Flatford - floods and frost

Two visits to Flatford in different weather conditions. The first series of photgraphs are taken on the 9th January, after the torrential rains that poured over large parts of the country.The second set are taken (10 days later) in the same area, now largely covered in frost although a fair amount of water remains in the fields. So first the rain.

This the start of our normal walk toward Dedham - `not today` we thought!

Bridge Cottage, where you can see the `normal edge` to the path under water.

Flatford Mill with torrents of water where there is normally a placid flow!

The dry dock - somewhere under here.

Days later the area is covered in frost!

Bridge Cottage and tea rooms looking rather splendid in the frost morning light.

Woodfarm Barns at Flatford

Frost along the riverside paths

Willie Lott`s cottage through the frosty grass.

The riverside as you join the footpath leading across the fields.

Altogether a period of dramatic weather which was well worth capturing.

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A frosty morning at Flatford

It was a cold and frost morning when we visited Flatford Mill, and we were pleased to see that everywhere was covered in, what my dad called, `a hoar frost` Not the usual warm day that you visit Flatford , but nevertheless, very pretty! 

This image was taken on a cold and frost morning with the sun creeping round from the other side, and the water frozen.

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.

A image facing in the opposite direction, depicting the Field Study Center, leased by the National Trust to the Field Studies Council, FSC, which is an environmental education charity `providing informative and enjoyable opportunities for people of all ages and abilities to discover, explore, and understand the environment`.

As you can see, this is the `Mill` of Flatford Mill.

Some interesting iron work against one of the Mill walls.

Sometimes misty, but still a lovely spot.

And of course, sometimes very cold and frosty. Taken on the pathway beside the river.

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Lavenham, Monks Eleigh and Flatford. A local tour.

These images were taken over a weekend when we did a tour of these local villages. You can see what a wonderful part of the world in which we live!. The Lavenham houses are not all named but give a sample of the village in general. Unfortunately, because of tourism, the streets are often clogged with traffic but that is the price we pay in today's world. Lavenham is one of the United Kingdom’s best-kept medieval villages with over three hundred listed buildings. 

The Crooked House

The Swan Hotel. The building started life as a guildhall. It belonged to the Guild of the Blessed Virgin, one of the four medieval guilds in Lavenham. It was converted into a Wool Hall in the late seventeenth century. It was restored by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll around 1911 who then transferred it to Mrs Culver and it became the Railway Women's Convalescent Home. It was incorporated into the Swan Hotel in 1963.

The Guildhall, also known as the Guildhall of Corpus Christi, was originally one of five guilds in Lavenham. It was probably the most exclusive, holding prime position in the market square.

More Tudor timbered buildings

The Green at Monks Eleigh with the old pump still in place.

There is no documentary evidence for the foundation of the Chapel of St James the Apostle at Lindsey. The earliest parts visible today date from the 13th century, but worked stones reused in the present building suggest a previous building on the site from about the middle of the 12th century: the west wall contains several characteristically Norman fragments.

The chapel was almost certainly built to serve the nearby Castle of Lindsey, the earthwork remains of which are visible some 250 metres to the south-east, and it was probably founded by the de Cockfield family.

In 1240 Nesta de Cockfield gave the churches of Kersey and Lindsey to Kersey Priory, but reserved the right to appoint the clergy for Lindsey, all of which suggests the present chapel was well established by that time. In 1242 she imposed a special tithe on parts of Cockfield – known as the Lindsey Tithes – to sustain continuous lighting in the chapel. 

Lindsey Castle appears to have been abandoned before the end of the 13th century but St James’s Chapel continued in use. The manor and the right to appoint the warden of the chapel eventually passed to the Sampson family who appointed wardens in 1375, 1400 and 1408. Late in the 15th or early in the 16th century the chapel was repaired, and perhaps shortened, and the existing roof replaced the previous higher one. It remained in use until the Dissolution, though in somewhat reduced circumstances. 

In 1547 the King’s Commissioners reported that its yearly value was £5, and it was one of the numerous ‘free’ chapels that were dissolved the same year. The king eventually granted the chapel to Thomas Turner and thereafter it was used as a barn until 1930. 

Flatford Mill is a Grade I listed watermill on the River Stour at Flatford in East Bergholt, Suffolk, England. According to the date-stone the mill was built in 1733, but some of the structure may be earlier. Attached to the mill is a 17th-century miller's cottage which is also Grade I listed. The property is in Dedham Vale, a typically English rural landscape.

The mill was owned by the artist John Constable's father and is noted, along with its immediate surroundings as the location for many of Constable's works. It is referred to in the title of one of his most iconic paintings, Flatford Mill (Scene on a Navigable River), and mentioned in the title or is the subject of several others including: Flatford Mill from a lock on the river Stour; Flatford Mill from the lock (A water mill); The Lock. The Hay Wain, which features Willy Lott's Cottage, was painted from the front of the mill.

The mill is located downstream from Bridge Cottage (below) which, along with neighbouring Valley Farm and Willy Lott's Cottage, are leased to the Field Studies Council, a group that uses them as locations for arts, ecology and natural history based courses. 

Bridge Cottage is a 16th-century thatched cottage

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