Lavenham and Sudbury 19 September 2012

We took a Kirby’s coach to the Suffolk medieval wool town of Lavenham.

It was a lovely ride through the gently rolling landscape of Suffolk, lanes and paths winding between fields, high hedgerows, scattered ancient woodlands, isolated farmsteads and historic villages.

Lavenham was the prosperous centre of the wool trade and the 14^th most wealthy town in medieval England. When the type of cloth made there went out of fashion, people could no longer afford to build or repair houses and so the town’s architecture today remains much as it was then, with a wealth of fine timbered buildings.

With no local stone for building, Lavenham’s medieval houses were built on an oak frame with gaps between beams filled with wattle (slender sticks) and daub (clay, chalk and straw). The buildings were limewashed, a practice still used today to allow moisture to evaporate and let the building ‘breathe’.

You may be surprised that the buildings are not the traditional black and white but the experts have found that they were not originally like that – it was a Victorian fad.

Wood does tend to flex much more than we are used to with brick. Some of the buildings look positively dangerous as they lean on their neighbours but they have stood the test of time.

We started our tour at the magnificent church of St Peter and St Paul, whose very high tower can be seen from the coach long before you reach the village. It was built at the accession of the Tudors and paid for mostly by the Spryng family, rich clothiers and the Earl of Oxford, John de Vere.

A steady walk down the High Street, lined with timber houses, brings you to the market place and the Guildhall of Corpus Christi. Originally built as a meeting place it has remained at the heart of village life for almost five hundred years through many different uses, a town hall, a prison, a workhouse and ARP centre in the Second World War. We had tea and cake there when we first arrived.

After the tour we dispersed to the many shops, galleries, pubs and restaurants before taking the coach to Sudbury.

Sudbury is an old market town with many old buildings of its own dating back to the wool and silk trades. It still has a lively market and many shops. It’s most famous man is Gainsborough the artist. His house is a museum and there is a statue in the market.