller…”