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, that 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 practical
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
ornamental 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 sigh, "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
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 away 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
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 their 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 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
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 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 artistic
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 recommendation 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 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.
[Illustration: ERWARTON HALL.]
Erwarton Hall is a ghostly looking old place, with an odd-shaped
early-Jacobean gateway, with nine great pinnacles rising above its roof.
It faces a wide and desolate stretch of road, with ancient trees and
curious twisted roots, in front, and a pond: picturesque but melancholy
looking. The house is Elizabethan, of dark red-brick, and the old
mullioned windows peer over the boundary-wall as if they would like to
see something of the world, even in this remote spot. In the mansion,
which this succeeded, lived Anne Boleyn's aunt, Amata, Lady Calthorpe,
and here the unfortunate queen is said to have spent some of the
happiest days of girlhood,--a peaceful spot, indeed, compared with her
subsequent surroundings. Local tradition long back has handed down the
story that it was the queen's wish her heart should be buried at
Erwarton; and it had well-nigh been forgotten, when some sixty-five
years ago a little casket was discovered during some alterations to one
of the walls of the church. It was heart-shaped, and contained but dust,
and was eventually placed in a vault of the Cornwallis family. Sir W.
Hastings D'Oyly, Bart., in writing an interesting article upon this
subject a few years back,[10] pointed out that it has never been
decided where Anne Boleyn's remains actually are interred, though they
were buried, of course, in the first instance by her brother, Viscount
Rochford, in the Tower. There are erroneous traditions, both at Salle in
Norfolk and Horndon-on-the-Hill in Essex, that Anne Boleyn was buried
there. There are some fine old monuments in the Erwarton church, a
cross-legged crusader, and a noseless knight and lady, with elaborate
canopy, members of the Davilliers family. During the Civil War five of
the bells were removed from the tower and broken up for shot for the
defence of the old Hall against the Parliamentarians. At least so goes
the story. An octagonal Tudor font is in a good state of preservation,
and a few old rusty helmets would look better hung up on the walls than
placed upon the capital of a column.
The story of Anne Boleyn's heart recalls that of Sir Nicholas Crispe,
whose remains were recently reinterred when the old London church of St.
Mildred's in Bread Street was pulled down. The heart of the cavalier,
who gave large sums of money to Charles I. in his difficulties, is
buried in Hammersmith Old Church, and by the instructions of his will
the vessel which held it was to be opened every year and a glass of wine
poured upon it.
Some curious vicissitudes are said to have happened to the heart of the
great Montrose. It came into the possession of Lady Napier, his nephew's
wife, who had it embalmed and enclosed in a steel case of the size of an
egg, which opened with a spring, made from the blade of his sword, and
the relic was given by her to the then Marchioness of Montrose. Soon
afterwards it was lost, but eventually traced to a collection of curios
in Holland, and returned into the possession of the fifth Lord Napier,
who gave it to his daughter. When she married she went to reside in
Madeira, where the little casket was stolen by a native, under the
belief that it was a magic charm, and sold to an Indian chief, from whom
it was at length recovered; but the possessor in returning to Europe in
1792, having to spend some time in France during that revolutionary
period, thought it advisable to leave the little treasure in possession
of a lady friend at Boulogne; but as luck would have it, this lady died
unexpectedly, and no clue was forthcoming as to where she had hidden the
relic.
But a still more curious story is told of the heart of Louis XIV. An
ancestor of Sir William Harcourt, at the time of the French Revolution
had given to him by a canon of St. Denis the great monarch's heart,
which he had annexed from a casket at the time the royal tombs were
demolished by the mob. It resembled a small piece of shrivelled leather,
an inch or so long. Many years afterwards the late Dr. Buckland, Dean of
Westminster, during a visit to the Harcourts was shown the curiosity. We
will quote the rest in Mr Labouchere's words, for he it was who related
the story in _Truth_. "He (Dr. Buckland) was then very old. He had some
reputation as a man of science, and the scientific spirit moved him to
wet his finger, rub it on the heart, and put the finger to his mouth.
After that, before he could be stopped, he put the heart in his mouth
and swallowed it, whether by accident or design will never be known.
Very shortly afterwards he died and was buried in Westminster Abbey. It
is impossible that he could ever have digested the thing. It must have
been a pretty tough organ to start with, and age had almost petrified
it. Consequently the heart of Louis XIV. must now be reposing in
Westminster Abbey enclosed in the body of an English dean."