There and Back

Despite having worked in the area for a number of years, I had never been inside All Saints Church in Hitcham. So I was looking forward to this, my first time. My first observation was that the church has a massive tower, built around the 15C, with a rather good looking South side entrance. The south porch entrance. And so into a lovely light and airy interior.  Unusually, the church has not a single piece of stained glass. The nave is seperated from the two outer aisles by the simple octagonal pillars of the five bay arcades that probably date from the 14C. Hitcham Church features a significant "Adoration of the Magi" painting, a copy of a work by Rubens, which is located in the south aisle. This painting, a reverse copy of the original at King's College Chapel in Cambridge, is a notable feature of the church. The painting is said to have come from the palace of the Bishop of Bath & Wells and was described as a copy of an old master. The fine double hammerbeam roof T...

Framlingham Castle is an externally perfect moated 12th century castle. The fortress consists of a curtain wall punctuated by 13 square towers. The curtain wall has remained in an exceptional state of preservation despite the castle's advanced age, and the renovations of later centuries, which saw it used as a school, a poorhouse, and a prison.! Now for some history (courtesy of Wikipedia): The site was probably used for fortifications as early as the 6th century, but of those early structures nothing remains. Framlingham enters history more firmly at the turn of the 12th century when the estate was given by Henry I to Roger Bigod. It seems likely that Bigod built a simple wooden motte and bailey castle at Framlingham, but it was left to his second son, Hugh, later the first Earl of Norfolk, to replace that structure with one of stone. That fortification was ordered dismantled by Henry II about 1175, but it was rebuilt by Hugh's son Roger, the Second Earl of Norfo...