Meeting on 18 October 2012

We regret that the Local History Group meeting on 18th October has been cancelled owing to a mixup by the WEA and the WI over dates. Therefore our next meeting will be on 21st March 2013. We shall of course have a table at the monthly U3A meetings as usual to take bookings and help with your queries.

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.

 

 

Mersea Island 15th August 2012

The Mersea Island Museum is an independent museum established in 1976 and occupying purpose-built premises in the centre of West Mersea, just to the east of the Parish Church. The traditional local activities of fishing, oystering, wild fowling and boat building are represented. The reconstruction within the museum of a typical weather-boarded fisherman’s cottage provides an interior display centred on a Victorian coal-fired kitchen range, with adjoining facilities for washing clothes using old-fashioned manual equipment.

They currently have an exhibition of the contents of the Roman Barrow on Mersea. It contained the remains of  a cremation in a glass urn which had been placed in a lead casket, a brick enclosure built round it and the whole thing covered in earth to make a sizeable mound which is still visible near the entry to the island.

We then moved to the church of St Peter and St Paul in the High Street. It is very ancient and it is believed that the first church was built on Roman foundations in the 7^th or 8^th century. The interior is very beautiful with some modern coloured window glass.

Our guide then took us along the promenade pointing out the various buildings of interest, the boats and the fishing sheds finishing up at the west end of the island which is a small village in its own right.

After lunch some of us visited the Roman barrow and went inside by the passage left by the excavation.

Remaining visits in 2012

Coach Visit to Lavenham and Sudbury on Wednesday 19^th September 2012

A reminder for those booked on this visit.

We leave Kirby’s depot in Bull Lane at 8.00am and arrive at Lavenham at 09.30 where those who have booked may take tea or coffee in the Guildhall . We will meet our guides at 11.00am for a tour of this beautiful old town. In the afternoon we have free time to explore Sudbury. Arrive back at Rayleigh about 06.00pm.

 

Our annual meeting at the WI Hall with the Social History Group is now scheduled for Thursday 18^th October, 10.00am to 12.00. There is no charge for this. Non-members of the group are welcome.

Come along and have a good old chat over tea/coffee/biscuits. David Carlton will tell us about the work the Social History group is doing and David Fryer-Kelsey will introduce the 2013 itinerary for the Local History group. Please come to our table to book for this event at the U3A meeting on Thursday 6^th September so that we have an idea of numbers.

Planned visits for late 2012

Wed 18^th July   Our visit to Prittlewell Priory and Southend Museum. Please note that there is a small alteration to the itinerary to make travel between the venues more convenient for those sharing a car. At 11.00am we meet at Prittlewell Priory which has been totally refurbished and has only just reopened. There we have a talk on the monastic building and immediate site and look round the exhibition. There is car parking and toilets in Priory Park. The Priory building itself has toilets and improved access. However, not all of the building is wheelchair accessible. There is a cafe in the Park.  After a lunch break those who wish can visit the Southend Museum in the old Library building near Victoria station . There is car parking next to the new library building.

£2 per person.

On Wednesday 15^th August we visit Mersea Island. At 10.00am we meet at the Museum next to the church in West Mersea. Then at 11.00 a guided walk along the front, possibly including the church if there is no wedding or funeral. There is an ancient barrow or burial mound on the island which we could visit on the way home, It is on the road to East Mersea. Free and it is possible to enter it.

£2.50 per person.

Coach Visit to Lavenham and Sudbury on Wednesday 19^th September 2012

Our coach trip is now fully booked.

Our annual meeting at the WI Hall with the Social History Group is now scheduled for Thursday 18^th October, 10.00am to 12.00, £2 per person.

Valentines Mansion, Ilford Wednesday 20^th June

We visited Valentines Mansion on 20^th June. It is situated in Valentines Park just south of Gants Hill roundabout in Ilford. There was a guided tour of the house inside and out. Then we were free to explore the gardens, lakes and grounds and to use the cafe.

Back in the late 17^th century there was a farm at this point known as Valentines farm. A lady approached the owner and offered to buy the buildings and land and he accepted. She was Mrs Tillotson, the widow of the Archbishop of Canterbury. When he died, being a churchman, he left very little money but he was renowned for his sermons. She had them printed and sold and they were so popular that they earned her £25,000, which was a great deal of money in those days. This enabled her to buy the farm, demolish the old house and build a new one for herself and her family. At that time the whole area was undeveloped, the occasional farmhouse and a row of workers cottages in Beehive Lane nearby. The new house was surrounded by its own grounds and the rest of the estate  was farmed.

Later the house passed through a succession of owners and was heavily modified. City merchant and banker Robert Surman bought the estate in the 1720s. He was heavily involved in the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720. He owned a number of properties in Essex which he had to sell at the time of the Bubble when much of his money was confiscated by the state. (That’s an idea we could follow today). By 1724 he had recovered sufficiently to buy Valentines and created the walled gardens, dovecote and grottoes. In the 1760s owner Sir Charles Raymond, originally a ship’s captain for the East India company, spent part of his fortune renovating Valentines, giving the house its Georgian appearance. The red brick facade was replaced with yellow stock brick which was the fashion. In Regency times everything had to be symmetrical so another wing was added to the west end. There are many blocked windows but this was not because of the window tax – they were designed that way to give symmetry to the outside but were not convenient on the inside. Later a porte cochere was added to the back, obscuring the window on the staircase so it had to be fitted with coloured glass to hide the building. This meant the back of the house became the front. The front was modified, the door blocked up and the gate and drive leading to Cranbrook Road removed. A porte cochere gives cover to the people leaving their coach to enter the building.

The service wing to the west was possibly built as an orangery and later converted into a dairy and kitchen. The dairy is remarkably cold, which is great for keeping dairy products fresh but very uncomfortable to work in. The kitchen contains two large ranges. The pots are cast iron and very heavy. Even a small kettle is difficult to lift even when empty.

Sarah Ingleby, the last private resident of Valentines, died in 1906 and the council acquired the house in 1912. They also bought more land and created Valentine park. Since then, the mansion has been a home to wartime refugees, a hospital, a public health centre, and a council housing department. Finally with the help of lottery money it was renovated and used for community use, as a museum and for social occasions, weddings etc. 

Considering that much of what we see today was paid for from money earned from the East India company it is interesting to see how many local residents of Indian extraction make use of it’s facilities today.

Valentines Park is Grade 11 listed. The area around the house is known as the Historic Core and is an extraordinary survival to find in 21^st century Ilford.

The best remaining outhouse is the 18^th century dovecote. Behind it are the cafe and the walled gardens, the kitchen garden, the old English garden and the rose garden.

A dry garden has just been opened by the Queen as part of the Jubilee celebrations.

Beyond the gardens are the water features, the Horse pond which feeds the Long Water through a grotto and the Fish pond, fed by another grotto. There is lots of bird life there.

The vine at Hampton Court was grown from a Black Hamburgh cutting taken from the gardens at Valentines. The original vine no longer survives in the park but in late 2008 a cutting was brought back from Hampton Court and planted in the kitchen garden at Valentines. Thus the circle is now complete.

Valentines Mansion, Ilford Wednesday 20^th June

 We go to Valentines House and Gardens at Ilford. Discover a beautiful country house and gardens in the heart of Ilford. Visit the recreated Victorian kitchen and Georgian rooms, with gorgeous views over surrounding parkland.

Motorised wheelchairs are not allowed in the house. Two manual wheelchairs available.

Guided tour of house. £3 per person.

Valentines Mansion, Emerson Road, Ilford, IG1 4XA

Take the A127 to Gants Hill, left into Cranbrook Road, left into Emerson Road, left into Valentines carpark.