Suffolk – Page 2 – Frames of Reference

Lowestoft

Ordnance Survey of Great Britain 1954, Sheet 137 – Lowestoft
(click on the image for a closer look)

A recent trip to Hastings lead to a Sunday morning treasure hunt in Roberts Rummage, a small living room piled high with loosely sorted items and belongings of past lives. My friend Christopher and I spent a couple of hours searching the stacks of china, jars of buttons and drawers of brass wear and the excitement is the unknown item you will stumble across, the joy of cleaning it up and the new life and place it will have in our lives.

I often think of the life items have had and if you could trace them back where they would take you. Amongst the old board games I discovered this map. Having grown up just outside Lowestoft I was thrilled, it felt like a gift to trace back the villages and towns I have known all my life. Continue reading “Lowestoft”

Around Sudbury

Sudbury is a place we often pass through on our way to somewhere else. But this time we stopped for a closer look and pretty soon we realised we’d already done this walk before. It all fell back into place.

The market town of Sudbury has a unique feature on its doorstep. The Sudbury Common Lands make up some 115 acres of water-meadows on the flood plain of the River Stour. Cattle and horses graze here, as they have for a thousand years, and the area is crossed by footpaths, making it perfect for a peaceful walk. Continue reading “Around Sudbury”

A Walk In The Woods

A Walk In The Woods

There’s a lovely and surprising exhibition by Jelly Green at the Alde Valley Spring Festival, and there’s not a single cow in sight! She’s abandoned her usual subject matter and gone for a walk in the woods, and lost herself in the green and tangled delights of the trees, and found herself there. Continue reading “A Walk In The Woods”

Manningtree

Manningtree was another daytrip destination in the early 1980s. We came on the train with our bikes from Liverpool Street to explore the country lanes around Dedham and Flatford, but we didn’t see much of Manningtree apart from the station. It was the gateway to Constable country. Continue reading “Manningtree”

Levington

The Ship at Levington last April, newly refurbished and reopened just a couple of months earlier, it was a good place for lunch before a walk along the north shore of the River Orwell. Continue reading “Levington”

The Sky At Snape

SNAP HQ, a cor-ten steel shed at Snape Maltings, nerve centre of the SNAP visual arts programme for this year’s Aldeburgh Festival, directing our gaze towards the great Suffolk sky. Continue reading “The Sky At Snape”

Flatford Mill

We started at East Bergholt, birthplace of John Constable whose father owned Flatford Mill, and where his first studio still stands, now a domestic residence but commemorated with a plaque. Continue reading “Flatford Mill”

Pin Mill

Pin Mill sits beside the River Orwell, south east of Ipswich, a pretty refuge of yachts and dinghys, where X marks the spot at the crossroads of a figure-of-eight walk. Continue reading “Pin Mill”

Art For Cure

Art for Cure is an exhibition I am involved in along with over 50 other artists. It’s going to be a really exciting exhibition and it’s raising money for Breakthrough Breast Cancer. It takes place at Bredfield House, near Woodbridge in Suffolk, on 3rd-5th May. Please visit the Art for Cure site for more details.

Jelly Green / The Rowley Gallery

Staverton Thicks

In July I posted Elizabethan Oaks about the ancient oak trees of Hatfield Park, which prompted comments recommending Staverton Thicks, a dense, primeval woodland with the oldest oaks in East Anglia. I was intrigued. I’d not heard of it before. Continue reading “Staverton Thicks”