YOUR COMPANION ON A GENTLE STROLL IN A LOVELY SUFFOLK VILLAGE

(Click on the little photos to get a better picture, then Back to return to this stroll)

The appearance of the bridge, which is classified as a Grade I listed building, unfortunately suffers from evidence of continuing efforts to protect its overburdened structure.

Chelsworth’s chief historian, Geoffrey Pocklington, recorded that in wartime the bridge was damaged by a tank - but evidently it survived, and against all the odds,  it continues to do so.

These scenes convey the tranquil delight of Chelsworth’s stream as it passes under the bridge. 

It is recorded that the punt was constructed by Geoffrey Pocklington himself, and the photograph is precisely dated at 11th June 1911.  

The handwritten notes below these and other Pocklington family pictures are in the hand of Frederic Pocklington.

This later picture captures the floods of 1987 which submerged much of this area and preceded the devastating hurricane of 16th October.  

Crossing the bridge a short way, you may see on the right the remaining parts of Robert Pocklington’s mansion, built in George II’s reign (c. 1750).

Happily, this drawing survives to remind of his Chelsworth Hall - but the main building was lost at the end of the last century, and the new hall was built higher up on the hill to the south.

Robert Pocklington, who was a lawyer in London and had acquired the Lordship of the Manor in 1737, died childless. In his will, he insisted that any heir of his must live here for five months in every year, and moreover must take the surname of Pocklington (and the husband of any heiress, similarly).   

So this wedding picture, which was painted by Stubbs in 1769, portrays Robert’s cousin Pleasance Pykarell Pocklington and her husband, Samuel Sharpe Pocklington.  

Robert Pocklington’s body was interred not in the humble parish church of All Saints in his village of Chelsworth, but in the grander setting of the South Chapel of St Mary’s in Hadleigh.  

We look across the meadow and along fine houses that in recent years have been known as the Old Rectory and the Old Manor (with the Old Forge beyond).  

In former days, they were known as “Prynchets” and “Bonds” respectively, after their owners in the 15th and 16th century.  

The Old Rectory – now happily renamed Princhetts - was bequeathed to the parish forever in the will of Samuel Maynard, the rector of Chelsworth in the early 18th century.  

Despite militant objections (including a successful action in the High Court) by Geoffrey Pocklington and others in the 1930s, the house was later sold by the church and the proceeds re-deployed when the benefice was merged with neighbouring parishes.  

The open ground to the right is called Shop Meadow, after the blacksmith’s shop that stood at its far end, before being moved across the road to stand by the Old Forge cottage.  

An 1843 plan (thankfully abortive) for building a railway through the middle of the village reveals that the stocks were here at that time.  

Other cottages - one called Mouses, another called Turners - stood in this meadow, too, but fell into disrepair and were pulled down a century ago.  

The Old Forge, possibly the most photographed subject in the whole village, presents a typical view of the way the dwellings have changed over the past hundred years – from a simple pair of craftsmen’s cottages to a delightful half-timbered treasure of a home.  

The forge itself and the maltings beyond, seen  in the middle picture, have long gone, and the Victory Hall, a World War I army hut which is the parish’s Memorial of the Great War, now stands in their place.  

Beyond Chestnut Cottage, to our right, the quiet road called Parsonage Lane runs down towards Culfen, mentioned in the grant of 962 AD which is Chelsworth’s (and Suffolk’s) oldest deed. The Parsonage House which stood down the lane has been gone these past 200 years; only its barn is left.

Further up the road that leads to Bildeston, the approaches to Chelsworth Hill are no less of a hazard today than when the narrow incline had less traffic to carry.  

Hill House, on the right, was built in about 1880 by one Clement Poole, who learned his trade from carpenter Peter Gage in the workshop behind the Peacock, where his son George Gage was “grocer and beerhouse keeper”.  Clement married Peter’s niece, Louisa,, and both lived well into their nineties.  

Turning your back on the hill, enjoy these two delightful aspects of the entry to the village: the one setting the charming old cottages among bright, leafy trees that soften the hard contour of the modern road, the other with a gentle perspective of the old stone-bedded and fenced village street.  

Invisible on the right is Barrards, once a simple cottage but greatly enhanced in the early 19^th century by the then rector of Chelsworth (also Lord of the Manor of Lindsey) the Rev. J. G. Smyth.

Alongside once stood a fine mansion house, at one time owned and occupied by a son of the distinguished Spring family of Lavenham.  The picture here (a poor one, sadly) shows the state of those buildings in1875, featuring Miss Catherine Cautley, whose sister Arabella Tattersall is remembered in a stained glass window in the church.  

In 1959, Chelsworth was the inaugural winner of Suffolk’s Best-Kept Village competition, under the prompting of Tom Evans, head gardener at Chelsworth Hall and an upstanding, respected character whose strong figure was prominent in most events in Chelsworth in the immediate post-war years.  

Tom Evans was a central figure in a television programme broadcast in the “Country Wise” series on 29^th October 1956.  Unfortunately, the recording has not survived.  A later TV record of the village has been kept, however, and copies are owned by several residents.  

Other interviewees in the earlier programme were Marjorie Powell, who lived at The Grange and was Chairman of the Women’s Institute, and Leonard Richardson who spoke about his family’s long experience of the craft of the thatcher.

Tom Evans also played a big part in many village functions as the next pictures show (he is on the extreme left in both).  

The W. I., in particular, staged countless dinners and meetings, and clearly loved nothing better than the chance to dress up and put on a show …

Other pursuits captured on film included the May Day festivities in 1920, and traditional sporting activities  - there was also a Sparrow and Rat Club in the years before the Great War, though this was a serious venture.  Village cricket has been played on and off in past years, though it's now rather in abeyance.

This postcard is one of six that was presented in 1990 by the Scudamore family, who built the present Chelsworth Hall in about 1900. The cards, in mint condition, provide our best record of the village at the turn of the century - if only we had more !  

To the right is the home once lived in by Mary Peacock, who gave her name to the inn.  

Sadly, the shop closed in 1977 when more and more residents came to own cars and the village trade moved further afield.  

Like the Old Forge, the house beside the pub has seen a transformation in the past century.

The picture here shows the family of Frederick and Maryann Gage in about 1870 – despite appearances, all the children here were boys ! Frederick was the son of Henry Martin Gage, one of three brothers who lived in Chelsworth in the mid-1800s and raised large families.  

Many Gages are buried along the East side of the churchyard. Here, they are standing in front of their butcher’s shop; later, in the 1920s, the house became the village post office.  

Today, it is a fine old house called Jackdaws Ford.  (This is a translation of the name  “Caford” which appears in Chelsworth’s charter of 962 AD.  It was mistakenly located here in Geoffrey Pocklington’s book).  

To the left were the cottages we still see today - but observe that there was one other house amongst them, so that there were no open grounds in between.   To the right, there were more dwellings.  The furthest, visible in this old picture, was called Mouses.  Closer on the right was another cottage, at one time derelict but refurbished as a poorhouse in 1700.  A second cottage, across the road, became a poorhouse at about the same time when the tenant defaulted on his mortgage to the Overseers to the Poor.   

Another house called “Swallows” lay further along towards the church, beyond the cattle pound which stood beside the poorhouse. The whole area was cleared in the 19th century, and the pound relocated, to make room for Pocklington’s parklands.  

The old photographs show that little has changed in the aspect of this old farmhouse, at one time owned by the rector of Chelsworth and later by the Green and Cutbert families. A hundred years ago, it was the home of the Pocklingtons when declining fortunes obliged them to sell the Hall.  

These drawings come from a small book produced by Sir Henry Austen, second husband of Catherine Blagrave, the widow of Sir Robert Pocklington.  

Her tomb lies to the west of the church. In the present century, members of the family are buried in the South-East corner of the churchyard.  

We can now give our attention to the church’s setting, not high on the hill as so many Suffolk churches are, but beside the stream and across from the old Chelsworth Hall.  

In fact, that was not the first Hall; the original was built close to the church, at its West side, and stood until about 1400.

Nearby, too, on the left stood Chelsworth Upper Mill, once a fulling mill where cloth was treated, and later a corn mill. It fell victim to Robert Pocklington’s desire to open up the lands facing his Hall, so that in the style of the day he might have a clear view across a newly-widened stream and open parkland.  

Railway Plans submitted in 1843, and again in 1844, called – incredible as it may seem – for the line to pass between the church and the river in this area.  Thank Heavens it was never built !

At the turn after the Grange, the road points north (and in days gone by, ran all the way to Hitcham). See the contrast between the old photographs and today’s view - not just the cottage that is no longer there, but the trees and palings, and the sharp corner - all now gone. They were replaced , in the interest of road safety, by the grass-green, spring-flowered meadow where we have placed the millennium village sign.

The clothes, too, are worthy of interest - the postcard is one of the set dating from 1900.  Postcards were produced in considerable numbers and many of our photographs are taken from them.

Further up the road stands Ivy House, for generations the home of the Woodgate family, and before that of the Raynhams, who with the Gages constituted a sizeable proportion of the village population in the 19th century.  

The Woodgate family albums provide many fascinating insights into the ways of farming and farmworkers, not least in these photos of the end-of-harvest picnics in the years just before the Great War; in many of them we see the proud figure of the matriarch Granny Woodgate in her bathchair.

Other snaps remind us of the days before tractors and combine harvesters.  

At the corner stands the schoolhouse, built in 1870 to the design of Col Frederic Pocklington and closed in 1927 because of falling rolls.

We cannot resist reproducing this little group of school photographs.

The log books of the school survive, and make fascinating reading, as they tell of the standards and methods of those days, of illnesses, absences and deaths, of regular, generally critical inspections and frequent changes of teachers.

Now we can walk along the remaining stretch of the street towards the bridge that leads out of the village towards Monks Eleigh.  

Photos show that several buildings served at one time or another as the village post office, including the Peacock Inn, Jackdaws Ford and, here, Deysfield Cottage.

Half-way along, we see the cottage that was called “Mary Webbs”; Mary Webb herself died there in 1708 but her name lived on into the 20th century.

The house, now called Woodstock Cottage, was notable also as the hiding place of the loot stolen from Chelsworth Hall in 1922; a block of melted-down silver was found under a bed two years afterwards, following some indiscreet talk in the local pub.

We have now reached the west end of the village.  Turning back, we can compare the approach as it was in the l930s with the present view.  

Heavy road traffic has been responsible for the replacement of the hump-back bridge; farming technology has taken away the stackyard on the left and the farm buildings to the right - but saddest of all, perhaps, the storm of 1987 brought down the great elm that framed the entry to Chelsworth and left it much the poorer for its passing.

We believe that this is the true site of Jackdaws Ford, mentioned in Chelsworth’s Charter as a key marker of the village boundaries.  

Cakebridge Lane, to the left, together with its continuation as Mill Lane, once came all the way down from Kettlebaston, and ran on South to the Roman road (now Clay Hill) across the valley, as well as to the fulling mill.  

The stream here is identified in Ordnance Survey maps as the Brett (rather than the river running down from Lavenham), but ancient records, described it as Walsham’s Brook or the Wagger.  

The house to our left, once the home of William Gage, was much earlier known as Clovers, at which time it was a larger hall house complete with crown post, medieval timbers and jettied upper story.  

A similar house called “Howletts” stood on the site of the stackyard, and was bought and demolished by Robert Pocklington. Looking over the right shoulder, note the carved corner post which is about all that remains visible of “Hills”, yet another big house taken down by Robert Pocklington.  

Now make your way back along the street and note once again that an old cottage has disappeared. We cannot date this picture accurately, and surprisingly we have not found a villager to recall the farther building; but its name of old was “Marshes”, and thatcher Thomas Raynham lived here in 1839.

Records indicate that in past centuries each  of these cottages was occupied by two or three families, as were many village dwellings.

Another cottage called “Monks” used to stand where now a path leads up to the row of houses built by the District Council in 1977.   It disappeared in about 1800.

The first house on the left is Mary Webbs; and then a cottage that, once again, has not survived.  In this case, however, we have a record of what happened.  In l935, in the days before electrification, candles burning by windows were a constant danger; and one night, in Ada Gosling’s cottage, one set fire to a curtain and the best efforts of the Bildeston Fire Brigade could not save the building.

To the right lies the village playground, given to the people of Chelsworth in 1950 by Mrs Mary le Mare, who with her husband owned Chelsworth Hall.  

Our picture shows the opening day with Geoffrey Pocklington (once Editor of the Boys’ Own Paper) and the children of Chelsworth. He loved children, as much as he loved the village, and he gave freely of his time to both.  His history of Chelsworth, published in 1956, is a delight to read and a tribute to his research.  It has now been reissued in an extended and illustrated edition.  

Let us look at some more of the village gatherings, both formal and frequently otherwise, with which people celebrated in the days before television.  

This delightful picture of Martha Lister giving a drink from the pump behind Riverside may well relate to an incident reported in the school logbook, telling of the passage of sixty horse soldiers through Chelsworth in 1916.  

Approaching the schoolhouse again, we see from another Scudamore family postcard that the cottage now called Deysfield was at one time the post office. (Dey was the rector in the mid-16th century and owned the land behind).  

Three separate families lived here in the 1840s, and in the 1920s the west end housed one Albert Hardwick, who led the burglary at Chelsworth Hall.  

On the crown of the bend opposite the old schoolhouse, we can look across towards the houses shown on the postcard entitled The Corner, Chelsworth.

A substantial cottage stood there until 1937, when as council records show, it was condemned and pulled down.  Its occupants were rehoused in the first pair of council houses built at the west end of the village.

It was owned and occupied for many years by members of the Gage family, and a close examination of the old pictures suggests that, like other Gage dwellings, it incorporated a butcher’s shop at one end.  

Rounding two bends at the top of the hill, we pass Rush Cottage, one of the two poorhouses built up here in the 19th century to replace those which formerly stood in the centre of the village.