The A-Z of Curious Suffolk E-Book

Sarah E. Doig

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 260

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

This book romps through the rolling countryside and along the shingled coastline of Suffolk, unearthing the curious along the way. Sandwiched between ecclesiastical penances handed down to adulterers and fornicators, and the odd porcelain incendiary bombs commemorating the Zeppelin raids, is an alphabetical cornucopia of strange, spooky and mysterious facts about the county. Is the supposedly ancient game of dwile flonking quite so old? What did writers like Pepys and Defoe say about Suffolk cheese? Which tower was probably just built to curry favour with the monarch? And who was the unknown, self-taught archaeologist who made one of the most significant finds of all time? The A-Z of Curious Suffolk is a book to dip into, unless of course you can't wait to turn the page and read more!

Leseprobe

To my parents, who instilled in me a curiosity in the people, places and events around me, and who have encouraged and supported all my endeavours.

First published in 2016

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2016

All rights reserved

© Sarah E. Doig, 2016

The right of Sarah E. Doig to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 6903 1

Original typesetting by The History Press

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Thank you to the people of Suffolk, present and past, for providing such a rich heritage. This book simply could not have been written without you.

There are a number of individuals who have provided information, offered suggestions on content, lent me books and magazines, and checked details of individual stories. Thank you, therefore, to Carolyn Boon, Stephen Dart, Chris Dunbavin, Caroline Hearn, Rosemary Knox, Neil Langridge, Diana Maywhort, Geoffrey Robinson, Jean Sheehan and ‘The Eighth in the East’.

Thank you to staff at the Suffolk Record Office, in particular the Bury St Edmunds branch, for their enthusiastic help and support during my research. I would also like to pay tribute to Suffolk Libraries; an excellent service, without which I could simply not have accessed all the books I wanted to consult.

All the new, stunning location photographs in this book were taken by Tony Scheuregger. I am sure you will agree that they enhance the text tremendously. Thank you, Tony, for your skill and for your forbearance during our various trips racing around the Suffolk countryside.

There are also a number of people and organisations to whom I am extremely grateful for giving permission for me to reproduce prints and photographs. I have duly credited them by the relevant illustration. All other illustrations are, to the best of my knowledge, out of copyright.

Thank you to the staff at The History Press for turning my raw text and images into this finished product.

And last but definitely not least, I would like to thank my husband, Mike, who has provided support, offered advice, been a sounding board for my ideas, read through and commented on my initial drafts and generally kept the household running while I have been immersed in my writing.

‘Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last’

– Samuel Johnson

A few years ago there was a public outcry when Visit Suffolk unveiled a new tourism campaign aimed at luring visitors back to Suffolk. The campaign’s slogan was ‘The Curious County’. One of Suffolk’s MPs branded the slogan ‘idiotic and meaningless’ and ‘a euphemism for something not quite right’, and there were calls for the phrase to be dropped. Well, I beg to differ. I think ‘The Curious County’ sums up Suffolk precisely as well as concisely.

When I was growing up in Suffolk, I knew that the county was special. Our family trips to castles, churches, country houses, farms, woods, forests, beaches, villages and towns alike always offered up something new and fascinating. Suffolk is a county steeped in history, yet still alive and thriving despite the best the Industrial Revolution had to throw at it.

Our Suffolk ancestors left a rich legacy for us to discover and enjoy today. But we must be willing to scratch beneath the surface. And that is what I have tried to do in researching and writing this book. Some of the tales will be familiar to Suffolk die-hards, but hopefully there will be something surprising, funny or odd when you turn the page. I invite you, then, to travel through ‘The Curious County’ with me, and hope that it is as enjoyable an experience for you as it was for me writing The A-Z of Curious Suffolk.

ADULTERY

On 2 April 1828, the Bury and Norwich Post reported on the trial and conviction of Thomas Peacock. He was found guilty of bigamous marriages, having been wed to Sarah Steed, spinster, at Lavenham in 1805, to Mary Harnton, spinster, at Elmswell in 1821, and to Mary Green, a widow at Postwick (in Norfolk), in 1824, all of whom were still alive. In passing sentence, the judge said that ‘unless I send you out of the country, it is to be feared you will literally make a conquest of all the ladies that come your way’. The judge was clearly not at all impressed with Peacock’s crime, adding that: ‘Not being content with one or even two wives, your attractions were so irresistible that the last lady (a poor decrepit old woman) was unable to withstand your solicitations, although it was evident she had arrived at that age when no common charms would have been successful.’ He further commented that:

For the preservation, therefore, of the ladies here whose hearts you appear by your fascinating qualifications easily to win, and to prevent the ladies by whom I am surrounded from falling a sacrifice to a person of such agreeable and attractive manners, the sentence of the Court is that you be transported to such place as his Majesty shall direct, for the term of seven years.

Despite the seriousness of the penalty he faced, Thomas Peacock was even heard to comment that he had another two wives in Yorkshire! Thomas was no doubt transported to Australia for the duration of his sentence. Whether or not he ever made it back to Suffolk is not known. But I think it is highly unlikely that he mended his ways and that he continued to leave a trail of wives behind him.

In centuries past, it was not just the civil courts who punished those who broke laws. The Church would impose penalties on members of its congregation who transgressed. Either the parish priest himself, or the local church courts, would often require penance to be performed, and such punishments were designed to publicly shame the culprit. Suffolk appears to have its fair share of adulterers and fornicators, and in some cases we have some wonderful detail of both the crime and the punishment. The following account comes from the Ubbeston parish register:

12 Sept 1707 The form of penance to be performed by Sarah Edwards for committing the crime of Adultery as followeth.

Imprimis [firstly] – The said Sarah Edwards shall upon a Sunday after the second Peale of Morning Prayers come out into the Church Porch of Ubbestone and there shall stand until the second lesson be ended arrayed all the while in a white sheet down to the feet with a white wand in her hand and a paper pinned upon her breast expressing her offence and shall ask forgiveness of those that come to church.

An adulterer performing his penance in church.

Item – the second lesson being ended the Minister shall receive her into the Congregation and being placed before the Minister’s desk with her face to the Congregation and standing upon a pesse [kneeler] shall make penitently the confession following saying after ye Minister in an audible voice: ‘I Sarah Edwards do acknowledge and confess that I have most grievously offended Almighty God and provoked his just wrath and indignation against me by committing the sin of fornication – I am heartily sorry for this my great sin of fornication – I am heartily sorry for this my great sin and offence and I do most sincerely beg of God Almighty pardon and forgiveness thereof and to grant his grace of true repentance and perseverance therein and that I may never commit the like sin anymore but lead an honest and sober life for the time to come …’

No details appear with this account of Sarah’s crime, but elsewhere in the register is recorded the baptism of her baby, born out of wedlock. No mention is made of the child’s father.

We do know slightly more about the crimes of six individuals punished in Great Welnetham church in 1701. A loose sheet in the parish register tells us that two couples, William and Elizabeth Boldero and Francis and Rose Ottewell, did penance for ‘fore antinuptua fornication’ which may well imply wife-swapping. Robert Bray and Elizabeth Harold were made to do penance on separate days for fornication with each other. And the following year it was recorded that ‘George Cason did his penance for committing fornication with Mary Johnson but shewed no sign of penitence, rather to the contrary’.

ALE

Suffolk people are certainly not unusual in their love for alcoholic beverages. Nor is it particularly surprising to learn that in the Middle Ages, church ales were one of England’s most traditional and festive forms of ecclesiastical fund-raising. It seems perfectly natural to assume that those people who worshipped together would also drink together. Where Suffolk does stand head and shoulders above many other counties, however, is in the wealth of surviving records and buildings which are testament to this custom.

The surviving parish accounts of Cratfield date back as far as 1490 and tell us that church ales were hosted by Cratfield, or by neighbouring villages, between five and six times a year, raising substantial sums of money. This continued into the early sixteenth century. These festivities were traditionally held on Passion Sunday, Pentecost, All Saints’ Day and Plough Monday. Another popular day for holding these celebrations was the Fourth Sunday in Lent which is still sometimes called ‘Refreshment Sunday’. On these occasions, ales were brewed, yeasty cakes were baked and residents of villages nearby were invited to come and enjoy the day and, of course, buy the food and drink at inflated prices. The visitors didn’t mind paying over the odds for their ale and cakes because they knew they could reciprocate on another occasion!

The former church house at Fressingfield where ales would have been brewed and sold. (Tony Scheuregger)

Whilst the majority of the profit from Cratfield’s ales appears to have been spent on the church building and ornaments, their church ales were sometimes sold to benefit an individual or a specific cause. Bride ales were sold on behalf of a newly married couple to give them a good financial start in life and help ales were brewed to assist a parishioner who had fallen on bad times.

Fressingfield was one of the fellow parishes who took their turn to produce church ales. In this village, the stunning timber-framed church house, which adjoins the churchyard, still stands. It is sometimes described as the old Guildhall and a beautifully carved wooden corner post depicts St Margaret with whom the guild was said to be associated. Whatever its formal title, it was the place where the church ales would have been brewed and the associated fund-raising events held. It is therefore quite apt that the building is now home to the Fox and Goose Inn.

If you mention the name Jankyn Smith to a resident of Bury St Edmunds, the chances are that there will be some signs of recognition. This may appear remarkable given that he died over 500 years ago, in 1481. But it becomes less surprising when you take into account that he is still commemorated annually in the town. Why? Because he was one of the major benefactors of the community. John Smith (to give him his usual, formal but less memorable name) gave money for the development of St Mary’s church, including two new aisles. He also made provision for the enlargement and incorporation of an established college of priests. When Jankyn Smith died he was buried in St Mary’s church in the north aisle although his monumental brass above the tomb was later moved to a different part of the church.

More importantly, Jankyn Smith founded a charity originally intended for the payment of town taxes to the abbott of Bury St Edmunds Abbey. But because of the flexibility of the terms under which this charity was set up, it has enabled many generations of townspeople up to the present day to benefit from the money from his endowment. In the seventeenth century, a group of charities of which Jankyn Smith’s was the earliest, came to be known as the Guildhall Feoffment. Today, the Guildhall Feoffment runs mainly sheltered housing in three locations in Bury.

Jankyn Smith’s will stated that he wanted a requiem mass to be said for his soul in St Mary’s church every year on the anniversary of his death (28 June), to be attended by townspeople and residents of almshouses he had established. This ‘Commemoration Day’, as it has been known since 1662, is still held annually on or very close to 28 June. It is believed to be the oldest, continually held endowed religious service in the world. Smith also stipulated in his will that the residents of his almshouses be given cakes and ale after the service. This tradition is also continued in the eleventh- or twelfth-century Guildhall, where town dignitaries and Guildhall Feoffees assemble with them for a reception to toast their benefactors, surrounded by portraits of these individuals, including one of Jankyn Smith.

In the nineteenth century, alcohol abuse was a serious problem and the local newspapers are littered with reports of coroners’ inquests into deaths due in part or wholly to drink. New laws had been introduced at the beginning of the 1800s which made it easier to open beer-houses in an ordinary home and gin was a particularly cheap liquor. In January 1832 an inquest was held into the death of a 7-year-old boy, Albert Mannell, of Iken, who died from drinking a large quantity of his mother’s gin. In June 1841, William Pain, the master of a boat moored at Woodbridge, drowned whilst attempting to board his boat whilst drunk. And in November 1842 the following report appeared in the Suffolk Chronicle under the heading ‘Caution to Drunkards’: ‘John Cowey of Rendlesham … was sent to Woodbridge with Lord Hay’s wagon to fetch some deals. He staid there till intoxicated … Near Wiford Bridge, running alongside the wagon at full trot, he was knocked into a ditch, the wagon overturning upon him.’

Finally this short item from the Framlingham Weekly News, reporting on the outcome of the Hartismere Petty Sessions, demonstrates that all sorts of excuses were given to authorities for being intoxicated:

David Storry, Rickinghall, was charged with being drunk and riotous on the highway at Botesdale on 18th April. The case was proved by Inspector Bernard who saw the defendant on the day in question in a beastly state of drunkenness. Defendant pleaded guilty and said he was sorry it had occurred, as he was just upon the point of marrying.

The guilty party was given the option of paying a fine of 10s or spending seven days in jail. He chose the former, which perhaps suggests that what was meant by the report was that he was celebrating his impending nuptials on a stag night, rather than getting legless to forget about the forthcoming event.

If you had asked the average man or woman in a bar in another part of the country at the beginning of the twenty-first century whether they had heard of Aspall Cyder, the answer would probably have been ‘no’. However, in just a short space of time the brand has achieved recognition around the world, and it is now unusual not to be able to order a pint of Aspall’s in any self-respecting British pub.

Aspall Cyder is by no means a new venture. It was started by Clement Chevalier, who brought cyder making to Suffolk from his native Jersey. Clement had inherited Aspall Hall near Debenham in 1722 from his uncle, Temple Chevalier, but took six years to move into the estate. However, once there it took only a matter of days before he planted his first apple trees, although the local farmers thought he was mad planting on good-quality arable land. The extensive, privately held family archive includes Clement’s diaries, accounts and letters which provide a detailed record of his efforts to produce his first cyder in autumn 1728 by buying fruit from local growers. Clement’s descendants have been making cyder at the hall ever since. The only female cyder maker in eight generations was Perronelle Guild née Chevallier who took over the running of the business in 1940 on the death of her father. It had been her father, John Barrington Chevalier, who had introduced the ‘y’ into the name of the drink to differentiate it from the West Country varieties. Perronelle was a founder member of the Soil Association, as a result of which Aspall Cyder became an organic producer; a tradition it maintains to this day. The Cyder House at Aspall Hall, built by Clement Chevalier in 1728, still houses his original mill and horse-drawn press. The heavy granite wheel and trough were brought by ship from France to Ipswich. From there, heavy horses were required to bring them to Aspall, a journey that took three days and which cost £6. When the last press horse died in 1947, the stone wheel and trough were retired and a small petrol-powered dicing machine was installed. The original press is built from wood from the estate and was in continual use until 1971.

Clement Chevalier (1697–1762) of Aspall Hall. (Courtesy of Aspall)

BANG

Daniel Defoe is best known for his fictitious account of the adventures of shipwrecked Robinson Crusoe on a desert island. But the author was also an active political pamphleteer and, especially in later life, travelled extensively in this country and in Europe. His account of his travels around Britain were first published in the 1720s in three volumes, and his Tour Through the Eastern Counties offers an invaluable insight into life in rural Suffolk a few decades before the Industrial Revolution. He would, however, be both complimentary and damning in a few short sentences:

Woodbridge has nothing remarkable, but that it is a considerable market for butter and corn to be exported to London; for now begins that part which is ordinarily called High Suffolk, which, being a rich soil, is for a long tract of ground wholly employed in dairies, and they again famous for the best butter, and perhaps the worst cheese, in England.

Suffolk cheese had a universal reputation for being hard and almost indigestible. It was even known locally as ‘bang’ or ‘thump’. The Suffolk poet Robert Bloomfield said of it, ‘ … Mocks the weak effort of the bending blade, Or in the hog trough rests in perfect spite, Too big to swallow and too hard to bite’. Although this rather unfair description may have been very accurate, the low quality of the county’s cheese was a direct result of the high quality and highly praised butter the same cows produced. After the cream from the milk had been taken to make the butter, it was then further skimmed once or twice. The resulting ‘flet’ was used to make this coarse cheese.

Nevertheless, Suffolk cheese appeared to have its uses, albeit for a limited time. One commentator wrote, ‘The Navy has always issued Suffolk cheese, a thin, hard and durable variety, but practically inedible’, and it was because of its long-lasting qualities that it had been chosen by the Admiralty to feed their sailors aboard ship. The diarist Samuel Pepys recorded that he and his wife were ‘vexed’ at people grumbling about having to eat the product. However, by the 1750s, the Royal Navy had had enough, and condemned it as unfit for their warships, switching to Cheshire and Gloucestershire cheese instead, even though they were probably more expensive and had a shorter shelf life.

Printed in large numbers from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries, broadside ballads were the tabloid newspaper of their day. They were printed cheaply on one side of paper and were sold on street corners, in town squares and fairs, and pinned on the walls of alehouses and other public places. They contained song-lyrics, tunes and woodcut illustrations designed to disseminate news, prophecies, histories, moral advice, religious warnings, political arguments, satire, comedy and bawdy tales.

The aftermath of the Gun Cotton Works explosion in August 1871. (Courtesy of Stowmarket Town Council)

One such broadside ballad, published in 1871, tells of a famous Suffolk tragedy, the first verse of which reads:

Good people all pray give attention,

List to what I have to tell,

Of the sad explosion at Stowmarket,

That occurred in August, which is known full well.

Where so many poor souls were injured

In the height of youth and bloom

And thro’ that sad gun cotton explosion

Many were cast into an early tomb.

The Stowmarket Gun Cotton Works had been built eight years earlier and provided valuable employment for the townspeople. It manufactured a propellant for gun cartridges and cannon by dipping cotton in a mixture of nitric and sulphuric acid and then washing the fabric. In the afternoon of 11 August 1871 two separate explosions demolished the factory leaving a crater 100ft across and 10ft deep. The noise was heard over 30 miles away, the shock being felt 7 miles away and windows were broken in houses up to 4 miles away from the site. In total twenty-eight people were killed, including two members of the Prentice family who owned the works, and seventy-five more were injured. After the tragedy, an investigation was launched which concluded that the explosion was probably due to a combination of the hot weather and sabotage. Somebody had added acid to the finished gun cotton after it had passed through the testing stage. Nobody was ever caught for the crime. The investigation was the first ever accident to be formally investigated and led to the formation of the world’s first Forensic Explosions Laboratory which still exists today. It also led to the introduction of the 1875 Explosions Act.

In February 2014, more than 140 years after the massive, fatal explosion shook the town of Stowmarket, a memorial plaque to those killed in the accident was unveiled in the Old Cemetery. Funded by the Stowmarket Local History Group, the town council and a local funeral director, the plaque was said to be a long overdue monument to the victims because only three of the dead had been buried with headstones. Although a lot of money had been raised to help the affected families in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, the funds were used to repair damaged houses and to support the needy. And so a memorial would not have been contemplated at the time.

The now chic seaside resort of Southwold has had a troubled history. Because of its position on the coast, it was vulnerable to attack from the various navies of countries with whom England had grievances over the centuries. Being the nearest coastal point to Holland, Sole Bay, Southwold’s coastal waters, was used as an anchorage and watering place for the British fleet during the Dutch Wars. And the considerable merchant and fishing fleet were in constant danger from piracy. Then in 1672 came the Battle of Sole Bay. The English resistance to the Dutch invasion fleet was led by the Duke of York and the Dutch were defeated.

We only know for sure that there were cannon on Gun Hill, pointing out to sea, at the time of the Battle of Sole Bay, although they may have been placed there earlier in the seventeenth century. In 1746 these guns were replaced by the six iron cannon designed to fire 18lb cannonballs. They are said to have been given to the town by the Royal Armouries as a protection to shipping against raids. It is these cannon which stand on Gun Hill today. During the Second World War they were removed and buried so as to avoid giving the Germans any excuse to shell or bomb the town. In fact, the town even offered the guns to the government to be melted down to make newer armaments. There was such an outcry, however, that the cannon stayed put. The last time the guns were fired was in 1842 to celebrate the birthday of the then Prince of Wales.

In July 2015, three of the wooden gun carriages were replaced with new green oak ones made by a boatbuilder in nearby Oulton Broad because the old ones had rotted in the sea air. The other three carriages will hopefully be replaced when a further £12,000 is raised.

The last maharajah of the Sikh Empire may have seemed an unlikely person to earn the reputation as the fourth best shot in England. But, at the age of 11, Maharajah Duleep Singh, ruler of the Punjab and owner of the famous Koh-i-noor diamond, was removed from his kingdom by the British East India Company after the Anglo-Sikh Wars and exiled in Britain in 1854. The deposed maharajah became a ward of the British Government and was completely isolated from his family and countrymen. In England he combined the extravagant lifestyle of an Indian prince – redesigning his Suffolk residence Elveden Hall in the style of a Moghul palace – with that of a young English aristocrat. He associated himself with the cream of Victorian society and became a favourite of Queen Victoria who described him as ‘extremely handsome … [with] a graceful and dignified manner’.

Duleep Singh had bought Elveden Hall in 1863 and there he indulged his passion for hunting and shooting. He also promoted the little-known method of taking hares by hawking. In 1870, when the war between France and Germany broke out, the entire stud of birds belonging to the Champagne Hawking Club, which had an establishment of some twenty or more hawks (mostly peregrines and goshawks), was moved to Elveden Hall. The maharajah sent John Barr, a falconer, to Iceland, to bring back a large stock of falcons.

Elveden Hall in the 1870s when the Prince of Wales visited to shoot with Maharajah Duleep Singh.

By the 1870s, Maharajah Duleep Singh was famous for his shooting skills and was among the top shots in the country after the Prince of Wales, who was a regular visitor to Elveden. On his visit in 1876, the future Edward VII wrote, ‘We had the most extraordinary good days shooting having killed yesterday and today close on 6000 head, nearly 4500 of which were pheasants! It is certainly the most wonderful shooting I ever saw, and I doubt whether such bags have ever been made before’.

Despite his privileged lifestyle in England, Duleep Singh’s movements remained under the strict control of the India Office, a wing of the British Government. He attempted to re-convert to Sikhism, having been converted to Christianity after the fall of his empire. And by the time of his death at the age of 55, he had only been allowed to visit India twice; once to bring his mother to England and three years later to scatter her ashes in their homeland. The maharajah’s wish for his body to be returned to India was not honoured. Instead he was buried in Elveden churchyard alongside his first wife and one of their sons.

BEACONS

With its long history of maritime trade with other parts of Britain, with the Continent and now increasingly with all corners of the globe, Suffolk has always been aware of the vulnerability of shipping to treacherous waters and sandbanks and to collisions at sea. In 1609, with the backdrop of a spate of losses to shipping along the coal route from Newcastle to London, a petition for seamarks was drawn up by ship-owners and merchants of the east coast who asserted that ‘no doubte but everyman that trade with the North partes will willingly contribute thereunto’. This appeal was to Trinity House, a body with an Elizabethan Royal Charter which comprised ships’ masters and mariners and which regulated pilotage on the Thames in London. And so the country’s first lighthouse was built at Lowestoft.

This first Lowestoft lighthouse comprised a pair of wooden towers illuminated by tallow candles, one high and one low, ‘for the direction of ships which crept by night in the dangerous passage betwixt Lowestoft and Winterton’. When these two towers were in line they led ships through the Stanford Channel, an inshore passage which no longer exists. To cover the cost of maintenance and fuel, there was a levy of four pence on every ship passing the light.

In 1676 a new High Lighthouse was built on the cliff at a cost of £300. This was a substantial structure of brick and stone and the light this time was provided by a coal fire, which burned throughout the day as well as at night. None other than Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist, was responsible for this building and a plaque which can still be seen inside the building reads: ‘Erected by the brotherhood of Trinity House, Deptford Strond in the Mastership of Samuel Pepys, Esq., Secretary of Ye Admiralty of England A.D. 1676.’

The lighthouse at Lowestoft has seen many more improvements since the seventeenth century. In 1778 oil lamps and reflectors were fitted and just over a century later, in 1874, it was converted to electric lighting. The complement of three lighthouse-keepers that was required at the end of the nineteenth century has since been reduced to just one with the introduction of a fully automated system which can be seen for 20 miles on a clear night. It is one of the most powerful navigation systems in the United Kingdom.

In 1914, the parish church of St James in Bury St Edmunds underwent a dramatic transformation when it became the cathedral church of the newly created Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. Up to this point, most churches in Suffolk had come under the pastoral care of the Bishop of Norwich. Unlike many other dioceses in the country, however, the bishop’s palace is not in the same town as the cathedral; instead it is in Ipswich. This was, no doubt, a compromise solution to the age-old ‘rivalry’ between East and West Suffolk. With its historic, religious heritage stretching back many centuries from the death and martyrdom of King Edmund, there was a strong argument for the new cathedral to be in Bury St Edmunds. Indeed, the nave of St James’ church, which was started in 1503, was the successor to one of the churches within the precincts of the mighty Norman abbey built to house the remains of St Edmund.

St Edmundsbury Cathedral’s Millennium Tower. (Tony Scheuregger)

The completion and enlargement of St Edmundsbury Cathedral was the inspiration of Stephen Dykes Bower who was the cathedral’s architect between 1943 and 1988. He drew up the original design for the completed cathedral, which included a spectacular Gothic tower. Although he was able to see much of his dream become reality – including the rebuilding of the chancel, the creation of transepts and side chapels, and the Song School – there was simply not enough money to complete the tower. When he died in 1994 he left £2 million towards the tower project, which turned into what became the ambitious Millennium Project. Some £4 million was raised from a public appeal to which the Millennium Commission added £