My Adventures 3: Constable Country

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On Monday the 24th October 2022 I drove to the National Trust car park at Flatford Mill Essex (CO7 6UL) for a walk. I had planned a walk in Kent but it was raining there so a dry walk in Essex and Suffolk it was!

I have walked this area many times before and never tire of it, it was however a first for Mike!

We walk down to Bridge Cottage by the Rive Stour.

A thatched cottage dating from the 16th century. Flatford Bridge Cottage houses an exhibition on the life and work of 17th century painter John Constable, who painted the house frequently. Constable's father owned the nearby Flatford Mill, and Constable often painted the mill itself as well as Bridge Cottage, and Willy Lott's Cottage. The building is timber framed, but this is not evident from the outside as it is rendered.

We walk up the road a bit pass the NT shop and tearoom closed right now as its too early and up to the site of Constables 'Boat Building' painting.

Painted entirely in the open air, this painting depicts the building of a boat at a dry dock along the River Stour.

We walk on passing a wooden building that shows a video of Constable country.

We pass Valley Farm on our left and reach the site of Constables most famous painting 'The Haywain'.

The Hay Wain – originally titled Landscape: Noon – is a painting by John Constable, finished in 1821, which depicts a rural scene on the River Stour between the English counties of Suffolk and Essex. It hangs in the National Gallery in London and is regarded as "Constable's most famous image" and one of the greatest and most popular English paintings.

Painted in oils on canvas, the work depicts as its central feature three horses pulling what in fact appears to be a wood wain or large farm wagon across the river. Willy Lott's Cottage, also the subject of an eponymous painting by Constable, is visible on the far left. The scene takes place near Flatford Mill in Suffolk, though since the Stour forms the border of two counties, the left bank is in Suffolk and the landscape on the right bank is in Essex.

The Hay Wain is one of a series of paintings by Constable called the "six-footers", large-scale canvasses which he painted for the annual summer exhibitions at the Royal Academy. As with all of the paintings in this series Constable produced a full-scale oil sketch for the work; this is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Constable originally exhibited the finished work with the title Landscape: Noon, suggesting that he envisaged it as belonging to the classical landscape tradition of representing the cycles of nature.

Flatford Mill was owned by Constable's father. The house on the left side of the painting belonged to a neighbour, Willy Lott, a tenant farmer, who was said to have been born in the house and never to have left it for more than four days in his lifetime. Willy Lott's Cottage has survived to this day practically unaltered, but none of the trees in the painting exist today.

Originally part of Gibbeon’s Gate Farm, Willy Lott's House is a Grade 1, listed building. Willy Lott (1761-1849) was a tenant farmer who worked the 39 acres around Flatford that made up Gibbeon's Gate Farm. He lived in a house attached to the farmland, which long after his death, became known as Willy Lott's House. Willy Lott's parents lived in this house, Willy and his sisters and brothers were born there.

Although he could not read or write, Willy made enough money to buy the house and farmland around Gibbeon's Gate which he did in 1825. He never married, lived with his sister Mary and he died in the house at the age of 88 leaving the farm plus approximately £450 to his sisters, their children and his brother’s children.

We walk on pass Willy Lotts Cottage and take a footpath just after on our left.

We head uphill pass a ram laying under a tree paying us no real attention.

We cross a road near Clapper Farm and continue along farmland paths.

View down to Dedham

We now follow Flatford Road towards East Bergholt.

We pass Old Hall in East Bergholt.

The earliest records date back to only the 14th Century and by which time Old Hall was established on its present site. Having been owned by Norman knights, wealthy Earls of Oxford, by London bankers and country squires, by staunch Puritans and Catholic religious orders, by soldiers in transit and now since 1974 The Old Hall Community.

We now reach East Bergholt and in front of us is the magnificent sight of St Mary The Virgin Church.

The Church of St Mary the Virgin was built in the 15th and 16th centuries, but is well known for the absence of a tower or spire to house the bells. Work began on a tower in 1525, but Cardinal Wolsey's fall from grace in 1530 brought construction to a halt and the following year a wooden bell cage was erected in the churchyard. The Bell Cage was built as a temporary structure to house the bells until the tower could be built. It still exists and now houses the set of 5 bells, although it is possible the tenor, which weighs 1 ton 6 cwt 0 qr 8 lb (1,320 kg) and has a diameter 4 ft 6 in (137 cm), was added in 1691. There are rumors the Bell Cage was moved from its original position in the 17th century because the occupant of Old Hall objected to the noise of the bells. The only evidence for this is a 1731 hand-drawn map on vellum that shows the Bell Cage situated to the East of the Church.

The bells are exceptional in that they are not rung from below by ropes attached to wheels, as is usual in change ringing, but the headstock is manipulated by hand by ringers standing beside the bells.

The bells are believed to be the heaviest five (A, G, F♯, E, and D) that are rung in England today, with a total weight of 4+1⁄4 long tons (4,300 kg).

We leave the church and turn right up The Street into East Bergholt.

During the 16th century, its inhabitants became well known for Protestant radicalism. A few of its citizens were martyred during the reign of Queen Mary I, and the Protestant martyrologist John Foxe recorded their stories in his famous work Acts and Monuments (also known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs).

East Bergholt is the birthplace of painter John Constable whose father owned Flatford Mill.

We stop in the East Bergholt Village shop and Post Office here to grab something to eat and drink before continuing or walk along Cemetery Lane.

We pass John Constables early studio on Cemetery Lane. While living in East Bergholt he used this building as his studio to paint his early paintings. He used it until 1799 when he moved to London.

There is a memorial plate on the building.

As we continue to walk down Cemetery Lane we are met with great views across the rolling countyside here.

We walk along Donkey Lane, a fine pathway engulfed by trees and great autumn colours.

We follow the paths across more farmland.

We walk back out onto Dedham Road and walk along the road avoiding a few cars as we do.

We are now in Dedham.

We cross the River Stour by The Boathouse pub, a place to eat, have a beer, ice cream or hire a rowing boat for a great view of the river.

Dedham is at the heart of 'Constable Country' – the area of England where Constable lived and painted. Constable attended the town's Grammar School (now the 'Old Grammar School' and 'Well House'), and he would walk to school each morning alongside the River Stour from his family's home in East Bergholt. Many of Constable's paintings feature Dedham, including Dedham Mill, which his father owned, and Dedham Parish Church, whose massive Caen stone and flint tower is a focal point of the surrounding Dedham Vale.

Early documents of Dedham records the name as Diddsham, presumably for a family known as Did or Didd.

Opposite the church is Sherman House. This house, in the main street of Dedham, a village on the River Stour on the boundary between Essex and Suffolk, was the ancestral home of the Sherman family, the ancestors of the federal General of the American Civil War famous in song for 'Marching through Georgia'.

The residents of Dedham, Essex, have established close links with those of Dedham, Mass. in the USA. There is evidence of these links in the splendid parish church, opposite Sherman House.

We walk up to Dedham Parish Church.

One of the great churches of northern Essex, St Mary's dominates the High Street of Dedham. The church as we see it today is primarily a 15th century rebuilding of an earlier medieval church which existed at least as early as 1322. That early church occupied the site of the current south aisle chapel, an indication of just how much smaller it was than the grand 15th century building we see today! The door to the vestry is thought to have been the main entrance to the 14th century church.

Work on a new church was begun in 1492 and completed in 1522. The walls are rubble and flint, so common in East Anglia. The tower is knapped flint, dressed with limestone. The striking west tower, finished in 1519, is totally self-supporting and features an unusual vaulted passage. An unsubstantiated tradition is that Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, gave money for the tower to be built. Whoever paid for it, the tower is certainly striking; it stands 131 feet high and is visible for miles along the valley.

We have a mooch about inside before walking on again.

We walk on down High Street and onto Brook Street where we stop at Dedhams Art and Craft Centre for a cream tea.

We leave the Centre and walk on taking a path off Brook Street that leads us back down to The River Stour.

We follow the river along towards Fen Bridge.

We reach Fen Bridge. The Fen Bridge, linking Dedham and East Bergholt, has been successfully replaced.

The bridge was removed by Suffolk County Council in January, having been closed to pedestrian and river traffic since 2020.

Fen Bridge, in the Dedham Vale, has been used as a crossing over the Stour for centuries, as part of the public footpath network and an earlier bridge was used by painter John Constable as part of his route to school.