Bathing Pool • Sudbury

 

The bathing pool today has more of a look of an ornamental pond, with its water lilies and established trees shading the water. The semi-circular bank built into the River Stour overlooking the water meadows once had a small structure behind it where bathers could change and leave their belongings. It opened in 1898 and was used until the 1930s. A diphtheria outbreak in the town lead to its closure and it was slowly left to be reclaimed by nature.

///follow.blip.openly

GRID REF: TL 87027 41763

St Gregory's Church • Sudbury

The church of St Gregory was first mentioned in the 10^th century, though most of what we see today dates from the 14^th and 15^th. Sadly many of the medieval stained glass windows and parts of the rood screen were lost during William Dowsing’s destructive tour of East Anglia during the Civil War in 1643. The building had become so fragile by 1860 that it had to close for restoration work to be carried out. It was offered Grade I listing status in 1952.

Sadly in recent times there has been vandalism on site, which means that the church is often only open for services. If you get the opportunity to enter though, please do for the most interesting thing to see is inside! Preserved in a niche in the vestry is the mummified head of Simon Sudbury.

Sudbury had been Bishop of London from 1361 to 1375. In 1375 he became Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1380 a highly unpopular poll tax was imposed and this, as well as the general discontent among the working classes, led to the Peasants’ Revolt the following year. The uprising was centred around East Anglia and the south eastern counties. On 13^th June 1381 men from the Kent area under the direction of Wat Tyler entered London. There they razed the palace of John of Gaunt and massacred some Flemish merchants. The King had already gone up to Essex to negotiate with the rebels there and it was during his absence that the Kent men took the opportunity to force the city to surrender the Tower of London.

Archbishop Simon of Sudbury was there in his capacity as Chancellor and so was the treasurer Sir Robert Hales. They had both been deemed responsible for the unpopular poll tax and became targets of the rebel party. Sudbury was saying mass in St John’s Chapel when they entered the Tower and he was dragged to Tower Hill where he was beheaded along with Hales. His head, with his clerics hood attached with nails, was placed on a pole at London Bridge. His body was taken to Canterbury Cathedral, where his tomb contains a cannonball in place of his head. His stone sarcophagus there once had a gilt copper effigy, but this was another victim of the Reformation in the 1640s.  His head remained on Tower Bridge for six days before being removed and brought to Sudbury. His head is today preserved and can be seen behind a protective glass front in the church. There is a bust of Simon Sudbury in the heritage centre on Goal Lane if you want to see what he looked like.

///widely.prompts.digitally

GRID REF: TL 87060 41470

Workhouse • Sudbury

 On the boundary between the residential flats and the Church of St Gregory’s you will find a gated archway. This is the last remnant of St Gregory’s College and it is today Grade II listed. The college provided a residence for six secular canons and it was founded in 1374 by Simon Sudbury and his brother John. The site on which the college was built was thought to have been the site of the home of Nigel Theobald, their father. Unfortunately by 1526 the college was in a state of disrepair and it ultimately closed during the dissolution of the monasteries, the land being surrendered to the crown. The site would be owned by several people after this, until it was eventually bought by the Borough of Sudbury, who put the building to use as a workhouse in the early 1700s.

A new Sudbury Poor Law Union was formed in September 1835. Initially they employed three workhouses. The one at Sudbury was for able bodied males over 13 years of age. There was also one at Bures for the aged and infirm of both genders, and another at Melford  for able-bodies girls up to 16 years of age and boys between 7 and 13. A year later they made plans to create a single new workhouse and the old workhouse site at St Gregory’s was purchased. This new workhouse received its first inmates in June of 1837, but by December an outbreak of smallpox temporarily halted admissions. In 1861 the Poor Law Board published a return naming every adult who had been a workhouse inmate for more than five years. It included their total length of stay and the reason for admission. There were two inmates on the list who had been there since its first year of operation, a total of 23 years of their life lived within the walls of the institution. One was Mary Bryant who was listed as ‘infirm’ and another was Sarah Debenham who was listed as an ‘idiot’ but also there due to her age. Obviously not language that would be used today, but other reasons for the people becoming longstanding residents were ‘paralysis’, ‘defective sight’, and ‘fits’. These institutions would really be used to house anyone unable to provide for themselves in the wider community. Further buildings were added to the site later including a hospital block and receiving block. The site was taken over by the County Council in 1929 and it slowly became a local hospital. In 2014 it was closed and converted into the flats we see today.

///wobbling.fussed.taxi

GRID REF: TL 87022 41447