Screen freezing and long load times in Skyrim Special Edition after extensive play?

My game has long loading times (sometimes 10 minutes) and also frequently the screen freezes without crash to desktop but the sound continues to play. The freeze can either last a few seconds or perhaps a minute. The first 50 hours of the game were fine since this issue wasn’t present. But since it has manifested, it has made it very tedious to play even a little since I’m constantly freezing (especially outside of cities or when discovering new locations). I have no mods installed apart from those included as part of Special Edition (Hearthfire, Dawnguard, Dragonborn). I believe my pc meets the required setting to run the game:-

CPU: AMD A6-6400k 3.9 GHz Dual-Core Processor

Video Card: GeForce GTX 750

8GB DDR3 RAM

OS: Windows 10

Any help would be very much appreciated so I can go back to exploring the northern part of Tamriel!!!