County motto: Direct our work
Luxury property for sale in Suffolk
Best thing: The atmospheric, wide skies and Constable Country
Local food: Greene King IPA; Adnams beers; Suffolk sweet-pickled hams; Woodbridge farmer’s market; Branston Pickle
Heroes: Cardinal Thomas Wolsey; Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle; Ralph Fiennes
Events: Dwile Flonking, Bungay, an impenetrable and alcoholic game involving ‘girters’, ‘flonkers’ and ‘swadging’; Aldeburgh Festival at Snape Maltings; Bungay Festival; Felix-stowe Fuschia Festival
Worst thing: Locals are called Silly Suffolks, although this is only because of all their fine churches. ‘Silly’ is used in the old sense of holy, innocent and pious
Battle: The largest recorded pitched battle in East Anglia was fought at Fornham St Genevieve in 1173
Inventions: Ransomes of Ipswich built the world’s first lawnmower in 1832, and then, 70 years later, the first petrol-powered lawnmower
Architectural identity: Pargetting prevails in Suffolk, where the art is still practised and the decorative lime plastering embellishes Suffolk houses
Artistic wealth: Libby Purves; John Constable; Benjamin Britten; Thomas Gainsborough; George Crabbe, poet; Sir Peter Hall, founded the RSC; Esther Freud, novelist; cartoonist Giles; Trevor Nunn
One for the road: The Lord Nelson, Southwold, is an award-winning pub
Wildlife: Suffolk Sheep, known locally as Blackfaces, provide good meat and are disease-resistant; the Suffolk Punch heavy horse
Titbits: Sutton Hoo’s famous cemeteries contained a ship burial linked with King Rædwald of East Anglia. The Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, is the only surviving Regency playhouse in Britain, and has just undergone extensive renovation
Houses: Ickworth, another Grand Tour monument; Christchurch Mansion has Constables and Gainsboroughs; the Tudor vernacular of Kentwell Hall; Somerleyton Hall’s Victorian extravaganza
Did you know?: Newmarket, HQ of British horseracing, has seen racing since 1174
What they say: ‘And that dark solemn Tor, and all that reach, Of bright-green meadows, laced with silver rills’ (Henry Alford)
Literary wealth: Arthur C. Clarke; Evelyn Waugh; Henry Fielding; Samuel Coleridge lived in Nether Stowey; Wordsworth rented Alfoxton Park; Henry Irving
Wildlife: The Exmoor pony
is one of the world’s oldest native horses, thought to have crossed the prehistoric land bridge from North America at the time of sabre-toothed tigers and mammoths
Houses and churches: Cothay Manor is a medieval treasure house; Dunster Castle is like a dream of Camelot; Montacute House is late Elizabethan Renaissance; Tyntesfield; Culbone church, the smallest in England
Guide to Suffolk’s livestock, varied beers and architectural heritage
Monday, 05 January 2009
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