Woodbridge
Woodbridge, Suffolk: a
fine market town on
the River Deben which boasts an early example of a tide mill; it also
has
links to the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial of the Anglo-Saxon King
Redwald
(probably), just accross the river. In the Thoroughfare, the main
shopping
street of the town, we find this ancient-looking milepost - or is it a
milestone?
The town is clearly proud of its (apparently) antique
slab. A shaped
metal tray-like support with the angled metal flanges seen above
protect the 'ecclesiastical' sign, despite the cracks in the stone.
This milestone is sited close to the Co-op store.
'WOODBRIDGE TO LONDON 77
IPSWICH 8 COLCHESTER 26
SAXMUNDHAM 12 YARMOUTH 46'
The naive masonic script is redolent of a distant era when a journey to
Ipswich or even London on horseback or by cart or carriage must have
been
quite an adventure. The stone must predate the arrival of the rail link
between Ipswich and Lowestoft by a considerable time. Compare the early
script with signs here in East Bergholt
and Stradbroke. All these
reveries
come down to earth with a bump as we learn from the Suffolk Milestones
website
(see Links)
that this is reputedly a 20th Century cement replacement of the
original.
Here's a further contribution from Richard at the Suffolk Milestones
website
[October, 2004]:
<<I don't have primary evidence of this [the 20th C. replacement
milestone],
but I have a letter dated Sept 1993 from PW Cotton, Clerk to Woodbridge
town council to a resident about this.
The response was:
"To the best of my knowledge, the milestone is made of a cement mix
inside an iron framework. I would not think that it is very old - it
seems
to have been a replacement for an old milestone of more traditional
appearance
which stood on the same spot, within the last 30-40 years as a guess."
This letter was passed to me by Carol Haines, which is why I used the
reference
to the report in her book rather than the infernal 'pers.comm'. I
assume
it is based on the same letter.
This sequence is odd around Woodbridge - the one before
http://www.milestonesweb.com/sites/tm261483.htm
looks authentically old in style to me, but curiously different to the
others
made by Garrett, say
http://www.milestonesweb.com/sites/tm281506.htm.
Something is different in the 7, for instance, and the lettering of
Woodbridge
is not radially aligned evenly with the arc, and something about the N
and
the O of London isn't right.
The closest date reference I have for the Ipswich to Yoxford A12 is a
secondary
reference to the inaugural meeting of the trustees at the Three Tuns in
1785. Stones of a roughly triangular pattern were used but eroded very
bady
becoming illegible, hence the move to mileposts in the early 1800s
regards,
Richard>>
Many thanks to him for adding to the debate.
Just round the corner past the public library is a
curved building at
the
corner of St Johns Street and New Street. The estate agents business
has
clearly not always occupied this place. In the curved, bricked-up
window
(Suffolk whites, now honey-coloured with age, unless we're very much
mistaken)
in the centre of the first storey there is the fading announcement:
'ANTIQUE
FURNITURE SHOW ROOMS' . The reddish brown serif capitals (barely
decipherable
lower down - not helped by the angle bracket which once supported a
hanging
sign) demonstrate the use of condensed and extended letterforms to
occupy
the measure created by the window recess. In this way the space is
nicely
filled, but the most eye catching word, by dint of containing the
smallest
number of characters, must have been 'Show' when originally painted.
The Clock House at 42 Cumberland Street provides a
fascinating sundial
above the front door. the unusual pierced disc gnomon provides a small
spot of sunshine to highlight the hour of the day, here picked out on
the rendered, painted wall in Roman numerals: X, XI, XII, I, II, III
distributed evenly on either side of an internal right angle. The
helpful letters below the upright 'GMT' remind us that sundials take no
cogniscence of Britain's arcane Daylight Saving practices. (See Links
page for Suffolk Sundials.)
Nearby, the short, narrow Kingston Road contains
the above painted lettering 'KINGSTON TERRACE' against a pale panel on
the
red brick. Important enough to have been lettered in the early part of
the
twentieth century (?), but also re-lettered on top - the ghost of the
earlier
lettering is visible. The encroaching modern cabling and slight damage
to
the name panel - an attempt to screw in a cable-hook? - marr the
photograph.
This end of the town contains some interesting houses of varying period
and architecture. Once the main approach into the centre of Woodbridge
on
into the (even narrower) Thoroughfare which eventually opens onto
Melton
Hill, it's a sobering thought that until a few years ago, this was a
two-way
street carrying heavy traffic including the Grey-Green
coaches from London to Great Yarmouth. We well recall travelling
down
the Thoroughfare on such a coach, watching the ancient eves on each
side
skim past the coachwork.
-
(Photograph left courtesy Daphne Lloyd, Woodbridge
Local History
Recorder
Above: not far from Kingston Terrace on Station Road once stood this
building.
Formerly a maltings, it was used as a warehouse for:
'SUFFOLK SEED STORES Ltd.'
until demolition in 1989 to make way for housing. This photograph was
taken
about a year earlier.The Suffolk Horse Society had its office in the
Suffolk Seed Stores building in Woodbridge for very many years but when
the tenancy came to an end it managed to acquire the lease, through the
generosity of Woodbridge Town Council, of the upper floors of the old
courthouse building on Market Hill. We assume that this is the building
shown in the monochrome photograph.
Suffolk Seed Stores once traded from both Fred
Smith & Co. in Princes Street, Ipswich and premises at 6 Church
Street, Woodbridge.
High up above the shop fronts and the first storey, the company used
the leading edge of the building to proclaim its trading position to
those descending the steep hill from the Market Hill. Suffolk Seed
Stores had a greengrocery business there, certainly as late as 1985. [Thanks to Daphne Lloyd, Woodbridge Local
History Recorder for this information.]
-
THE CROSS
EST 1652'
stands at the crossroads of
Church Street, Quay Street, Cumberland Street and Thoroughfare.
The former public house has one of the
earliest dates on this site and has often stood empty in recent years.
The sign is obscured by the inevitable street furniture, but it's
good that someone cares enough to look after the lettering.
Meanwhile, three quarters of the way up Church Street is a building
bearing an impressive relief monogram:
'WR
Ao Dm 1866'
This is number 21, now a place of trade. The decorative trellis
brickwork and bottle-glass window above the front door only embellish
this fine entrance (pity about the red burglar arm...)
'CORRECTION'
-
A few hundred yards from the top of Market Hill as
Theatre Street leads
towards Burkitt Road, there stands the easily-missed sign above. These
Houses of Correction were minor prisons, originally intended for minor
offenders - the idle (regarded as subversive) and the disorderly. In
addition to its function of a gaol for the rogue, it might also include
a workhouse for the poor, hospital for the old, and industrial school
for the young. Some date from the early 17th century, but this seems to
be an 18th or 19th century building. The central projecting section,
which narrows the pavement, carries the lettering incised into a
bevelled stone tablet, then coloured/infilled; the weather is taking
its toll. For more on this sort of institution and workhouses in
general, see the Workhouse website listed in Links.
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