Water Mills, an Old Barn, Silver Fish, and “Stuff”

From Ardleigh Camping & Caravanning Club CS (see previous post), where we’d booked in for two nights, we walked via the village of Dedham to Flatford Mill.

Flatford Mill (National Trust)

This is “Constable Country”, supposedly quintessential English countryside where John Constable grew up and set many of his paintings.

There’s not a huge amount to see at the National Trust site; a small exhibition on John Constable’s life and work and the surviving buildings and scenery from his time.

We took the obligatory “this is the scene in the Hay Wain” photo:

Flatford Mill itself, owned by Constable’s father and where he himself trained as a miller, doesn’t seem to feature in any of his paintings, at least not the ones reproduced in the exhibition:

Maybe it’s because he was always in the mill looking out rather than on the outside looking in?

We had a look round Dedham on the walk home. Here’s Mark in the church completely ignoring the only original Constable painting we saw on the day (“The Ascension”, one of three religious paintings by Constable); Mark was much more captivated by the second hand book stall….

All in all, we walked just over ten miles. A good walk, with a bit of amusement thrown in along the way….

Coggeshall Grange Barn (National Trust)

Mark LOVED Coggeshall Grange Barn. It’s thought to have been built around 1240 at a time when Coggeshall Abbey was expanding rapidly, and is apparently one of the oldest surviving buildings of its kind (“wooden barn”?) in Europe.

Changes were made around the turn of the 14th / 15th centuries, the most reasonable-sounding theory behind the work being that it was to do with tiling the roof (which would have required strengthening of the structure to take the extra weight).

After a major campaign, the barn was saved from destruction and rebuilt in the 1980s, with the National Trust taking over management of the site a few years later.

We got a brilliant talk explaining all about the history of the barn. Absolutely one of the best things we’ve seen this trip.

Lavenham

Our plan was to drive from Coggeshall up to Lavenham to visit Lavenham Guildhall (National Trust).

There was only one problem – there was NOWHERE to park. Seriously.

If you’d been in a small car you might have circled for a while in the hope of grabbing a space in a car park or on a street, but in something the size of SOK, there was no point even trying.

Melford Hall (National Trust)

We went to Plan B – Melford Hall near Sudbury. This wasn’t one that either Mark or I had picked out of the National Trust handbook, probably because the book doesn’t make clear what exactly is unique / particularly special about this property.

To be honest, after visiting, I still don’t know. The exterior is very attractive. Much of the interior was redone after a fire in 1942. Beatrix Potter (some kind of cousin of the family) used to visit…..

I did like the library:

Presumably, this very cute building in the garden would have been some kind of summerhouse?

There was a funny incident when we arrived at Melford Hall. Mark went off to check with the National Trust person in the car park whether we were OK where we’d parked, and came back proudly announcing that she’d said he was perfect.

I assumed that she was referring to his parking, but as we walked past, she said “I really like you because you look like you’ve just arrived from the 70s”, then embellished her praise some more… and a bit more for good measure. Apparently, Mark looks like he should’ve been in a band. Led Zeppelin was mentioned, which pleased him inordinately…

We asked about Lavenham. “Oh yes”, she said, “it’s terrible, I never go there”. Apparently the whole place looks like a museum piece and it’s always very very busy.

Mark has decided we need to deploy our “get up and get there early” strategy next time, which involves jumping out of bed and setting off straight away. Showers and breakfast are delayed until we’re safely tucked into a corner of our target car park.

Overnight: Bury St Edmunds

Sunday night was spent back at Ram Meadow car park in Bury St Edmunds. Once again, it was lovely and quiet overnight…. until 6.30am on Monday morning when the council lorry arrived to empty the bottle banks… Thankfully there were only 3 of them!

Bury St Edmunds

We spent a bit of time in Bury St Edmunds on Monday morning to see the things we’d been too late to visit when we’d spent a night on Ram Meadow car park earlier in the trip.

We had a good look at the remaining ruins of the abbey:

Next we had a look at the inside of St Edmundsbury Cathedral:

The nave was built in 1503, whereas the tower was only completed in 2005:

The cathedral here is one of four in the country to be undertaking a Lego Cathedral fundraising project. We’ve seen the one in Durham Cathedral, which appeared to be complete; this one needs a few more bricks (which can be sponsored at £1 a time)…

From the cathedral it’s only a couple of minutes’ walk to St Mary’s Church.

St Mary’s Church was the largest of three churches within the abbey precincts (the church that is now the cathedral was another; the third was demolished). It has the longest nave of any parish church in England (213 feet):

In similar vein, the West Window is the largest in any parish church in England, paid for by local landowners in thanks for a bumper harvest in 1854:

Tucked away in a corner is the grave of Mary Tudor. She was reburied under a slab in 1784 because her box tomb was taking up too much space (I wonder who first voiced that idea?!?)

The marble kerb wasn’t added until the early twentieth century following a visit by Edward VII.

It’s a very poor do considering that she was Henry VIII’s sister and (briefly) Queen of France….. Poor old Mary…..

Ickworth (National Trust)

We’d skipped Ickworth last time we’d passed Bury St Edmunds for the simple reason that we needed to get on to other sites that are only open at weekends in October.

Ickworth is an Italianate palace built between 1795 and 1828 for the Earls of Bristol.

The interiors are every bit as posh as you’d expect.

No-one ever lived in the round central bit though – by the time it was finished, the then Earl decided that it would be too cold with all those high ceilings and had a mansion constructed in one of the wings instead. The central part was just opened up for special occasions.

Yes, Mark’s first words when entering this room were, of course, “Only Fools and Horses” (referring to the episode involving the cleaning of a chandelier, with predictably disastrous results).

The thing that really stood out for me at Ickworth was the 3rd Marchioness of Bristol’s collection of silver fish:

Ickworth is another of the National Trust properties that have had a “multi-use trail” installed so it would have been rude not to have done a lap (5.4 miles) before leaving.

Overnight: Huntingdon Boat Haven

We had two nights at Huntingdon Boat Haven, an independent marina and camp site. There’s not much to say really; it did the job.

Huntingdon

From the camp site, it was only a short walk into the centre of Huntingdon.

On the way, we crossed a bridge dating back to the 1330s. It’s wider in the middle than it is at the ends as the folk of Huntingdon on one side and Godmanchester on the other weren’t getting on so hadn’t worked together very well.

They’ve also built different shaped breakwaters and Huntingdon added decoration on a couple of the arches on their side.

A wooden castle was built nearby following the Norman Conquest but pulled down in 1174 under Henry II (the owner having taken the losing side in an unsuccessful uprising).

Although the castle was never built in stone so there are no physical remains, you can still easily see from the shape of the landscape where the motte and bailey were.

Oliver Cromwell was born in Huntingdon in 1599 and lived here until the early 1630s. An Oliver Cromwell museum is housed in his former school (the building on the right in the photo below):

Mark figured that as we’d visited his house in Ely earlier this trip, “we may as well finish him off”…..

Samuel Pepys attended the same school for around 18 months, having been sent out of London to stay with an uncle during the Civil War.

The museum was small but interesting, with plenty of original artefacts to look at. It was free to go into, with a “suggested donation” of £3 each. It’s all clearly run on a shoestring, so we did pay up.

Houghton Mill (National Trust)

The next morning, we drove the short distance to Houghton Mill for the 11am tour of the mill.

Having

a) seen the National Trust camp site next to the mill, which does look very nice,

b) found that there IS a footpath into Huntingdon (an 8 mile round trip),

and c) discovered the previous day that Huntingdon is small and doesn’t need a full day to visit,

we’d have been better off booking onto the National Trust campsite for two nights and walking into Huntingdon from Houghton Mill. Live and Learn….

There has been a mill on the site since the 900s AD. The present mill building mainly dates back to the 18th century, though we were told that one end is Tudor.

The mill became uneconomical around the turn of the 20th century. The Youth Hostel Association used the building as a youth hostel from the 1930s until the 1980s. Mark stayed there on a cycling tour when he was 12, hence he’d been keen to revisit.

The tour was interesting but unfortunately they weren’t milling that day, so we didn’t get to see the mill “in action”.

The National Trust is apparently allowed to mill for up to six hours a week but this does depend on river conditions. The level of the river is controlled nowadays by sluice gates, and running the mill allows a lot of water downstream…. so if the Environment Agency don’t want more water further downstream, the National Trust can’t mill.

Overnight: Grafham Water

We stayed one night on the Grafham Water Caravan Club Site. To be honest, it’s so like other main club sites that it didn’t even occur to me to take a photo.

The plan had been an afternoon jog around the reservoir. Things didn’t go to plan. I seemed to have done something (minor and fine when walking but painful when running) to my left hip, so Mark ended up going on a jog on his own. He didn’t go all the way round but did a very respectable 8 miles.

Calke Abbey (National Trust)

Thursday saw us starting our journey home. We stopped off at Calke Abbey near Derby, a National Trust property we’d visited four or five years ago and really liked.

This place shows what happens when a family lives in the same house for nearly 400 years and never gets rid of anything! It’s absolutely full of what even the National Trust describes as “Stuff”, a real mixture of all kinds of belongings.

When they ran out of space in the library, they added a bit on top of the original bookcases – like an early Billy Bookcase Height Extension? The books in this house do look as though they’ve been bought to read rather than to fill the shelves for show.

The place has been kept “as was” and is supposed to illustrate the 20th century decline of many British country houses. In this room, the original wallpaper was painstakingly put back once the water ingress from the leaking roof had been fixed to show the run-down state of the place when the National Trust took over:

Unfortunately, the second floor wasn’t open when we visited this time. Apparently it was kept closed earlier in the year due to Covid restrictions and they then decided not to open it at all this year.

We remember corridors and room after room piled high with “stuff”. We’ll have to come back in a year or two for another look.

Overnight: Carsington Water

We decided to end the trip as we started, with two nights at the Carsington Water Caravan & Motorhome Club site.

It absolutely hoofed down after we arrived on Thursday night and the forecast for Friday wasn’t great.

Thankfully, the day hasn’t been too bad, and we did manage a jog round the lake this afternoon with only three short rain showers.

Homeward Bound

We’re heading home tomorrow. All that remains for us to do on the way is to stock up with wine and beer at English prices before crossing the border into Wales (where minimum alcohol pricing applies).

We’re not sure yet when our next trip will be. We’ve a couple of things to sort out back at home before we can hit the road again.