In 1828 Benjamin King, a merchant who had warehouse and malting businesses in Stowmarket and Ipswich, bought the meadowlands between Violet Hill and Bury Street known as Bess Garnhams from his business partner Nathaniel Byles Byles for £800. King, raised in Ipswich, had settled in Stowmarket shortly after his marriage in 1810 to Ann Goodwin of Manningtree, Essex. The property purchased from Byles had an area of 3 rods and 24 perch. The next year King purchased a neighbouring small piece of land (304 ft.x 38 ft.) from Thomas Prentice. Soon King built a large house on the property for his wife and family of three boys and three girls. The house seems to have retained the name Bess Garnhams and many years later his grandchildren recalled pleasant times in the gardens surrounding the house.

                                                     
The tomb of Benjamin in Stowmarket Churchyard appears nearest the camera in the left hand picture. The wording on the tomb is very worn but reads - "Benjamin King esq. many years a resident of this town 24 Feb. 1855 aged 69" Anne was buried in Stowmarket Old Cemetery. It would originally have been a chest tomb and would have been surrounded by iron railings.

  When Benjamin King died in 1855, the property was left to his youngest son William King. It appears that William did not occupy the house, continuing to occupy his own house on Bury Street but his mother lived there until her death in September 1859. It was then mortgaged to Philip Benet and Edward Samuel Alderson for £2000. In April of 1860 the house was occupied by J. B. Burroughs and was still owned by William King but by 1865 Benet and Alderson had possession and sold the property to  Hervey Alston Oakes of the Bury St. Edmunds banking family for £2018 - 6 - 5. The house was now known as Hill House although in documents it is still sometimes referred to as Bess Garnhams.

    There appears to have been financial problems gathering for the King family at the end of the 1850s and early 1860s and about 1863 the two surviving sons, Benjamin Owen King and William King with their wives and families emigrated to the Port Hope area of Ontario, Canada. 

    In 1905 the property was put up for sale again and soon became a private school that had the name Eastward Ho! An extension was added to the building for extra classroom space and this spoiled the symmetry of the house and its proportions. Later on it became a children's home and this is when it became known as Evelyn Fison House. Later, when it was used solely as offices of the Suffolk Social Services, it retained this name.

    The Suffolk Social Care Services vacated the building in the fall of 2003 and it remains empty at this time [2007] although planning permission has been applied for to develop it into flats.