This church tower was of particular interest to Pete, as here, Sir John Cavendish hid his valuables, while being hunted down by peasants seeking revenge. John's son had killed Wat Tyler, the leader of the Peasant's Revolt in 1381. Wat, Pete believes, might be a relative on his mother's side.
John, though, was later caught just down the road at Bury St Edmunds, and ended up beheaded, poor bloke. Up in the belfry where John dropped off his valuables is an odd little priest's room, complete with fireplace and a window onto the altar. High up there with the bats.
A little further on is Long Melford which has several amazingly large estates bordering a very long village route that occupies part of what once was a Roman road. One of them, Melford Manor with its distinctive pepperpot towers, was the country retreat and deer park for the monks from the prosperous abbey at Bury St Edmond. What a life these monks must have had! A bit like nobility, tho' with all the prayers added!
Actually Elizabeth 1 came calling one evening, on one of her Ministers who owned the estate in 1578, and it is recorded that she was greeted rather royally by "200 young gentlemen in white velvet, 300 in black and 1,500 serving men". How very fine. I can't help wondering if mine hosts set up marquees out back in the deer park to store all the servants when not in use? And just imagine the logistics of trying to provide enough loos and meals for that number of staff, even for one night. Or, and more likely, they just did not bother. Ahh!
Long Melford's church, the Holy Trinity, is a quite gorgeous feature of the village, too. Its exterior is decorated in beautiful flush work, which is the ancient art of knapping flint and laying it, with limestone, to make a stunning textural and decorative element.
St Mary's at Boxford, further down the road, has some illuminating little memorials: a vicar who lost his son in infancy had a wee brass made and melded into one corner of the lady chapel floor, showing the child's crib and his little shoes resting on the floor beneath it. Above and to the right of David hangs a memorial to a rather astonishing Elizabeth Hyam, four times a widow, who after a Fall, in 1748, suffered a Mortification, which "at last, hastened to her End...in her 113th year." Darn that Mortification. What might frisky Elizabeth have continued to get up to without it? Wonderful tales these churches tell!
We slept in a farmer's field accessed by brushing both our side view mirrors on the hedgerows, left and right, so narrow was his lane. This was no ordinary farmer. His grandfather started the business in 1935 and his grandchildren are now working it with him. He had fields of produce growing both sides of the lane when we walked it later that evening. And free range animals to boot. To defy the supermarkets, he owned a farm shop in town where he provided produce to the locals that any delicatessen in Australia would have been delighted to place on their shelves. And it was crowded.
Most of the produce was homegrown: all the legumes were his and a wide variety of hand-cut herbs came fresh from his fields. There was bread from the next village collected that morning, and cakes, locally made and packaged. There were bottles of jams, chutneys and pickles and mayonnaise from shoulder-brushing farms just a few miles distant. Everything was local, fresh and gone today, if not tomorrow.
We bought dinner from his grand-daughter in his store, and ate tender organic pork lightly smoked, with a crunchy garlic-marinated zucchini, fresh from his fields. We tossed it off with an Eton Mess, mashing newly-harvested strawberries and home-made meringue, fresh from his store. Eating felt clean.
oooOOOooo
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| Once built by benefactors as almshouses for the poor |
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| Long Melford Manor with its pepperpot towers |
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| Not bad for a village church |
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| Flint and limestone flush work on exterior of Holy Trinity |
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| In memory of the death of the vicar's baby son in 1606 |
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| Elizabeth, four times a widow, died aged 113 |
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