Winter brings floods to Layham & Hadleigh

Some years we appear to have a considerable amount more wet weather than others. During these times, Layham takes on a new look, and indeed, the whole area does. This year was one of the wetter ones, although not the worst we have seen. Here are some of the images I have taken when we have experienced large rainfalls.

The seat in the conservation area. You needed wellingtons to reach it, and the view was a bit different from normal. Where does the river start or finish?

The path through the trees is flooded, but the odd oasis produces the occasional surprise.

... such as crocuses still managing to produce some colour.

.... and snowdrops.

It's as well that this house is standing on pillars of brick, although this year the water was not quite as deep but near enough.

Facing the other way, the garden? and tennis court of the neighbours property.

The water as it thunders under the bridge and down the overflow beside the bridge.

Walking toward Hadleigh, this is the scene which greeted me. This is normally horse grazing area!

Anyone for rugby? Not much play on Hadleigh Rugby Club grounds.

In front of the Council offices. There is, believe it or not, a footpath under this lot.

However, the Royal Mail always tries to deliver.

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Hares of Havergate Island

Just off the mainland, south of one of Suffolk’s most popular tourist hotspots lies a rare and special landscape that most casual visitors probably have no idea even exists. The British coast boasts more than 6,000 islands, but only one of them is in Suffolk.

Across the River Ore from Orford Ness, it's far more obvious and famous neighbour, Havergate Island is, in many ways, a bundle of contradictions. Just a 20-minute boat ride from the quay at Orford!

These days, no-one lives on Havergate except an abundance of wildlife. It’s been an RSPB nature reserve since just after the Second World War – and what a reserve it is.

Along with Minsmere, it was the first place in Britain for avocets to breed in 100 years, and is a magnet for exotic spoonbills and migrant waders. 

Then there are the hares, probably first brought to the island as a food source when it was inhabited by farmers. Numbers were depleted in the storm surge of 2013, but they’re still a Havergate speciality.

It was to see the hares that we booked our place on the small boat to make the 20 minute journey, in the hope of at least a few photographs.

The small vessel we travelled on.

This shot taken as we were boarding to leave the island. Orford Ness in the background with it`s Cold War structures on it. 

Orford Ness was used a lot for military purposes but these are from the height of the Cold War when the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment and the Royal Aircraft Establishment (AWRE) used Orford Ness for development work on the atomic bomb. Continuing all the way through the 1960s ominous half-buried concrete structures were built to contain these most lethal of weapons.

A visit another day I think.

Well, we had been on the island for quite a while at the various hides, but it was hares we wanted to see. Arriving at the area where we were most likely to see them, we began to wonder if we would be lucky when suddenly - there they were. Where do I point the camera being the big decision!

Sometimes they were so close that I struggled to remember to quickly zoom in - resulting in several images with chopped ears and feet!

In the end I was quite happy with the resulting images. Even if I had taken nothing, it was a privilege to see them so close and in their natural surroundings.

A little history:

Before 1948 Havergate was farmed by local marsh keepers, who recognised the potential of its rich, silty soil.They built walls and embankments against tidal flooding, inhabited the island and introduced livestock to graze the site.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Havergate was owned by a Mr Fisk, and a cottage on the island housed the Brinkley family, who eked out a living growing crops and tending wildlife. In the early 1920s, a gravel company moved in to extract shingle, which was taken down to the shore in railway buggies powered by electricity and transferred onto Thames barges.

The remains of the extraction pits, tracks and some buggies can still be seen. By the end of the 1920s Havergate was no longer inhabited, but cattle were still brought over to graze in summer, swum over at low tide, until a barge was eventually constructed to ferry them across.

Throughout the Second World War Havergate was left unattended, something which is thought to have led to the failure of sluices that had been installed to prevent flooding and stop the island being reclaimed by the tide. The walls and embankments eventually collapsed, allowing the island to be flooded in several places.

Ironically, this flooding created perfect conditions for a bird that hadn’t bred in Britain for 100 years, the avocet. Avocets were discovered nesting on the island in 1947, leading the RSPB to purchase Havergate in 1948 and to appoint warden Reg Partridge, who began the task of rebuilding the river walls and creating the lagoons that can now be seen today.

It was a great day, and well worth the visit.

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The first snow of winter

The day started with falling snow blanketing the surrounding countryside. As the morning progressed the snowfall subsided and we decided to brave the `elements` and equipped with camera, we set off to explore.

We soon found that, although it looked very pretty, it was not going to stay long. It was very `slushy` underfoot in places. Looking up the hill neat Overbury Hall did look rather winter like, as this image shows.

A close up of snow on the edge of a roof. 

Patterns formed by the snow and the structure of the barn.

The scene by Layham Mill, including the little snow covered island used by our resident swans.

A couple of images of the playing field.

And finally, Rosey, having ducked under the fallen branch, makes her way down the centre of the road. Wouldn't do that normally!

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The American link with the Suffolk village of Shelley

Shelley is a small village and civil parish in Suffolk, England. Located on the west bank of the River Brett around three miles south of Hadleigh, it is part of Babergh district.

Probable built C13 with a north facing tower added C14, this little church was very obviously used by the Tylney family, who lived in the Shelley Hall nearby. It contains tombs and a chapel, all in the Tylney name.

Elizabeth Gosnold Tilney, sister of Jamestown colonist and explorer Bartholomew Gosnold, is buried at All Saints Church, Shelley. Many people who come to Shelley will do so to see Dame Margarett Tylney. Her effigy lies in a window embrasure to the west of the pulpit. She died in 1598, shortly before the Tudor dynasty ended.

Thomas Tylney, who married Elizabeth Gosnold Tylney, is also buried in Shelley church.

Her sleeping effigy was witness to a quite extraordinary event in the early years of the 21st Century. In 2003, archaeologists working in Jamestown, Virginia discovered the remains of a body which had been buried with obvious ceremony at the James Fort heritage site. There was a theory that it could be the corpse of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, a Suffolk-born adventurer who led the pioneers that established the first English colony in the New World at Jamestown in 1607. A certain amount of DNA was recovered, and the only way of establishing for certain the identity of the corpse was to find a match from a source known to be of the same family. Gosnold’s sister Elizabeth Tylney Gosnold had been buried in the vault of Shelley church, and permission was given for the vault to be opened and a DNA sample obtained.

Permission was given because of “the strength of the educational and scientific rationale presented to us by the Jamestown team”. The Victorian tiles were removed from the chancel floor, then the 18th Century bricks below them, and then the 17th Century flagstones. A small amount of DNA was obtained from the corpse of Elizabeth, and lo and behold it was a match. 

A brass plaque on the chancel wall recalls the event and remembers Elizabeth - however, despite the excitement, identification of the Jamestown body still remains uncertain, as the body in All Saints’ Church – thought to be Elizabeth’s – turned out to be that of a much younger woman, possibly Anne Framlingham, who had married Philip Tylney, of Shelley Hall, in 1561 and died around 1601. It's a great story though!

North side view of Shelley church.

Another view of the front. This time with what looks like a couple sleeping rough in the porch.

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Cardinal Wolsey's Angels come to Ipswich

Thomas Wolsey was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, around 1475. His father, who is thought to have been a butcher, provided a good education and he went on to Magdalen College, Oxford. Wolsey was ordained in around 1498. He became chaplain to the archbishop of Canterbury and later chaplain to Henry VII, who employed him on diplomatic missions.

Wolsey was a cardinal and statesman, Henry VIII's lord chancellor and one of the last churchmen to play a dominant role in English political life.

Wolsey made a name for himself as an efficient administrator, both for the Crown and the church. When Henry VIII became king in 1509, Wolsey's rapid rise began. In 1514, he was created archbishop of York and a year later the pope made him a cardinal. Soon afterwards the king appointed him lord chancellor. Wolsey used his great wealth to indulge his passion for building - at his London home, York Place in Whitehall, and at Hampton Court, 20 miles south west of London. He also founded Cardinal College at Oxford (later King's College, and now Christ Church), but his haughtiness and grand style of living made him increasingly unpopular.

In 1524, he commissioned the Florentine sculptor Benedetto da Rovezzano to create four bronze angels for his magnificent Renaissance tomb, but as we know, fate intervened and Wolsey fell from favour. When Wolsey died in 1530, his possessions were appropriated by Henry for his own use, angels and unfinished tomb included. 

Henry didn't live to see the tomb finished, though he outlived Wolsey by 17 years. Construction was halted despite Benedetto establishing a team of craftsmen in Westminster, and the plans of Henry's three children to complete the memorial posthumously went unrealised. 

After Henry's death, details of whether the angels remained with the tomb become scant. Elizabeth I moved much of the tomb to Windsor in 1565, where it stayed for over 80 years, with some parts sold off during the civil war to help finance the Royalist cause. After the civil war, the only element of the tomb known to have survived was a black stone chest, finally put to use as the centrepiece of Horatio Nelson's tomb at St Paul's Cathedral. 

As for Wolsey's angels, their location, if they had survived at all, was unknown. In 1994, an unillustrated entry in a Sotheby's catalogue listed two bronze sculptures 'in Italian Renaissance style'. 

A Parisian art dealer bought the statues, and soon afterwards the Italian scholar Francesco Caglioti attributed the angels to Benedetto. In 2008, the second pair was discovered at Harrowden Hall, a country house in Northamptonshire owned by the Wellingborough Golf Club. The Sotheby's angels, it emerged, had been stolen from Harrowden in 1988. 

So, when Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich were loaned the four Angels by the V&A, I just had to see them. 

Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich

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Rowland Taylor - Hadleigh's Martyr

In 1544 Rowland Taylor became Rector of Hadleigh where the new Protestant reforms of Edward VI's reign were adopted. However, in 1553, Mary Tudor became Queen and reinstated the Roman Catholic religion, but Taylor, and others, refused to give up the Protestant changes and beliefs. His arrest was ordered in March 1554 and in January 1555 he was excommunicated and sentenced to be burnt at the stake. He was returned to Hadleigh and on February 9th 1555 burnt at the stake on Aldham Common.

Some history:

On 16 April 1544, he was presented to the living of Hadleigh, Suffolk, thus becoming their spiritual leader and rector. Then, on 15 August 1547, he became canon of Rochester, the same year during which King Henry VIII had died in January.

In 1548, Taylor was further appointed archdeacon of Bury St Edmunds, followed 3 years later, in 1551, being made archdeacon of Exeter in the diocese of Exeter

Other positions he was appointed to include being one of the Six Preachers of Canterbury Cathedral and being appointed chancellor to Bishop Nicholas Ridley. A very busy man!

Taylor's troubles began on 25 July 1553. He was arrested just six days after the new queen, Mary I, ascended the throne. Aside from the fact that Taylor had supported Lady Jane Grey, Mary's rival, he was also charged with heresy for having preached a sermon in Bury St Edmunds denouncing the Roman Catholic practice of clerical celibacy, which required that a priest in holy orders be unmarried. Many English clergymen, including Taylor, had abandoned this teaching since the 1530s as a token of the English Reformation.

Taylor also denounced the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, which is the belief that the two elements (bread and wine) taken during Holy Communion, or the Eucharist, actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Since the Roman Catholic position is that the Eucharist (and the miracle of transubstantiation) is a sacrament commanded by God, anyone denying it, particularly a cleric or pastor, is considered a heretic. This teaching was opposed universally by the Reformed and Protestant Churches, who maintained that, since a sacrament is a sign, it cannot also be the thing signified. For similar reasons relating to the problem of idolatry, Taylor took issue with the Roman Catholic form of the Mass and received much support from the villagers of Hadleigh.

These issues came to a head after Edward VI died (6 July 1553) and was succeeded by Queen Mary I. In 1554, Mary began a program of re-establishing Catholicism in England. However, the English clergy and Anglican faithful, whose hopes for a Protestant royal succession had been dashed by Mary's imprisonment and execution of Lady Jane Grey, saw it as a matter of English Christian duty to resist this backlash, not least to resist the political ambitions of the king of Spain (Philip II, whom Mary married) to draw England within the sphere of the Holy Roman Empire and its Roman Catholic satellites. Although Mary, as Henry VIII's eldest daughter, was a legitimate successor to Edward VI, England was no longer minded to tolerate a Roman Catholic monarch, and the courage and endurance unto death of men such as Taylor provided the public example which ensured that the Reformation was not in fact overturned, but became established in the realm of England.

On 26 March 1554, the Privy Council ordered the arrest of Taylor, and he thus appeared before Bishop Stephen Gardiner. The proceedings against Taylor ran over several years. During this time he was kept in the King's Bench Prison. While in prison he befriended many inmates and was instrumental in many conversions to Anglicanism.

January 1555 was an ominous month for Anglican clergy in England. After several years of separation from Roman worship and governance, the accession of Mary I in 1553 and her immediate reversion to Roman Catholic rule in obedience to the pope (an attempt to turn back the Reformation of the English church) led her to unleash her wrath upon those whom she defined as treasonably minded heretics.

His execution took place on 9 February 1555, at Aldham Common just to the north of Hadleigh. His wife, two daughters, and his son Thomas were present that day.

A local butcher was ordered to set a torch to the wood but resisted. A couple of bystanders finally threw a lighted torch onto the wood. A perhaps sympathetic guard, named Warwick, struck Taylor's head with a halberd, which apparently killed him instantly. The fire consumed his body shortly thereafter.

An unhewn stone marks the place of Taylor's death at Aldham Common (just to the north of Hadleigh, where the B1070 Lady Lane meets the A1071 Ipswich Road). Next to the unhewn stone, there is also a monument erected in 1818, and restored by parishioners in 1882.

The memorial window to Rowland Taylor in St Mary`s Church, Hadleigh.

Aldham Common, the site of Rowland Taylor' burning, was enclosed in 1729 with the income to be used for the 'poor of Hadleigh'. Today the Aldham Common Charity administers the land and money raised is used to help with cases of hardship within the Parish of Hadleigh.

The Charity is able to make grants to individuals or organisations to help in a number of ways eg. contributions towards school uniform, school trips, college and university books and equipment, assistance with travelling costs to hospital appointments, replacement of furniture and white goods etc.

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Exploring in the the Forest of Dean

Friday started dull and misty (again) despite a forecast of sunshine, so we delayed going out until 10:30 when we headed for the Forest of Dean. Had a bit of a wander along the Sculpture trail before heading to Beechenhurst Lodge for lunch and a coffee.

Beechenhurst Lodge (formerly the site of Speech House Colliery, closed around 1906) is now the ideal base for a family day out, the sculpture trail being only of many family orientated activities you can pursue from here. Very difficult to visualise the area once being an active coal area.

Freckled Dapperling (Lepiota aspera) We had hoped to see more fungi in the forest as well as more Autumn colours, so it was a bit disappointing to find almost no fungi, apart from this one. As for autumn colours, they were not as apparent as at home.

Dor beetle (Geotrupes vernalis) spotted by Rosey. It is a beetle neither of us had photographed before. 

Since 1984 The Forest of Dean Sculpture Trust has raised funds to commission artists to celebrate and help us appreciate and understand the life of the forest. 

The Sculpture Trust works in partnership with the Forestry Commission which maintains the sculptures and trail. 

The sculptures are mostly constructed from natural material from the Dean - wood, stone and iron. They are interspersed along the trail through majestic oaks and towering Scots pine trees 

IRON ROAD by Keir Smith 1986.Twenty carved jarrah wood railway sleepers remind us of the train line that used to run through the forest carrying coal and iron. Each sleeper illustrates an aspect of the forest, from smelting to writing, charcoal to hunting. 

The Speech House was the administrative building of the Forest of Dean. The building was originally constructed as a hunting lodge for Charles II and the Speech House was authorised by the Act of 1668 as part of a reorganisation of the open land in the area, and its construction was finished in 1682] It hosted the "Court of the Speech", a sort of parliament for the Verderers and Free Miners managing the forest, game, and mineral resources of the area. 

It was severely damaged in the Revolution of 1688, but repaired soon thereafter. Around 1840 it began to be used as an inn, and by the late 19th century it was functioning as a hotel, which (as of 2013) it continues to do. 

I must confess that I had to Google the word `Verdeers` and the answer was "Verderers are officials in Britain who deal with Common land in certain former royal hunting areas which are the property of The Crown. The office was developed in the Middle Ages to administer Forest Law on behalf of the King. Verderers investigated and recorded minor offences such as the taking of venison and the illegal cutting of woodland, and dealt with the day-to-day forest administration. In the modern era verderers are still to be found in the New Forest, the Forest of Dean, and Epping Forest, where they serve to protect commoning practices, and conserve the traditional landscape and wildlife." 

So, something learnt! 

A small painted stone found in the forest on this stone marker. I was tempted to bring it home, but I decided against it. 

The stone marker was inscribed to commemorate the loyal service of Deputy Surveyor R G Sanzen-Baker. 

A short walk back to the car by which time it was getting very dull, so back to Monmouth, a bit of shopping before heading home for packing and cleanup, as tomorrow we head back to Suffolk 

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