On the way to Sudbury

Many years ago we paid a visit to an old market town in Suffolk called Sudbury, where we stayed in a very twee looking B&B on the river, possibly now the Mill Hotel, and where we were surprised by the number of rough young country people who came out to play after dark. The river, the Stour (nothing to do with the Stourhead of reference 3), was also memorable in that we were able to hire a rowing boat from which to admire it, it being a river well known to such eminences as John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough and Paul Nash. A river with reed beds along the banks and lots of cows beyond. See reference 2.

Yesterday we paid a very brief return visit, fighting our way through torrential rain to get there - and what seemed like a very large number of roundabouts while crossing Essex. Essex also seemed to run to a lot of McDonald's restaurants, with the one we visited being very smartly put together, with plenty of wood and wood flavoured wall coverings, this despite its main business appearing to be drive through. A good impression which was rather spoiled by rather irritating musak. I did not think to search for the advertisements noticed at reference 1.

Once at Sudbury, we paid a visit to the substantial principal church, a church named for one St. Gregory and once looked after by a local boy who went on to be the Archbishop of Canterbury who was lynched during the reign of Richard II. His head, or rather his skull, still lives on in the vestry, having once starred in an episode of 'Time Team'. A visit which picked up a few points of interest, including, for example, a very large & elaborate gothic or gothic-revival font cover, but which was too short to pick up on many more, more which we only learned about from the guide book afterwards. For example, we completely missed the green man, here rendered, rather inappropriately, in red terracotta. According to the guide book, the carpenters around at the time were alarmed lest the fashion for terracotta bosses on the ceiling would catch on, thus doing them out of the lucrative business of carving wooden ones.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/more-mcdonalds.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Stour,_Suffolk.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/stourhead.html.

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