Earliest Settlers
The earliest people in the Friston area may have
been hunters rather than farmers. Chance finds of Neolithic flint
scrapers and flakes and a flint-axe tell us of their presence. The
Bronze Age cremation urns found at Snape show that there were
settled people here, but no further signs have been found. In the
Roman period some kind of small settlement existed on Barber’s
Point above the Alde estuary. Early this century excavators found
pottery, small bronze items, roof tiles, spindle whorl and other
signs of human occupation dating from the 1st or 2nd Century AD.
The finds from the site together with its location suggest that it
was a small farmstead or possibly a lookout post and dwelling.
There was a nearby market and settlement at Knodishall, known as
Sito or Senomagus, and possible settlements at Thorpeness and
Aldeburgh. Further evidence of the Roman occupation comes from the
eastern edge of Friston parish on the Alde estuary where evidence
has been found of the production of salt from brine.
The Anglo-Saxons
The first invaders to arrive in the area, after the
withdrawal of the Roman army early in the 5th century AD, were a
mixture of peoples from Northern Germany - Angles, Saxons and
Frisians. The Wuffinga dynasty held power in Suffolk with their
headquarters between the Alde and the Deben and one of their kings,
Raedwald, is the likely occupant of the famous burial mound at
Sutton Hoo. There is, however, another important
Anglo-Saxon cemetery very close to Friston on its
south-west boundary on the site of an earlier Bronze Age cemetery.
The early cremation phase of this cemetery dates almost certainly
from the 5th century. The second phase of burials;- including three
boat burials,- date from slightly later at the beginning of the 6th
century.
The Place Name Evidence
Friston is widely accepted to mean ‘enclosure or
settlement of Frisians’ and at least one of the urns from the Snape
cemetery, found during pipe-laying in 1972, is of Anglo-Frisian
type. However the name itself may well have only come into usage at
a later date, in at least the 8th century AD, to describe a small
settlement or several scattered homesteads of peoples originally
from Frisia.
The Conversion of
the Wuffingas
Saint Felix converted King Sigeberht of the
Wuffingas to Christianity in the early 7th century AD and a
bishopric was established in the area - probably at Dunwich. St
Botolph is also thought to have established a monastery in 654AD
across the Alde at Iken where the present church is. It is possible
that this monastery was connected to the Friston bank by a low
water causeway and it seems likely that any nearby settlements
would have been converted to Christianity during that period.
Despite the setback to Christianity caused by the invasion of the
Danes in the years following 865 it is likely that Friston would
have had a simple wooden church at least, by the end of the 9th
century.
During the later Saxon period an important gift of
land which was to shape the administrative future of Friston and
the wider area for over a thousand years was made by St Etheldreda,
daughter of King Anna of the Wuffingas. Following two marriages she
gave her dowry lands to found a convent at Ely in 673 AD. This
parcel of land known as the Wicklaw was not geldable, that
is taxable by the King, but came under the jurisdiction of her
abbey at Ely and later the cathedral. It was later known as the
Liberty of St Ethedreda. The northern boundary of Friston parish
follows this same ancient boundary of the liberty and may in part
account for the strange shape of the parish of Knodishall, some of
which lies outside the liberty in Blything.
By
the 10th century the Saxon division of Hundreds (maybe meaning a
hundred hides or units of land sufficient to support one
family), had been introduced and Friston is in the Plomesgate
hundred. The liberty of St Etheldreda covered six separate
hundreds. The names of the hundreds usually derived from the
outdoor meeting place of the old Hundred court, for example
Plomesgate meaning ‘gate under the plum trees’. Today the name of
the Hundred River, which runs through Knodishall and Coldfair
Green, reminds us of the boundary between Plomesgate hundred and
Blything hundred.
The Norman
Conquest
The Doomsday Book has no entry for Friston, although
this does not mean that the settlement did not exist in 1086, for
it may be included under another landholding entry. Snape is the
most likely entry to have included the settlement at Friston. There
are two entries for Snape in the Doomsday book and the larger
holding measured 3 leagues, or nine miles, in length and ½ a mile
in width; there were a further 38 acres held by another man and on
that holding a church stood. The overlord of that area was Robert
Malet and two Normans, Walter and Gilbert, soon replaced the
previous Saxon Lord Edric of Laxfield. The Doomsday Book includes
information about landholding at the time of the Norman Conquest in
1066, as well as at the time of the survey -there had been 46
freemen living on the manor together with 8 villagers and 16
smallholders. The size of population on this manor demonstrates the
fact that Suffolk in the eleventh century was a well populated
area, indeed one of the most populous counties of England, with a
high proportion of freemen and a more liberal version of the feudal
system.
The Middle Ages
The earliest existing building in the village is the
church, which dates from the eleventh century. The earliest
post-conquest domestic evidence in Friston comes from the north of
the parish around the Friston Moor area; 13th and 14th century
pottery shards have been found in some quantity in this area. The
settlement of small farms and cottages around the edge of common
land on the western boundary of the parish shown on the early maps
is characteristic of early settlement in the clay-land
region.
During the Middle Ages the population continued to
rise and the wool trade brought great prosperity to Suffolk with
much of the land in Friston being used sheep walks. A form of
wealth taxation recorded in the Lay Subsidy rolls of 1327 assesses
Friston and Snape as jointly having 36 taxpayers; poor people would
not have paid tax so their numbers go unrecorded in the tax
returns.
Over most of the country there was a sudden decline
in population during the 14th century due in part to the
Black Death, which struck first in 1348. It took a long time for
populations to rebuild, and another tax return for 1524 found only
15 households eligible for taxation. One economic change as a
result of the Black Death was the increase in wealth of a few
individuals and the 1524 tax return indicates that at least 50% of
the tax in the parish was paid by one person, Jone (John?)
Palmer.
Friston
inhabitants may occasionally have gone to a local market,
travelling by foot, pony or ox cart and maybe necessitating a
night’s stay at an inn. Nearby Kelsale already had a market at the
time of the Doomsday Book; a gift of the king to the Bigod family.
The Kelsale market thrived until rival Saxmundham was granted a
market charter by the new monarch King Edward I in 1272. He had no
liking for the Bigods who held most of the land in Suffolk and had
been favoured by previous monarchs.
A
bronze seal from the Middle-Ages was found in Friston in 1824. It
seems to have belonged to the Bishop of Norwich or one of his
representatives and have been accidentally dropped by its bearer
when about the Bishop’s business.
The Local Economy
Agriculture during this period slowly developed and
more land was turned over to arable farming; the wool trade
suffered from competition from cheaper imports which protectionist
legislation did little to help. In the latter half of the
seventeenth century Friston had three husbandmen (tenant farmers),
four yeomen farming their own land and two linen weavers. Linen can
be made from flax or hemp and the latter was grown in the parish,
as various fields called hemp-lands on the tithe maps testify. The
production of hemp was labour intensive and provided additional
income for small farmers. It may have been used in Aldeburgh for
sail-making. Friston was not a wealthy parish in the seventeenth
century as the hearth tax returns of 1674 indicate, more than half
of the households being exempt from paying this tax through being
too poor. The decline in herring fishing and shipbuilding affected
coastal towns such as Aldeburgh and inland villages, who lost
valuable markets for their goods.
Development of the Village
In
1674 there were 31 inhabited houses and 33 households in the parish
and although no detailed map exists these were probably clustered
around the church. Around a hundred years later on Hodskinson’s map
of 1783 the Chase’s Lane and Donkey Lane area of the village is
marked as Friston Green but few houses are shown. Settlements on
the edges of uncultivated land are fairly common in Suffolk during
early periods but these later ones reflect a new pressure on land
and housing because of growing populations and enclosure. Whereas
there were no enclosures in Friston at that date, other areas of
common land in neighbouring parishes were enclosed.
An
increase in families who had no manorial rights may also have
caused the secondary settlement on the manorial wasteland to the
south of the village centre. This area was known simply as The
Common until recently. Poplar Cottage on Chase’s Lane, previously
known as Clay Cott, is reputed to be the oldest dwelling in the
village; built of unfired clay lump it possibly dates from the
sixteenth century.
Roads
The desire for better communications began during
the seventeenth century when travel by carriage, rather than
horseback, became popular for the wealthy. Carriages, however,
needed better roads than horses and this led to the establishment
of the Turnpike Trusts. The costs of road maintenance normally fell
to the parish who could rarely afford the repairs, so local gentry
established the Trusts and the maintenance was provided for by the
levying of tolls on all users apart from travelers on foot. A
Turnpike Act was passed in 1792 to improve roads between Farnham
and Aldeburgh and Yoxford and Aldeburgh. These turnpike roads cut
across Friston parish along the same route as the A1094 and the
B1121. There were toll booths at the ends, near Friday Street, at
Sternfield and outside Aldeburgh and the roads connected with the
slightly older Ipswich to Lowestoft Turnpike. The turnpike roads
lasted for around 100 years until road maintenance costs passed to
public authorities, when the gates, lodges, etc were sold
off.
Some tracks marked on the early maps have
disappeared or become footpaths or bridleways. The direction and
straightness of these early tracks is interesting as it reflects
the routes frequently taken by the villagers and by people passing
through on longer journeys.
The Growing Village
The
village was well established by the beginning of the nineteenth
century, the population being 299 in 1801. There were 40 houses or
cottages in the parish including outlying farms and cottages. A map
from 1793 shows some of the village and at that time Low Road is
the only extension of the village to the south and is labeled
Friston Street. Later on the village stretch of B1121 road is known
simply as The Street. These figures apply only to the dwellings
within the then Friston parish boundary; dwellings on Grove Road
and Church Road were in Knoddishall.
There was,
apparently, no track connecting the village to the Aldeburgh Road
along the line of the present Snape Lane. The 1st series Ordnance
Survey 1” map completed during the 1830s shows the village in its
present layout with a cluster of dwellings near the church and the
secondary development fanning out to the south though not with as
many houses as later in the century. Further wasteland is marked to
the east of the village as ‘Furze’.
Other
interesting features of this map are the names High House Farm, in
use again today, and Lichfield House which is marked to the west of
the village before Moor Farm. A large scale tithe map and
apportionment book from 1845 lists all the dwellings in the parish
and their inhabitants. This map shows the village fully developed
with about 100 properties in the village and a few farmhouses and
cottages. By this date the triangle to the south of the crossroads
is complete and the village very much resembles its present state.
The Knodishall tithe map of the same date shows the houses along
Grove Road as far as Ivy Cottage and about six cottages on the east
end of Church Road.
The railways came late to East Anglia and the
closest lines to Friston were not opened until 1859. The potential
of this method of transport was exploited by local industry,
notably the Maltings at Snape and Garretts at Leiston. Later it was
used to bring holidaymakers to Aldeburgh and Thorpeness. There was
no station in Friston parish, the nearest being some miles away so
the difference its coming made to villagers is hard to
gauge.
Employment
The first clear picture of the occupations of the
villagers comes from the 1851 census. By now the population had
risen to around 450 with 114 occupied houses and the village had
just experienced a period of growth. Not surprisingly most men
worked as agricultural labourers or in occupations related to
agriculture. Mechanisation on farms was rare with all the work done
by hand, so it was physically hard and involved long hours,
especially in the summer. The main crops grown were barley, wheat,
peas, beans and roots. Wages for agricultural workers were low,
only about seven shillings a week, and less than factory workers’
wages. This was barely enough to feed a family on and often choices
must have been made between buying a week’s meat or a pair of boots
or other necessary item. The family of an agricultural worker would
have lived in a tied cottage and paid a low rent, long fixed in the
manorial copyhold. These properties were usually in a poor state of
repair with no modernisation, but the labourer could not afford
anything else, and this ensured that the labourer and his family
were obedient to the law of the manor and the rule of the estate
owner.
In
addition to the 62 agricultural labourers, the 1851 census lists
three shepherds, a harness-maker, two thatchers, two millers, three
wheelwrights and five blacksmiths. There were also three tailors,
two sailors, a couple of gardeners, several bricklayers and nine
shoemakers. Not all of the craftsmen would have been self-employed,
some being journeymen who worked for a master of the trade, having
finished their apprenticeships. There were five blacksmiths in the
village and the forge at this time was at Woodside Farm; obviously
a site of long usage as the neighbouring wood is named Blacksmith’s
Walk on the 1845 tithe map. Few women worked outside the home but
Friston did have two laundresses, a dressmaker and a seamstress and
one of the shops just in Knodishall had a female proprietor. Many
older children, that is above the age of 10, worked - the boys as
farm or errand boys and the girls as domestic servants.
Chequers Inn
The
Chequers was probably built at the very end of the eighteenth
century, when the village was really beginning to expand. Before
that there was probably little need for an alehouse as many people
brewed their own beer and sometimes sold it as well. There was
probably little demand for a coaching inn either as there were
other hostelries in the nearby towns. However by the early
nineteenth century The Chequers was beginning to be an important
meeting place for villagers and people from a wider area. The
Association for the Prosecution of Horse Stealers met there at
least three times in the first decade of the nineteenth century,
its members including three local farmers and interested parties
from neighbouring villages. In 1811 there was a Lamb Show outside
the Chequers, presumably one of several, at which 50 or 60 score
(1,000 or 1,200) lambs and sheep were to be offered for sate.
Dinner was served in the Inn at 2 o’clock and the publican was
William Scarlett. Another publican, William Sharman, was innkeeper
for several decades. There is no record of any other inn in the
village.
The Mill
The famous post mill was built on wasteland in 1812,
perhaps indicating that sheep were then giving way to corn and
barley in the local countryside, as well as the increased demand
for bread flour and animal feed. From 1837 various members of the
same family worked the mill until it finally closed in 1973. The
mill is the tallest post mill in England at 55 feet high. Whether
the mill was built on the site or was moved there is unknown. One
theory is that the mill was built in sections at California near
Ipswich and moved to the site by horse and cart. Another is that
the mill was one of four, which stood as a group above Woodbridge,
and was moved to Friston. Joshua ReynoIds who had bought the mill
in 1837 built the fine house next to the mill in 1872. There was
another mill on the parish boundary just off the track to tw
England farm. This is shown on the 1st series OS map as a turning
mill. It was apparently built on a tumulus to catch the wind and
drove a lathe, which a woodworker (known as a bodger) used to make
chairs and children’s toys.
Parish Administration and the Poor
Parish
officers had a great burden of administrative duties put upon them
ring the nineteenth century, mostly to do with the regulation of
the poor and the maintenance of public order. The overseers of the
poor, supervised out-relief for paupers - who needed additional
help, but not housing. Poorhouses and later workhouses provided
shelter for elderly people without means, illegitimate children,
the long term sick and people returned to the parish through
removal, or who had no other place to go or employment. Parishes
that lay close to main routes were often heavily burdened with
paupers and beggars passing through and seeking aid and
shelter.
Following
the Acts of Parliament in the eighteenth century small parish
workhouses were built in the Plomesgate Hundred. Friston built one
sometime between 1776 and 1803. This was in an out of the way
location at the extreme end of the parish across the Saxmundham -
Leiston road just off a track called Workhouse Lane which is now a
driveway and footpath. It is on one of the first series Ordnance
Survey map and must have been for people from Friston, not
Knodishall, which was in a different Hundred.
Political Events
Universal
suffrage for men, pay for MPs, and more frequent elections. All but
one of these points were eventually adopted and are now embedded
into our political system. Friston in 1839 would have had few men
eligible to vote, as rural workers were not given the vote until
1885.
One leading local chartist put Friston on the map in
1839. He was Thomas Hearn, a local shopkeeper who opened a branch
of the Working Men’s Association in the village and aimed to make
Friston the ‘metropolis of chartism’. The Friston meetings were
held in the Chequers Inn and the Baptist Chapel and the following
was good. A rally for farm-workers was held in Friston wd 1,000
people were present. The farmers were alarmed at this and laid on
alternative entertainment, and one threatened dismissal for any
worker found attending. Later in the same year, on Boxing Day,
5,000 people attended a second rally, some of whom had walked from
Ipswich to meet up with Hearn’s group and others at Carlton.
Although the Chartists failed to get their demands at that time,
Thomas Hearn continued to support the movement. In 1851 he was
living in Grove Road, probably on the site of the later grocer’s
shop.
Closing Years of the Nineteenth Century
By
the end of the nineteenth century the population was just under 500
with 109 inhabited houses. The census indicates a greater diversity
of occupation as new industries opened up in the area and
agricultural employment declined due to falling prices and poor
harvests in the second half of the century. These new occupations
suggest that there was employment outside the parish though till in
the local area. Some occupations in the census include a maltster
who was, presumably, employed at Snape, a labourer in a foundry, a
boilermaker’s labourer, a fitter and a mechanic, all of whom could
have been employed at Garretts in Leiston. The Howard-Vyses, the
Lords of the Manor, must have been keen to preserve their game
shooting as they employed two gamekeepers and an
under-keeper.
Snape Abbey
Around 1155 William Martel, or his heirs, gave Snape
and Aldeburgh manors to the Benedictine house of St John at
Colchester in order to build a cell at Snape where masses were to
be said twice a week. Before 1163, Friston manor had been added to
this endowment. This gift and income from the manor and the tithes
of the church to the Abbey with the right to choose the parish
vicar, this being called an priated parish. The abbey was
established for 12 monks but rarely had many, the site of it being
marked today by Abbey Farm, Snape. The Abbey was closed in 1528 and
Cardinal Wolsey used its assets to enrich his college at Oxford.
The college commissioned a written survey or ‘terrier’ manor in
1536. In the late sixteenth century the manor seems to have owned
by Michael Hare of Bruisyard who sold it to Sir James Bacon
sometime before 1618 when Bacon died.
The following account of the changes of ownership
applies both to the manor and to Friston Hall. A note here should
be made about manors: manors do not follow parish boundaries, and
Friston Hall centred on Snape where were four manors - Courletts,
Tastards, Rysing and Scotts - which were eventually merged to form
Snape Manor of which Friston was a part. The original manor courts
would have been held in a barn at the Abbey, later possibly in the
Hall, and by the early nineteenth century in the Crown at
Snape.
Family Ownership
The
Friston manor house was built either by Michael Hare or Sir James
Bacon and became known as Friston Hall. Thomas Bacon, grandson of
Sir James, enlarged the existing house and added a chapel at which
stage it must have been a house of some importance and one of the
largest in the east of the county. In 1674 it was taxed on having
twenty hearths. Lady Jenny at Knodishall had seven and only 45
houses in the whole county had more. Seven years later the house is
described as having dove-houses, gardens, orchards, stables, decoy
pool and a warren. Thomas Bacon’s first wife died young in 1647 and
has a memorial in the church, so probably Friston Hall was their
main residence.
Sir Henry
Johnson is known to have bought the hall and the manor from the
Bacon family, probably Thomas’s son Nathaniel, sometime in the
1680s, and from other evidence it seems likely that he rented it
prior to purchase. Sir Henry had become wealthy through
shipbuilding, first in Aldeburgh and later in Blackwall. London,
and was sometime MP for Aldeburgh. He was knighted in 1679 or 1680
and presumably wished to establish himself by acquiring an estate.
A series of improvements and alterations to the hall are recorded,
including repairs to windows at the hall, Abbey and Decoy House in
1695 and in 1705, being preparations for alterations to the great
staircase and other areas. Ten years later the chapel was
demolished. Monogrammed iron gates, possibly HJ, are still standing
between the remains of the terrace and the kitchen
garden.
The Earls of Strafford
Through
the daughter of Sir Henry the manor and hall passed into the
possession of the Wentworth family. In 1711 Anna (or Anne) Johnson
married the newly ennobled Thomas Wentworth, first Earl of
Strafford of the second creation, great nephew of the well-known
earl executed in 1641. She was an heiress worth £60,000 with
estates in Buckinghamshire as well as Friston. He owned property in
Yorkshire, London and Twickenham. Prior to his marriage he had been
a member of the Royal household, soldier and diplomat and spent
much of his time in Europe. He narrowly avoided impeachment in 1715
and thereafter retired from royal duties and politics. Having been
born in 1672 he was somewhat older than his wife, although the
marriage seems to have been quite happy and they had four children,
three daughters and a son. The Earl and Countess certainly visited
Friston Hall and a letter from his steward following a visit in
1722 contains a request for the return of various room keys, which
he had mistakenly taken with him.
By the
middle of the seventeenth century the great avenue of lime trees
running south from the house across Aldeburgh Road and down to
Snape Common was planted. It is not recorded when or why this great
avenue was planted. It may have been to make a grand triage drive
down to one end of the racecourse or it may have been planted to
commemorate the marriage between Anna Johnson and the Earl of
Strafford. The Earl died at Wentworth Castle in 1739 after which
the hall was let until the Countess’s death in 1754. There were
several branches of the Wentworth family and Thomas inherited
Wentworth estates in Bedfordshire from Martha Lovelace, Baroness
Wentworth of Nettlestead, who was the second of his father-in-law
Sir Henry Johnson. Friston Hall passed to William Wentworth, son of
Anna Johnson and Thomas Wentworth. He died childless in 1791 and,
following the death in 1799 of his cousin who inherited the title,
the Earldom became extinct.
Cousins
The heirs
of William Wentworth in 1791 were descendants of his sisters, Lucy,
Henrietta and Anne, and the estates they inherited were in many
counties and in London. Most of the properties were to be divided
up four ways so an accommodation was reached between the
beneficiaries to exchange and consolidate their shares. Thus
Leveson Vernon, youngest son of Henrietta, acquired some of Snape
and the Blackheath area of Friston on the Alde estuary and his
cousin Richard William Vyse received the rest of Friston manor.
Richard Vyse was only 9 when he inherited and did not reach his
majority until 1805. As he had careers in the army, in politics, in
his inherited (through his father) Buckinghamshire estates and his
aternal grandfathers Norfolk estates, it seems unlikely that he
spent much time in Friston. He assumed the additional name of
Howard (his mother's name) in 1812. The estate probably remained of
interest only for its income and sporting potential.
There was a proposed enclosure in 1817, which would have included
Friston Moor as well as Church Common in Snape amongst others.
However, this seems not to have happened as Church Common was not
enclosed until 1860 and it is not clear when, or if, Friston Moor
was enclosed by Act of Parliament. Three generations of the
Howard-Vyse family were Lords of the Manor, but apart from building
an infants school, they seem to be little remembered in the
village. Howard Howard-Vyse sold the manor to his distant cousin
Thomas Vernon-Wentworth in 1892.
The Vernon-Wentworths
In 1791 when William, third Earl of Stafford died,
two of his heirs were brothers; Henry and Leveson Vernon, the sons
of his sister Henrietta. Henry Vernon seems to have inherited land
in the parish of Haslewood and his second son Frederick William
ultimately inherited this, the Manor of Aldeburgh and the Yorkshire
Estates. He added the name Wentworth in 1804, when he received the
rest of the Wentworth inheritance from a kinswoman who was heir to
the last Earl. Thomas Vernon-Wentworth, who had already inherited
the Blackheath estate from his father, purchased the Friston estate
from Howard Howard-Vyse in 1885. Many estates changed hands in the
1890's as the economic climate was not favourable to landed
families without additional forms of income.
Thomas Vernon-Wentworth died in 1902 and his second son Frederick
Charles, the Captain, inherited Friston Manor together with
the manors of Snape and Aldeburgh. Between 1912 and 1919 he put
several farms and cottages up for sale, one of these
cottages still holds the purchase document of the freehold for
the sum of 12 shillings and 6 pence (62.5p in current money).
The manorial system officially ended with two property acts in 1922
and 1924. Charles John Wentworth, the Major, inherited in 1947 and
remained principal landowner until his death in 1975. Most of the
old manor of Friston and the land in the parish of Hazlewood were
offered for sale as the Blackheath Estate in 1998, thus ending
nearly three centuries of connection with the Wentworth
family.
The First House
From 1791
the Blackheath area of Friston has a slightly separate history from
that of the rest of Friston. There was no big house at Blackheath
then, only two farms, Decoy and Poundhouse. These were allocated to
Leveson Vernon, Henry Vernon’s younger brother, who died unmarried
in 1831. He built a house, keeper’s lodge and wall around the
eastern boundary. He seems to have treasured the plantations,
possibly his own creations, and valued the property although he
spent some of his time at Aldeburgh and at his other property,
Stoke Park in Northamptonshire. He wrote a long and complicated
will with many codicils in which he left his Suffolk property to
his ward Susanna Smith Ratledge. She was unmarried at the time of
her guardian’s death but in 1834 married Captain Thomas Bagnold at
Aldeburgh and lived in the house she inherited at Blackheath known
as Blackheath Villa. Susanna Bagnold died childless in 1873 and
left Blackheath to her goddaughter Susan Pettit, wife of James
Pettit junior, whose father was Susanna’s tenant at Poundhouse
Farm. By 1886 the Blackheath estate had been sold to Thomas
Vernon-Wentworth. (Before 1891 the name of Poundhouse farm had
changed to The Firs. The old name of this farm must denote that
there was a pound for stray cattle and animals nearby.
Blackheath Mansion
Thomas
Vernon-Wentworth demolished Blackheath Villa and commissioned the
architect E. F. Bishop to build a grand red brick mansion in a
Venetian Renaissance style with a 50’ tower to house the
water tank. A large central hall dominated the interior with piano
and a grand oak staircase, which led to a first floor gallery and
was illuminated by a roof lantern. Several of the rooms were
wainscoted in oak and the drawing room in Havana cedar.
The Twentieth Century
Thus after 1892, the Vernon-Wentworths were the
major landowners between Snape and Aldeburgh with the great house
now being Blackheath Mansion. As Thomas Vernon-Wentworth also owned
Wentworth Castle and property in Scotland, Blackheath was used as a
sporting estate. On Thomas’s death in 1902 his estates were split
between his two sons, the elder son Bruce acquiring Wentworth
Castle and the younger son Frederick Charles inheriting Blackheath
Mansion and Friston. Bruce, who bore his grandmother’s maiden name,
died in 1951 without children and Wentworth Castle is now a
college. On the death of Major Frederick Charles, in 1947 his son
Captain Charles John, inherited Blackheath Mansion and estates. The
house had been requisitioned by the army during the war and on its
return to the family Mrs. Wentworth commissioned local architect
Reginald Erith to remodel the exterior in a neo-Georgian style.
Since Mrs. Vernon-Wentworth’s death in 1992 the house has been sold
and the interior redesigned.
Within Living Memory
The watercourse that spasmodically runs through the
village has varied in flow according to agricultural practice. It
has flooded many times in recent decades but is not remembered as
being a regular stream. The lime tree avenue leading from Friston
Hall to the Aldeburgh Road was known in the village as ‘the lights’
although nobody remembers why. At the end of the avenue there were
white gates and railings. The track to the north of the Hall is of
relatively recent usage.
One curious architectural feature of the village is
the number of single-storey dwellings known locally as ‘bedroom
houses’. It seems that if more space was needed another room was
Just built on at the end, which is probably where the name comes
from. Many are brick built and a few are board and tile although
there were more of these in the past. The first village ‘building
society’ house stands on Chase’s Lane. In the 1890s a housing club
started at Snape and for £5 a year entry the members held a draw
with a chance of one winning sufficient funds to build a house.
Lucky Bill Saunders won on his second year of entering.
Many houses, particularly those that had a business
attached, must have had stables close by - most have now been
demolished or converted. There were certainly stables at the
Chequers; along Mill Road opposite Dimbola for use by Mr Nunn; at
Rose’s cottage; at Friston Cottage; and a little earlier at Laurel
Cottage; and probably at several other sites.
The Estate
Friston is remembered as being very much an estate
village, in the twentieth century, with the Wentworth family as
paternal and interested landowners. (The Vernon part of the surname
seems to have been dropped in this century.) The Wentworths must
have owned around 100 cottages or farmhouses in the area, many of
which were in Friston. A numbered oval enamel plaque on the front
door identified each properly. Each farm had at least one cottage
in the village proper, usually occupied by the stock man and his
family. Other cottages were occupied by other workers on the estate
and at one time the head-teacher was leased one of the pink
cottages on Church Path. Gaining employment on the Blackheath
estate, as it became known, was one way of a young man acquiring a
cottage to bring up a family.
Life in a Cottage
Everyday life in Friston changed little in the first
few decades of the century and life must have been a financial and
physical struggle for many families. Most adults rose at 5.30 or 6
AM in order to make the preparations for the day’s work. There were
none of the labour-saving devices of today and everything had to be
done by hand. The first modernisation came with the supply of
electricity in 1928 but most families continued to rely on oil
lamps and candles for lighting and a range or oil stove for cooking
and heating. The brightness of the light from an electric bulb,
albeit from a low wattage bulb, was regarded with deep suspicion by
one old lady in the village who used to cover her eyes when the
light was turned on and declared that it would make her go
blind.
Water had to be drawn from the well, generally
shared with three or four other cottages. They are clearly marked
on the 25” Ordnance Survey map. There are no accounts of the wells
running dry and the water was good although in the summer it
sometimes became a little sandy as the level dropped. Later on,
with the draining of the sand pit, people complained that their
wells ran dry. One lady remembers that her well was 36’ deep and
that it was a useful place to cool foods such as custards and
jellies as they could be lowered carefully into the cool depths in
a bucket. Well water was used for cooking and drinking but
rainwater from butts was used for clothes and personal washing, all
of which would have had to be heated on the range. Mains water
arrived in the village in the 1950s and to turn on a tap instead of
hauling a bucket of water up from the well must have been a welcome
novelty.
The outside earth closet or privy in the garden was
the norm and many still stand, either modernised or adapted to some
other use. The privy, for reasons of daintiness was built into a
washhouse, which was either a detached building or a lean-to on the
side of the cottage. One lady remembers the wash-house as having a
lovely warm place to hang around in on a cold day, but wonders how
her mother managed not to set light to the wooden shed that housed
the fire? Washing must have taken nearly all day for a woman with a
large family as when washed and wrung, the clothes had to be hung
out to dry. On Wet Mondays, it must have been a nightmare as then
the clothes had to be dried indoors around the fire. Tuesday was
ironing day, done with a flat iron ted on the range or possibly
with one of the more sophisticated irons that d hot coals.
Wednesday was market day in Saxmundham so the housewife able to
have a break from the domestic chores. However although a bus
service started in 1923 many women walked as it was either too
expensive or that with a pram-full of small children, it was easier
walking. Thursday was for darning and mending. Friday was baking
day and the range was heated up for the cooking of breads, cakes
and pastries. All the working men took packed lunches and treats
were needed for the weekend especially if visitors were
expected.
Saturday was for extra cleaning and tidying beyond
what was done on a daily basis. Sunday was of course a day of rest
for everyone with church or chapel attendance for the adults and
Sunday school for the children. Many children went to both the
church and the chapel Sunday schools, partly from lack of
alternative activities, but also because it made them eligible for
both of the Sunday school treats. These were usually picnics in
some neighbouring village or scenic place, and were a highlight of
the summer. Some children sang in the church choir, which sat in
the gallery at the west end of the church, with a certain amount of
discrete play being allowed, in order to keep the children occupied
during the sermon. Few activities and no work were allowable on a
Sunday - one lady recalled being horrified at the suggestion that
her soaking carpet should be removed on a Sunday after her house
had been flooded.
Commercial Activity
From the early years of the twentieth century until
the end of the Second World War Friston was a thriving, almost
self-sufficient, little commercial centre. A lot of the goods sold
in the shops were home produced, such as the peppermint Black
Balls, apparently the only item sold by one elderly lady to the
local children. A lot of villagers produced surplus fruit and
vegetables in their gardens and allotments and Aldeburgh provided a
good market through the shops and hotels. In the following
description of the village shops, it should be noted that not all
of them would have existed at the same time (precise dates being
impossible to recall), but many must have survived through at least
one generation of owner. The longest surviving shop was Studd’s
Post Office, General Stores and Drapery located on the east,
Knodishall, side of Grove Road. This was certainly in existence by
1871 and run by Thomas Studd.
Letters came there twice a day from Saxmundham and
there were a similar number of collections. Later on the postman,
who had to cycle out from Saxmundham, had a corrugated iron shelter
nearly opposite the shop in which he could take a rest before his
return journey. Some of the village boys enjoyed chatting to him
there and remember him with affection. The shelter is now in the
garden of a cottage in the village. Thomas’ son eventually took
over the stores and with various proprietors it continued until
1980 when it was decided that it was not economically viable to
keep it open. By the 1960s the premises belonged to Mrs. Wentworth
and when she found it difficult to find a postmaster and shop
assistants she took to running the business herself, with
assistance from various part-time helpers, some of whom were women
who had previously been employed at Blackheath. Major Wentworth
collected fresh bread for the shop everyday. Mrs. Wentworth’s
enthusiasm, however, seems to have outstripped her expertise,
resulting in a certain amount of confusion at times.
Another general store in the early decades of the
century was Gadd’s Stores in the building now called Friston
Cottage and previously owned by Pastor William Brown. This was the
first shop in the area to sell ice cream and the shopkeeper at one
time kept a pet monkey on the counter. Along Mill Road was a small
shop, which sold firewood and second hand goods. This was run by
Austin Rose who later had a small lorry to take vegetables to sell
in Aldeburgh. He also went to Hollesley Bay Colony to sell and
collect fruit and vegetables.
The windmill sold animal feeds and flour ground on
the premises: from the late 1920s they also had a lorry, which was
used to deliver. Mrs. Nunn’s shop just past the windmill sold
everything from ‘a pin to an elephant’. During the war Mrs. Nunn
made meat pies and sausage rolls for sale, which were off ration
for agricultural workers. Mr. Nunn had a horse and cart and took
vegetables to Aldeburgh to sell. Further down Mill Road in Moss
Cottages, Tom Meadows did bike repairs and recharged radio
accumulators. He later had a manual petrol pump and ran a taxi. A
similar workshop existed in the wooden garage on the other side of
Mill road run by Ernie Barnes.
Around the corner on Chase’s Lane was a pork
butchers and slaughterhouse run by the Forsters. Their son
converted some of the stabling along the side of the lane into a
bakery, and this later became a house. Further along Chase’s Lane
on the west corner of Donkey Lane was a curious shop run by the
Whig family.
The smithy stood opposite the Chequers pub and the
‘travis’, a semi open shed for shoeing horses on the corner of the
site, remained there until a few years ago. The forge had two sets
of bellows and after being run by various members of the same
family closed sometime after the last war. Further along Grove Road
was a sawmill, the pit of which has now been built on. Their logs
were often stored on the little green opposite until one day they
slipped and killed a small child. Also on Grove Road was a
shoemaker, and there may also have been a cobbler next to the
Homestead. Church Farm was a dairy farm then as now and supplied
milk to the community. More recently when the village was snowed in
and the milk tanker couldn’t get through, Mrs. Reeves delivered
milk around the village on a sledge.
Schooldays
In the
early days of the Board school children in the village received all
their education in the village. In the 1920s the 10 year olds went
one day a week to the National School at Snape for either cookery
for the girls or ‘manual training’ for the boys.
During the war a number of children from an East End
school were evacuated to Friston with three teachers, but the
school could not physically accommodate all of them so in the
mornings the Friston children went to the school and the evacuees
to the Parish Hall. In the afternoon the procedure was reversed.
The instructions to the children in the event of an air raid were
simple: run out of the building and hide in the ditches under the
gorse bushes on the heath, then more or less surrounding the
school. It is to be hoped that the siren didn’t go off too often
during school hours!
After the Second World War children left the village
school at 11 and went either to the grammar school or the Secondary
Modern school at Leiston. The Friston children were issued with a
bicycle, waterproof cape and leggings for their journey. To their
delight the children of the 1951 class were lucky enough to get
brand new bikes instead of the usual reconditioned ones. The girls
and boys cycled in groups. If it snowed they walked.
Leisure Time
Until Saturday working ended sometime after the
Second World War villagers had little leisure time and for adults
much of it must have been spent in cultivating their gardens and
allotments. However over the years Friston has had many societies
for all age groups and the following is a list of some of them. For
sport there was a steel quoits team, football, darts, and bowls
with there being two greens at one time. There were also branches
of The British Legion, a Men’s Club, Mothers’ Union, and a
Community Council. For children there were Guides and Scouts, a
Girls’ Friendly Society and a Youth Club which met in the stables
behind the P.O. Stores. The Scout troop ran for over two decades
and was very successful, being the first troop to win the Gilwell
penant at an international camp, under the leadership of Mrs
Nunn.
Other memories of youthful spare time include
walking to Leiston on Saturday afternoons and then back again;
those with a few spare coppers might go to the cinema there, or
indulge in some window tapping and other fairly innocent forms of
mischief. Church or chapel attendance was a necessity for every
family until more recent decades and it had its own traditions. In
Captain Wentworth’s lifetime the household staff from Blackheath
would arrive at the church in a car and sit in their appointed
pews. The Wentworths would duly arrive and sit in the pew in front
of their staff right at the front of the Church on one side of the
aisle. The front pew on the other side was reserved for the Friston
House family. At the end of the service the people from the village
and the Blackheath staff would go outside and line the path to the
lych-gate and the Wentworths would walk down greeting people as
they went. In later years Mrs Audrey Wentworth is remembered for
arriving consistently late at church and for her wonderful large
hats.
In
September of each year everybody in the village turned out to pick
blackberries. These were then sold to the various shops in the
village and then taken away by train, probably to a dye works in
Ipswich. 6d a pound is the remembered price for these. Some village
children also collected rosehips so that their mothers could make
rosehip syrup. Collecting any wild fruit for jam making would also
have been a task undertaken by many.
By
various accounts there seem to have been two incidents of note in
the village during the war. One was the crashing of a doodlebug
near Friston Hall. which partially demolished the summer house;
many people walked up the track to see its remains. Early one
morning, presumably towards the end of the war, an American-crewed
bomber crash landed in a field near Friston House. but fortunately
no-one was killed.
The end of rationing and food shortages was no doubt
a relief to all. One lady remembers her mother coming home with one
of the first bananas available since before the war. This was given
to the young girl but as she was used to orchard fruits she found
it dry and unexciting, much to her mothers disappointment. The end
of rationing in the 1950s was marked by an event organised by Mrs
Audrey Wentworth, known as ‘The Friston Frolic’. She taught the
children how to do the Lambeth Walk, which they did from a meeting
point along to the heath, presumably Knodishall Whin, where a
bonfire was made and the ration books ceremoniously burnt,
accompanied by a singsong round the fire.