Lavenham, Suffolk: In the Footsteps of the Witchfinder General and Harry Potter

After my early stroll through the Abbey Gardens in Bury Saint Edmunds (see my previous post) last Thursday, I caught a bus to the nearby village of Lavenham, home to more than two hundred National Heritage buildings, including thirteen exceptional gems listed as Grade I. This is the kind of village you could spend a couple of days exploring, but I only had a couple of hours...and I made the most of them.

I won't retell the history of Lavenham, because you can find plenty of information about the place on the net, but I'll give you a quick idea of why it's so important. Firstly, it's teeming with mediaeval houses, shops, and halls; the highest concentration in Britain. Long before several of my ancestors participated in making Australia "ride on the sheep's back", Suffolk was where the wool (mostly from the Cotswolds) was being woven, and it was the fourteenth richest town in England by the early Tudor period. The bubble soon burst, however, due largely to foreign (Dutch) competition and heavy royal taxes.

The wealth of mediaeval architecture remaining in the old "wool town" of Lavenham gives the visitor a glimpse at the golden of age of what is now a quaint village. Let me share a handful of my favourites with you.

One of Lavenham's pink houses, Cordwinders (also spelled Cordwainers) dates from the fifteenth century. Today it is a private residence but it once housed an inn called the One Bell. If you're interested in the story behind the striking colour known as Suffolk Pink, this site is worth a visit: https://www.inigo.com/almanac/what-is-suffolk-pink

Lavenham's most famous mediaeval house, and one of its oldest, built in 1395, is The Crooked House. Apparently, this is Britain's wonkiest abode! Originally built for a wealthy wool merchant, the building has twisted and warped over the centuries due to the use of green oak in its construction. As the wood dries, it warps. I have no idea what line of work the current owner is in. What's the 21st-century equivalent of the wool trade?

The gardener who works for the owners of this magnificent home a couple of days a week stepped aside to let me take this shot, but I asked him to stay there. He is part of the De Vere House's story, after all, and he was happy to have a chat with me and remind me that this house was featured in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But long before the boy wizard took the world by storm, this was a merchant’s house, built around 1520 to 1530 as the extension of a fifteenth-century open hall house. This extension was made possible when the stream that separated the mediaeval building from the street was culverted. The name of the street reminds us of the presence of water beneath the surface; Water Street. De Vere House stands out in Lavenham thanks to the spectacular use of brickwork instead of daub between the timber studs.

The Old Wool Hall is a fifteenth-century hall house with cross wings on the north and south ends. It was restored by Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll around 1911 and transferred to Edith Bruce Culver (O.B.E.) for use as United Kingdom's first Railway Women's Convalescent Home in 1918. After the home closed, it was acquired by Trust Houses and incorporated into the Swan Hotel in 1963.

Lavenham's major landmark for history (and film) buffs has to be the Grade I listed Guildhall. It was built in 1529 by the Guild of Corpus Christi, one of the powerful religious and mercantile guilds that regulated the cloth trade. In the seventeenth century, the guildhall was in use as a bridewell (prison), and from 1787 it was used as a workhouse. This magnificent building has been managed by the National Trust since 1951 and it's well worth a visit. The sixteenth-century woodwork is breathtaking, particularly the figure on the north-west corner, as shown here. The rooms are quite interesting too, and the thumbscrew (which I tried on for size) and mummified cat used for magical protection were nasty surprises. On the topic of magic, the guildhall features in one of British cinema's great classics. You know the one I mean, don't you? That's right, the 1968 horror flick starring Vincent Price; Witchfinder General. Suffolk is Matthew Hopkins territory!

  

Built in the 1390s, Lavenham Little Hall was once home to the Causton family. 

The Swan Hotel was once a coaching inn with stabling for around fifty horses. This building was also a backdrop in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. 

So, if you're ever in Suffolk and at a loose end, find your way to Lavenham. It's the closest you'll come to time travel back to the days of the Tudors. Just make sure the Witchfinder General isn't on your tail!

Exploring Bury Saint Edmunds with M. R. James

If you know me well, and I think you do if you've been reading my tales of mystery, suspense, and horror, you'll not be surprised to learn that after arriving at London Heathrow at five-oh-ridiculous in the morning and catching the Tube to the British Library to explore what I suspect is the most fascinating exhibition ever dedicated to Agatha Christie, I was still hungry for more mystery, atmosphere, and literary tourism. And so, hopping back over to King's Cross Station, I caught a Great Northern train to Cambridge, where I'd booked myself a room for two nights. While waiting for my room to be available at three o'clock, I paid the Fitzwilliam Museum a visit, and didn't regret the decision; mediaeval armoury, Egyptian artefacts, and an art collection including the likes of Canaletto, Constable, Turner, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Monet, and Picasso. That, however, is not the subject of this post. What you see below is.

After a good night's sleep, I got an early train to Bury Saint Edmunds, a town boasting some of England's most important ruins (and that's saying a lot for a land full of the ruins of past glories) as well as one of the haunting grounds of a former director (1893–1908) of the aforementioned museum, but better known as one of the most brilliant mediaevalists and antiquarians of his age, and even better known as the Father of the Modern Ghost Story and arguably of Folk Horror as a modern genre. I am, of course, talking about Montague Rhodes James. Good old M. R. 

I'm not going to get all cheesy by telling you that it felt as though M. R. was right there beside me as I strolled through the ruins, graveyards, and gardens of Bury, but I did catch a couple of passers-by giving me odd looks as though I'd been talking to "myself". One thing's for sure, it's no exaggeration to say that you do get an agreeably eerie chill walking in his footsteps here where he discovered the resting place of five abbots in 1902, after being led to where they lay by studying a manuscript fragment. The man didn't just write ghost stories, he dug them straight out of hallowed ground. 

Not all the bodies have been located, however, and the mystery remains as to what happened to the man Bury is named after; Saint Edmund (Edmund the Martyr), King of East Anglia, who died 869. He was originally buried in a wooden chapel near where he was killed, and later translated to a shrine at Beodricsworth (as Bury was then called) in Suffolk. His shrine in the abbey church was a pilgrimage site throughout the Middle Ages, but the location of his remains following the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–1541) is unknown.

If you've ever read one of James' ghost stories and you happen to be passing through East Anglia, make sure you pay Bury Saint Edmunds a visit. Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, if you haven't read any of James' work, put that right as soon as possible. Oh, and if you love mediaeval architecture as much as I do, make sure you set a few hours aside to visit the nearby village of Lavenham when you come to Bury. Stay tuned for that post!

Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery

Exhibition ticket in hand, straight off a flight from Hong Kong to London, preceded by one from Brisbane to Hong Kong, I headed from Heathrow Airport to the British Library before the crack of dawn. After a mug of cappuccino and several walks around Saint Pancras, including through the old churchyard, I joined the queue outside the library and awaited the opening of the doors at half past nine on a Wednesday morning. I'd given myself somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours to discover Agatha Christie: A World of Mystery before catching a Great Northern train to Cambridge, where I would visit the Fitzwilliam Museum in the afternoon. The question, therefore, begs an answer... Was it worth it? And the answer? It's a resounding "yes!", you'll be pleased to hear.

This fascinating exhibition takes the visitor on Agatha's journey, unearthing her childhood in Devon (this English author who had an American father and Irish mother) and her wartime service (dabbling in poisons) as a Red Cross nurse. We then have the adventuress crossing continents by train and joining her second husband, Sir Max Mallowan, on archaeological digs. The exhibition concludes with her work as a West End playwright. Her life is on display here...the girl, the woman, the legend. But of course, this exhibition is as much about her characters as herself, with Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple in the limelight, naturellement, but Ariadne Oliver and others also getting some well-deserved attention.

There are letters, notebooks, photographs, personal belongings, early manuscript drafts and many objects on display for the first time, including her passports, Remington Portable typewriter, and camera. My personal favourite was probably was one of David Suchet's costumes from the TV series Poirot. It almost felt like he was there with me, ready to share a crème de menthe. 

The exhibition will run through to June next year, so if you're calling on London any time soon, book your ticket and spend an hour or two with the Queen of Crime! Buy your ticket here.

Review: Thief

Thief: Tales of Rogues and Robber is the debut anthology from Salty Dog Press, and Paulene and Andy Turner have really hit the nail on the head here...or would it be more fitting to say they've managed to pick that lock? In any case, the book itself is a dazzling jewel with an eye-catching cover (by Holly Dunn) and professional internal layout. The editing is top-notch, which is no surprise knowing the Turners, and the stories chosen were more fun than you can shake a lock pick at.

Now, as a fan of puzzle mysteries, I was hoping for a couple of real headscratchers, but that wasn't the point of this anthology. What we have here is a rollicking selection of short stories loosely bound together by theme of thieves, with forays into science-fiction futures and the pioneering past. There's even a spot of time travel, and I have to say that The Mysterious Smile, a tale of art and quantum physics, and the editor's own offering, was my personal favourite. While the anthology as a whole is upbeat and positive, sticking to the glamorous side of thievery or ending the adventures with a human touch and a hint at the real treasures beyond the trinkets, there were some darker escapades as well, particularly the gritty Honor, Thieves, Etc. by Trey Dowell, which adds a bitter shot of noir crime to the anthology... Okay, sorry Paulene, but I'm going to say Dowell's tale gets equal favourite alongside yours.

This is a great anthology to dip in and out of, to keep on your bedside table for those nights when you can't fall asleep for one reason or another... Why is that, by the way? Wait, what was that noise? Didn't it come from downstairs? Should you get out of bed and check it out? No. Never mind. Best ignore it. Stay curled up in your blankets and enjoy these tales of fictitious thieves instead. 

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Review: Colours of Death

I rarely take advantage of the ebook giveaways offered by BookBub, but this one caught my eye, and I'm glad I downloaded it. I hadn't heard of Robert New before (which probably makes sense considering his name) and so the prospect of giving a fellow Australian author of fair-play mystery puzzles a go was one I couldn't let slip by...like an elusive clue! Colours of Death was more than I hoped it would be. Sergeant Thomas is a likeable protagonist who in true Sherlockian tradition bedazzles us with insight into the workings of his brilliant mind. There's also entertaining banter and splashes of wit as he navigates cases with his team of admirable colleagues. These elements, alongside the backstory of his upcoming wedding, give the reader a relatable and human hero we can believe in.

With nine short mysteries adhering to the theme of "colours" in this collection clocking in at just under a hundred and ninety pages in the edition I read, the pacing is spot on. These are stories for fans of the puzzle mystery, particularly those readers with a penchant for forensics. Numerous readers have called my protagonist, Oscar Tremont, Investigator of the Strange and Inexplicable, a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, and I think Sergeant Thomas is also worthy of that accolade, perhaps even more so taking into account the nature of the mysteries in this casebook.

I'm looking forward to further glimpses into the workings of Robert New's mischievous mind and cracking more cases alongside the intrepid Sergeant Thomas. My hat is well and truly off, Mister New!

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