The idea of calling pretty little Mildenhall in north-west Suffolk a town,
seems out of place. It is snug and sleepy and prosperous-looking, an
inviting nook to forget the noise and bustle of a town in the ordinary
sense of the word. May it long continue so, and may the day be long
distant when that terrible invention, the electric tram, is introduced to
spoil the peace and harmony. Mildenhall is one of those old-world
places where one may be pretty sure in entering the snug old
courtyard of its ancient inn, tha
[Pg 23]
t one will be treated rather as a friend than a traveller. Facing the
"Bell" is the church, remarkable for the unique tracery of its early-English eastern window, and for its exceptionally fine open hammer-
beam carved oak roof, with bold carved spandrels and large figures
of angels with extended wings, and the badges of Henry V., the swan
and antelope, displayed in the south aisle.
In a corner of the little market-square is a curious hexagonal timber
market-cross of this monarch's time, roofed with slabs of lead set
diagonally, and adding to the picturesque effect. The centre part runs
through the roof to a considerable height, and is surmounted by a
weather-cock. Standing beneath the low-pitched roof, one may get a
good idea of the massiveness of construction of these old Gothic
structures; an object-lesson to the jerry builder of to-day. The oaken
supports are relieved with graceful mouldings.
Within bow-shot of the market-cross is the gabled Jacobean manor-
house of the Bunburys, a weather-worn wing of which abuts upon the
street. The family name recalls associations with the beautiful sisters
whom Goldsmith dubbed "Little Comedy" and the "Jessamy Bride."
The original "Sir Joshua" of these ladies may be seen at Barton Hall,
another seat of the Bunburys a few miles away, where they played
good-natured pract
[Pg 24]
ical jokes upon their friend the poet. In a room of the Mildenhall
mansion hangs a portrait of a less beautiful woman, but sufficiently
attractive to meet with the approval of a critical connoisseur. When
the Merry Monarch took unto himself a wife, this portrait of the little Portuguese woman was sent for him to see; and presumably it was
flattering, for when Catherine arrived in person, his Majesty was
uncivil enough to inquire whether they had sent him a bat instead of a
woman.
A delightful walk by shady lanes and cornfields, and along the banks
of the river Lark, leads to another fine old house, Wamil Hall, a
portion only of the original structure; but it would be difficult to find a
more pleasing picture than is formed by the remaining wing. It is a
typical manor-house, with ball-surmounted gables, massive mullioned
windows, and a fine Elizabethan gateway in the lofty garden wall,
partly ivy-grown, and with the delicate greys and greens of lichens
upon the old stone masonry.
In a south-easterly direction from Mildenhall there is charming open
heathy country nearly all the way to West Stow Hall, some seven or
eight miles away. The remains of this curious old structure consist
principally of the gatehouse, octagonal red-brick towers surmounted
by ornamen
[Pg 25]
tal cupolas with a pinnacled step-gable in the centre and the arms of
Mary of France beneath it, and ornamental Tudor brickwork above
the entrance. The passage leading from this entrance to the main
structure consists of an open arcade, and the upper portion and
adjoining wing are of half-timber construction. This until recently has
been cased over in plaster; but the towers having become unsafe,
some restorations have been absolutely necessary, the result of
which is that the plaster is being stripped off, revealing the worn red-
brick and carved oak beams beneath. Moreover, the moat, long since
filled up, is to be reinstated, and, thanks to the noble owner, Lord
Cadogan, all its original features will be most carefully brought to
light. In a room above are some black outline fresco paintings of
figures in Elizabethan costume, suggestive of four of the seven ages
of man. Most conspicuous is the lover paying very marked attentions
to a damsel who may or may not represent Henry VIII.'s sister at the
time of her courtship by the valiant Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; anyway
the house was built by Sir John Crofts, who belonged to the queen-
dowager's household, and he may have wished to immortalise that
romantic attachment. A gentleman with a parrot-like hawk upon his
wrist says by an inscription, "Thus do I all the day"; while the lover observes, "Thus do I while I may." A third person, presumably getting
on in years, says with a si
[Pg 26]
gh, "Thus did I while I might"; and he of the "slippered pantaloon" age groans, "Good Lord, will this world last for ever!" In a room adjoining, we were told, Queen Elizabeth slept during one of her progresses
through the country, or maybe it was Mary Tudor who came to see
Sir John; but the "White Lady" who issues from one of the rooms in the main building at 12 o'clock p.m. so far has not been identified.
In his lordship's stables close by we had the privilege of seeing "a racer" who had won sixteen or more "seconds," as well as a budding Derby winner of the future. Culford is a stately house in a very trim and well-cared-for park. It looks quite modern, but the older mansion
has been incorporated with it. In Charles II.'s day his Majesty paid
occasional visits to Culford en route from Euston Hall to Newmarket,
and Pepys records an incident there which was little to his host's
(Lord Cornwallis') credit. The rector's daughter, a pretty girl, was
introduced to the king, whose unwelcome attentions caused her to
make a precipitate escape, and, leaping from some height, she killed
herself, "which, if true," says Pepys, "is very sad." Certainly Charles does not show to advantage in Suffolk. The Diarist himself saw him at
Little Saxham Hall[7] (to the south-west of Culford), the seat of Lord Crofts, going to bed, after a heavy drinking bout with his boon
companions
[Pg 27]
Sedley, Buckhurst, and Bab May.
The church is in the main modern, but there is a fine tomb of Lady
Bacon, who is represented life-size nursing her youngest child, while
on either side in formal array stand her other five children. Her
husband is reclining full length at her feet.
Hengrave Hall, one of the finest Tudor mansions in England, is close
to Culford. Shorn of its ancient furniture and pictures (for, alas! a few
years ago there was a great sale here), the house is still of
considerable interest; but the absence of colour—its staring
whiteness and bare appearance—on the whole is disappointing, and
compared with less architecturally fine houses, such as Kentwell or
Rushbrooke, it is inferior from a picturesque point of view. Still the outline of gables and turreted chimneys is exceptionally fine and
stately. It was built between the years 1525 and 1538. The gatehouse
has remarkable mitre-headed turrets, and a triple bay-window bearing
the royal arms of France and England quarterly, supported by a lion
and a dragon. The entrance is flanked on either side by an
ornamental pillar similar in character to the turrets. The house was
formerly moated and had a drawbridge, as at Helmingham in this
county. These were done a
[Pg 28]
way with towards the end of the eighteenth century, when a great part
of the original building was demolished and the interior entirely
reconstructed. The rooms included the "Queen's Chamber," where
Elizabeth slept when she was entertained here after the lavish style
at Kenilworth in 1578, by Sir Thomas Kytson. From the Kitsons,
Hengrave came to the Darcys and Gages.
In the vicinity of Bury there are many fine old houses, but for historical
interest none so interesting as Rushbrooke Hall, which stands about
the same distance from the town as Hengrave in the opposite
direction, namely, to the south-west. It is an Elizabethan house, with
corner octagonal turrets to which many alterations were made in the
next century: the windows, porch, etc., being of Jacobean
architecture. It is moated, with an array of old stone piers in front, upon which the silvery green lichen stands out in harmonious contrast
with the rich purple red of the Tudor brickwork. The old mansion is full
of Stuart memories. Here lived the old cavalier Henry Jermyn, Earl of
St. Albans, who owed his advancement to Queen Henrietta Maria, to
whom he acted as secretary during the Civil War, and to whom he
was privately married
[Pg 29]
when she became a widow and lived in Paris. He was a handsome
man, as may be judged from his full-length portrait here by Vandyck,
though he is said to have been somewhat ungainly. In the "State
drawing-room," where the maiden queen held Court when she visited
the earl's ancestor Sir Robert Jermyn in 1578, may be seen two fine
inlaid cabinets of wood set with silver, bearing the monogram of
Henrietta Maria. Jermyn survived his royal wife the dowager-queen
over fourteen years. Evelyn saw him a few months before he died.
"Met My Lord St. Albans," he says, "now grown so blind that he could not see to take his meat. He has lived a most easy life, in plenty even
abroad, whilst His Majesty was a sufferer; he has lost immense sums
at play, which yet, at about eighty years old, he continues, having one
that sits by him to name the spots on the cards. He eat and drank
with extraordinary appetite. He is a prudent old courtier, and much
enriched since His Majesty's return."[8]
Charles I.'s leather-covered travelling trunk is also preserved at
Rushbrooke as well as his night-cap and night-shirt, and the silk
brocade costume of his great-grandson, Prince Charles Edward. An
emblem of loyalty to the Stuarts also may be seen in the great hall, a
bas-relief in plaster representing Charles II. concealed in the
Boscobel oak. Many of the bedrooms remain such as they were two
hundred years ago, with thei
[Pg 30]
r fine old tapestries, faded window curtains, and tall canopied beds.
One is known as "Heaven" and another as "Hell," from the rich paintings upon the walls and ceilings. The royal bedchamber,
Elizabeth's room, contains the old bed in which she slept, with its
velvet curtains and elaborately worked counter-pane. The house is
rich in portraits, and the walls of the staircase are lined from floor to
ceiling with well-known characters of the seventeenth century, from
James I. to Charles II.'s confidant, Edward Progers, who died in
1714, at the age of ninety-six, of the anguish of cutting four new
teeth.[9] Here also is Agnes de Rushbrooke, who haunts the Hall.
There is a grim story told of her body being cast into the moat;
moreover, there is a certain bloodstain pointed out to verify the tale.
Then there is the old ballroom, and the Roman Catholic chapel, now
a billiard-room, and the library, rich in ancient manuscripts and
elaborate carvings by Grinling Gibbons. The old gardens also are
quite in character with the house, with its avenues of hornbeams
known as Lovers' Walk, and the site of the old labyrinth or maze.
Leaving Rushbrooke with its Stuart memories, our way lies to the
south-east; but to the south-west there are also many places
[Pg 31]
of interest, such as Hardwick, Hawstead, Plumpton, etc. At the last-
named place, in an old house with high Mansard roofs resembling a
French chateau, lived an eccentric character of whom many
anecdotes are told, old Alderman Harmer, one of which is that in
damp weather he used to sit in a kind of pulpit in one of the topmost
rooms, with wooden boots on!
For the remains of Hawstead Place, once visited in State by Queen
Elizabeth, who dropped her fan in the moat to test the gallantry of her
host, we searched in vain. A very old woman in mob-cap in pointing
out the farm so named observed, "T'were nowt of much account
nowadays, tho' wonderful things went on there years gone by." This was somewhat vague. We went up to the house and asked if an old
gateway of which we had heard still existed. The servant girl looked
aghast. Had we asked the road to Birmingham she could scarcely
have been more dumbfounded. "No, there was no old gateway
there," she said. We asked another villager, but he shook his head.
"There was a lady in the church who died from a box on the ear!" This
was scarcely to the point, and since we have discovered that the
ancient Jacobean gateway is at Hawstead Place after all, we cannot
place the Suffolk rustic intelligence above the average. It is in the
kitchen garden, and in the alcoves of the pillars are
[Pg 32]
moulded bricks with initials and hearts commemorating the union of
Sir Thomas Cullum with the daughter of Sir Henry North. The moat is
still to be seen, but the bridge spanning it has given way. The
principal ruins of the old mansion were removed about a century ago.
Gedding Hall, midway between Bury and Needham Market, is
moated and picturesque, and before it was restored must have been
a perfect picture, for as it is now it just misses being what it might have been under very careful treatment. A glaring red-brick tower has
been added, which looks painfully new and out of keeping; and
beneath two quaint old gables, a front door has been placed which
would look very well in Fitz-John's Avenue or Bedford Park, but
certainly not here. When old houses are nowadays so carefully
restored so that occasionally it is really difficult to see where the old
work ends and the new begins, one regrets that the care that is being
bestowed upon West Stow could not have been lavished here.
We come across another instance of bad restoration at Bildeston.
There is a good old timber house at the top of the village street which,
carefully treated, would have been a delight to the eye; but the carved
oak corner-post has been enveloped in hideous yellow brickwork in
such a fashion that one would rather have wished the place had been
pulled down. But at the farther end of the village
[Pg 33]
there is another old timber house, Newbury Farm, with carved beams
and very lofty porch, which affords a fine specimen of village
architecture of the fifteenth century. Within, there is a fine black oak ceiling of massive moulded beams, a good example of the lavish way
in which oak was used in these old buildings.
Hadleigh is rich in seventeenth-century houses with ornamental
plaster fronts and carved oak beams and corbels. One with wide
projecting eaves and many windows bears the date 1676, formed out
of the lead setting of the little panes of glass. Some bear fantastical designs upon the pargeting, half obliterated by continual coats of
white or yellow wash, with varying dates from James I. to Dutch
William.
A lofty battlemented tower in the churchyard, belonging to the rectory,
was built towards the end of the fifteenth century by Archdeacon
Pykenham. Some mural paintings in one of its rooms depict the
adjacent hills and river and the interior of the church, and a turret-chamber has a kind of hiding-place or strong-room, with a stout door
for defence. Not far from this rectory gatehouse is a half-timber
building almost contemporary, with narrow Gothic doors, made up-to-
date with an art
[Pg 34]
istic shade of green. The exterior of the church is fine, but the interior
is disappointing in many ways. It was restored at that period of the
Victorian era when art in the way of church improvement had reached
its lowest ebb. But the church had suffered previously, for a
puritanical person named Dowsing smashed the majority of the
painted windows as "superstitious pictures." Fortunately some fine linen panelling in the vestry has been preserved. The old Court Farm,
about half a mile to the north of the town, has also suffered
considerably; for but little remains beyond the entrance gate of Tudor
date. By local report, Cromwell is here responsible; but the place was
a monastery once, and Thomas Cromwell dismantled it. It would be
interesting to know if the Lord Protector ever wrote to the editor of the
Weekly Post, to refute any connection with his namesake of the
previous century. Though the "White Lion" Inn has nothing
architecturally attractive, there is an old-fashioned comfort about it.
The courtyard is festooned round with clematis of over a century's
growth, and in the summer you step out of your sleeping quarters into
a delightful green arcade. The ostler, too, is a typical one of the good
old coaching days, and doubtless has a healthy distaste for
locomotion by the means of petrol.
The corner of the county to the south-east of Hadleigh, and bounded
by the rivers Stour and Orwell, could have no better r
[Pg 35]
ecommendation for picturesqueness than the works of the famous
painter Constable. He was never happier than at work near his native
village, Flatford, where to-day the old mill affords a delightful rural studio to some painters of repute. The old timber bridge and the
willow-bordered Stour, winding in and out the valley, afford charming
subjects for the brush; and Dedham on the Essex border is delightful.
Gainsborough also was very partial to the scenery on the banks of
the Orwell.
In the churchyard of East Bergholt, near Flatford, is a curious, deep-
roofed wooden structure, a cage containing the bells, which are hung
upside down. Local report says that his Satanic Majesty had the
same objection to the completion of the sacred edifices that he had
for Cologne Cathedral, consequently the tower still remains
conspicuous by its absence. The "Hare and Hounds" Inn has a finely
moulded plaster ceiling. It is worthy of note that the Folkards, an old
Suffolk family, have owned the inn for upwards of six generations.
Little and Great Wenham both possess interesting manor-houses: the
former particularly so, as it is one of the earliest specimens of
domestic architecture in the kingdom, or at least the first house where
Flemish bricks were used in construction. For this reason, no doubt,
trippers from Ipswich
[Pg 36]
are desirous of leaving the measurements of their boots deep-cut into
the leads of the roof with their initials duly recorded. Naturally the owner desires that some discrimination be now shown as to whom
may be admitted. The building is compact, with but few rooms; but
the hall on the first floor and the chapel are in a wonderfully good state of repair,—indeed the house would make a much more
desirable residence than many twentieth-century dwellings of equal
dimensions. Great Wenham manor-house is of Tudor date, with
pretty little pinnacles at the corners of gable ends which peep over a
high red-brick wall skirting the highroad.
From here to Erwarton, which is miles from anywhere near the
tongue of land dividing the two rivers, some charming pastoral
scenery recalls peeps we have of it from the brush of Constable. At
one particularly pretty spot near Harkstead some holiday folks had
assembled to enjoy themselves, and looked sadly bored at a
company of Salvationists who had come to destroy the peace of the
scene.