Rev John Henslow of Hitcham

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

The font was installed in 1878 but moved to its presnt position in the 1930`s

Memorial to Rev John Stevens Henslow. For me, the main interest in this Church and Parish

John Stevens Henslow was born in Maidstone, Kent, in 1796, the eldest of eleven children. His father was a solicitor and his grandfather, Sir John Henslow, had been Master of Chatham Dockyard and Chief Surveyor of the Royal Navy. His was a family of amateur naturalists and the children were encouraged to add to the household collection of insects, fossils and anything of natural interest. As he had a flair for collecting and classifying, young Henslow, whilst still a schoolboy, was invited to assist staff at the British Museum in cataloguing its growing Natural History collections.

Thus began Henslow’s lifelong interest in science and scientific education.

He went up to Cambridge in 1814 and as there were no Natural Science courses then, he took his degree in Mathematics. It was only during his postgraduate studies that he was able to follow his scientific interests and in 1822, at the age of 26, was given the Chair of Mineralogy. Five years later, in 1827, he was appointed Regius Professor of Botany.

In addition to his required lectures, Henslow organised field trips for his students, but his most popular custom was to hold weekly soirées at his home in Cambridge to which anyone who had a scientific interest was invited to come and join in discussion in an informal and social atmosphere. It was during these gatherings that Henslow came to know and to recognise the outstanding ability of a diffident young undergraduate named Darwin. In 1831, Henslow was asked to recommend a suitable naturalist to join HMS Beagle for its scientific survey of South American waters, and he persuaded Charles Darwin to accept the post. It was during the five year voyage of the Beagle that Darwin began to compile his vast collection of notes which he subsequently condensed into “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.”

The Henslow-Darwin connection did not end at Cambridge, they remained close friends, and in 1860, the year before his death, Henslow chaired the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Oxford, where “Origin of Species” was debated and where Thomas Huxley, in his celebrated defence of Darwin, declared that he would sooner be descended from an ape than a bishop. Henslow’s own comments were unrecorded, but there is little doubt that he regarded Darwinism in particular, and science in general, as enlarging our view of God, and giving us a greater respect for the rest of creation.

There is also little doubt that Henslow himself would have liked to have accompanied the Beagle. Perhaps that is why the invitation came to him, but by 1831, he was not only a married man but a clergyman too; he had been ordained Priest of the Church of England in 1824.

John Henslow came to Hitcham in 1837, a village described at the time as being “a populous, remote and woefully neglected parish, where the inhabitants, with regard to food and clothing and the means of observing the decencies of life, were far below the average scale of the peasant class in England.”

He immediately set about the task of improving the quality of life of his parishioners. But not from the pulpit. It is recorded that Henslow’s first congregation in Hitcham Church was insufficient to fill one pew, and although a first-class lecturer, he was regarded as an indifferent preacher. Perhaps he felt uncomfortable in speaking six feet above contradiction. With Victorian confidence and practicality he saw that education and the application of scientific knowledge offered the best solutions to the impoverishment that he found around him.

He found the farmers of Hitcham to be hard-working but intensely conservative in their methods of husbandry. He found their workers. who made up the bulk of the population, to be underemployed and invariably the victims of poor harvests and economic downturns.

He believed passionately in scientific agriculture and persuaded local farmers to assist him in experiments on crop diseases and measured analyses of manures. On a family holiday in Felixstowe, his restless, enquiring mind caused him to examine substances found in the cliffs there, known as coprolites. He recognised that coprolites, which are the fossilised excrement of animals long extinct, contained a high percentage of phosphate of lime, which he believed would provide a highly concentrated fertiliser. He conducted experiments, published his results and lectured at Suffolk Farming Society Meetings. Two young Suffolk farmers were so impressed, that they gave up their farming work to exploit the coprolite deposits, and from these humble beginnings, the international chemical company of Fisons, once based in Ipswich, evolved. There is a small back alley in Ipswich, close to the Docks where the fertiliser was crushed and prepared, called Coprolite Street. A reminder, perhaps, of Henslow’s holiday in Felixstowe.

Throughout his ministry in Hitcham, Henslow maintained his position as Professor of Botany at Cambridge, and was also, for a time, a private tutor to Queen Victoria’s children. But his teaching was not confined to bright undergraduates or to royal offspring. Shortly after arriving at Hitcham, he founded a village school and timetabled himself for regular lessons during the school year. His lessons were naturally Botany and nature study. Henslow was no mere chalk and talk classroom teacher. His surviving teaching notes show carefully prepared lessons which involved the children in collecting specimens, dissecting them and preparing notes and drawings of their findings. A teaching method still regarded as exemplary. Henslow believed that learning and enjoyment went hand in hand.

His beliefs in the potency of education did not end with the school children. He was deeply concerned with the overall poverty of their homes and families. Their fathers, farm workers subject to the vagaries of the day labour system, worked to exhaustion at some times of the year, during ploughing and harvest, for example, and stood off with little or no pay at other times; whose only recreation was in beer which they could ill afford. Their mothers, prematurely aged through child-bearing and drudgery.

As Rector of Hitcham, Henslow was responsible for the administration of the Village Charities, which traditionally gave handouts to the poor at Christmas, much of which they were relieved of at The White Horse. He changed this by substituting coal for money (a system which still prevails in the village, although now it’s electricity tokens for pensioners), but more significantly, he used the resources and influence of the charity to provide gainful occupation and extra food throughout the year. He introduced allotments to the village. In the teeth of opposition from the farmers who feared the loss of labour when they most needed it, he badgered them into making available plots of land which their labourers could cultivate, produce their own vegetables and develop an absorbing interest in gardening. As well as providing practical advice, Henslow instituted an annual vegetable show at the Rectory where those parishioners who had responded to him could proudly show off their produce and receive prizes for “Superior Allotment Culture”.

With the coming of the railways to Suffolk, Henslow organised excursions to places where Hitcham people were unlikely to have visited before, such as Cambridge and Norwich, and, in 1851, to the Great Exhibition in London. Each trip set off from Stowmarket station and was meticulously planned so that his party could see and enjoy as much as possible in the time available.

Henslow could also be described as the father of scientific archaeology in Suffolk, in that he undertook the first excavations in the county for which plans and sections survive – these were on the Roman barrows Eastlow, Rougham 1843-4. He was also one of the founders of Ipswich Museum.

John Henslow died of an attack of bronchitis in Hitcham in 1861. He had lived a life full of achievement, only fragments of which are described in these brief notes. He has had two biographies, one written in 1862 by his brother-in-law, Leonard Jenyns and a recent one by Jean Russell-Gebbett, published by Terence Dalton of Lavenham in 1977. This is available in local libraries.

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Framlingham and Orford castles

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 Norfolk, about 1190. It is largely Roger's work that visitors can see today.

So strong were the towers built by Roger Bigod that a central keep was considered unnecessary for the defences.

However, the castle had not been in existence long before it did indeed fall to besiegers. That occurred when Roger Bigod supported the baron's resistance to King John that resulted in the Magna Carta. John was not the forgiving sort, and he besieged Framlingham in 1216. The castle garrison held out only two days before surrendering, however, King John did not have long to live, and Framlingham was restored to the Bigods following the king's death.

The castle changed hands several times over the ensuing centuries until it finally came to the Howard family. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, added much of the Tudor brickwork in the late 15th century. Finally, in 1635 the castle was sold to Sir Robert Hitcham.

Following Hitcham's death the castle was used as a poorhouse, and later, to house victims of the Plague. Over the intervening centuries, the castle has been used variously as a courthouse, drill hall, meeting hall, workhouse, and a fire station, before finally passing into the hands of English Heritage, whose work it has been to preserve the castle.

Though the interior of Framlingham Castle offers little to recall its days of power, the exterior, including the curtain wall and towers, offer a very enjoyable day out.

A couple of images of the castle from the other side of the Mere. 

Two large lakes, called meres, were formed alongside the castle by damming a local stream. The southern mere, still visible today, had its origins in a smaller, natural lake; once dammed, it covered 9.4 hectares (23 acres) and had an island with a dovecote built on it. The meres were used for fishing as well as for boating, and would have had extensive aesthetic appeal. It is uncertain exactly when the meres were first built. One theory suggests that the meres were built in the early 13th century, although there is no documentary record of them at least until the 1380s. Another theory is that they were formed in the first half of the 14th century, at around the same time as the Lower Court was constructed. A third possibility is that it was the Howard family who introduced the meres in the late 15th century as part of their modernisation of the castle.

Sir Robert Hitcham died in 1636 leaving the castle and the manor to Pembroke College in Cambridge, with the proviso that the college destroy the internal castle buildings and construct a workhouse on the site instead, operating under the terms of the recently passed Poor Law. 

After the collapse of the power of the Howards, the county of Suffolk was controlled by an oligarchy of Protestant gentry by the 17th century and did not play a prominent part in the English Civil War that occurred between 1642–6. Framlingham Castle escaped the slighting that occurred to many other English castles around this time.

(Slighting? - Slighting is the deliberate destruction, partial or complete, of a fortification without opposition, to render it unusable as a fortress - so now we know!)

Hitcham's bequest had meanwhile become entangled in the law courts and work did not begin on the workhouse until the late 1650s, by which time the internal buildings of castle were being broken up for the value of their stone; the chapel had been destroyed in this way by 1657.

The workhouse at Framlingham, the Red House, was finally built in the Inner Court (as shown above) and the poor would work there so they were eligible for relief; it proved unsatisfactory and, following the mismanagement of the workhouse funds, the Red House was closed and used as a public house instead.The maintenance of the meres ceased around this time and much of the area returned to meadow. In 1699 another attempt was made to open a poorhouse on the site, resulting in the destruction of the Great Chamber around 1700. This poorhouse failed too, and in 1729 a third attempt was made – the Great Hall was pulled down and the current poorhouse built on its site instead.Opposition to the Poor Law grew, and in 1834 the law was changed to reform the system; the poorhouse on the castle site was closed by 1839, the inhabitants being moved to the workhouse at Wickham Market.

The castle continued to fulfill several other local functions. During the outbreak of plague in 1666, the castle was used as an isolation ward for infected patients, and during the Napoleonic Wars the castle was used to hold the equipment and stores of the local Framlingham Volunteer regiment. Following the closure of the poorhouse, the castle was then used as a drill hall and as a county court, as well as containing the local parish jail and stocks.

View of the inner court.

The Lower Court (l) and Postern gate (r)

A number of carved brick chimneys dating from the Tudor period can be seen around the Inner Court, each with a unique design; all but three of these were purely ornamental, however, and historian R. Allen Brown describes them as a "regrettable" addition to the castle from an architectural perspective. Two of the functional Tudor chimneys make use of original mid-12th century flues; these two chimneys are circular in design and are the earliest such surviving structures in England.

And so to Orford castle, in the village of Orford, Suffolk, located 12 miles (20 km) northeast of Ipswich, with views over the Orford Ness. It was built between 1165 and 1173 by Henry II of England to consolidate royal power in the region. The well-preserved keep, described by historian R. Allen Brown as "one of the most remarkable keeps in England", is of a unique design and probably based on Byzantine architecture. The keep still stands among the earth-covered remains of the outer fortifications.

So here we have Framlingham Castle with no keep, and Orford with a magnificent keep and no outer walls, within a few miles of each other.

Again, a huge history - (Wikipedia). Prior to the building of Orford Castle, Suffolk was dominated by the Bigod family, who held the title of the Earl of Norfolk and owned key castles at Framlingham, Bungay, Walton and Thetford. Hugh Bigod had been one of a group of dissenting barons during the Anarchy in the reign of King Stephen, and Henry II wished to re-establish royal influence across the region. Henry confiscated the four castles from Hugh, but returned Framlingham and Bungay to Hugh in 1165. Henry then decided to build his own royal castle at Orford, near Framlingham, and construction work began in 1165, concluding in 1173.

The Orford site was around two miles (3.2 km) from the sea, lying on flat ground with swampy terrain slowly stretching away down to the river Ore, about half a mile (0.8 km) away.

The design of the keep was unique, and has been termed "one of the most remarkable keeps in England" by historian R. Allen Brown. The 90-foot-high (27-metre) central tower was circular in cross-section with three rectangular, clasping towers built out from the 49-foot-wide (15-metre) structure. The tower was based on a precise set of proportions, its various dimensions following the one-to-the-root-of-two ratio found in many English churches of the period. 

The keep was surrounded by a curtain wall with probably four flanking towers and a fortified gatehouse protecting a relatively small bailey; these outer defences, rather than the keep, probably represented the main defences of the castle.

The Merman of Orford

In London. the athletic and active Henry II sits on the throne of England, plotting an invasion of Ireland that will lead to nearly a thousand years of pain. In Canterbury cathedral Thomas Beckett is the Archbishop, asserting an independence for the church that will one day cause his death. In Oxford a group of scholars, recently expelled from Paris, arrive and settle down.

In Orford, on the Suffolk coast, the world is the sea. What comes out of it, how it behaves, what goes into it; all these are the concerns of Orford people.

On one day in 1167, a group of men are fishing in the sea a mile off Orford Ness, their small boats rising and falling on the swell. Suddenly, one of their nets is pulled and twisted with great ferocity. With practised expertise the fishermen begin to pull it in, only to find that they have not caught a dolphin or a seal, as they had suspected, but a wild looking man.

Ralph Coggeshall, the Abbott's chronicler, takes up the story:

'Men fishing in the sea caught a wild man in their nets. He was naked and was like a man in all his members, covered with hair and with a long shaggy beard. He eagerly ate whatever was brought to him but if it was raw he pressed it between his hands until all the juice was expelled. He would not talk, even when tortured and hung up by his feet. Brought into church, he showed no signs of reverence or belief. He sought his bed at sunset and always remained there until sunrise. He was allowed to go into the sea, strongly guarded with three lines of nets, but he dived under the nets and came up again and again. Eventually he came back of his own free will. But later on he escaped and was never seen again.'

Belief in mermaids and mermen has existed since earliest times; most commonly they are represented as having the head and body of a woman or man and a fishtail instead of legs. While mermaids are often described as having great beauty and charm, which they used to lure sailors to their deaths, mermen (of which there are far fewer stories) are generally considered uglier and less kindly, although encouraging sailors to drown doesn't sound too friendly. Most tales suggest mermen have no interest in mankind, although they have been cited as being instrumental in the production of huge storms and the sinking of ships in revenge for man’s mistreatment of a beloved mermaid.

The story of the Orford Merman is still much talked about today, a memorial to him hanging in the market square - used as the logo for The Butley Orford Oysterage. It has now been put to music in a wonderful new composition by Joanna Lee, composer in residence to the Aldeburgh Music Club. The music was performed by the Aldeburgh Music Club choir as part of their 60th anniversary celebrations in 2012.

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