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

Mummified Cat • Sudbury

 

As the name suggests, the hotel that sits here was once a mill. A water-powered corn mill, in fact. It is a site of endurance and there had been a mill recoded on this site since domesday. The earliest part of the present building dates to around 1800. The mill was owned by the Clover family until it closed in the 1960s. 

In the early 1970s the plan to convert the mill into a hotel was completed. It was during the conversion that a mummified cat was found within the structure. 

A plaque in the foyer of the hotel reads: ‘An age old East Anglian custom was that of burying a live cat in a building under construction. The cat would protect it from all harm by witches, warlocks, and fire. The mummified cat buried below was found in the timber-framed part of this building during its conversion in 1971. It was obviously a victim of this superstition when the building was originally constructed nearly 300 years ago. It was re-interred on November 15^th 1975 after four years eventful absence from the building.’  

Below this plaque is a glass plate in the floor, under which you can see the mummified remains. Curiously this is not the only mummified cat to be found in town. When alterations were being made to a building along North Street another was discovered between the timbers. Again it was removed but replaced after supernatural disturbances started to take place. As with the cat here, once returned to the premises, the unexplained phenomena ceased. That cat isn’t on display, but you can see a photo of it in the heritage centre on Gaol Lane.

///hypnotist.sues.maple

GRID REF: TL 86940 41318

All Saint's Church • Sudbury

It’s 13^th January 1617 and a wedding is taking place at this church. Martha is marrying Richard Haffield, a carrier from the town.  Martha is 24 years old and her new husband is 36. They would be old parents by the standards of the day, eventually having five daughters. Martha was 25 when she became pregnant with her first daughter and 39 with her last. It is her middle daughter, Rachel whose story starts here and ends 65 years later as a destitute survivor of the Salem Witch Trials. On 13^th September 1629 Rachel Haffield was baptised at this church, where her parents had been married. As a six year old she would leave England with her family for America during the Great Migration.

Between 1620 and 1640 roughly 80,000 Puritans left England, with around a quarter of those heading for the New England colonies. Although there would be some families travelling from most of the English counties, almost half came from East Anglian settlements like Sudbury. They hoped to have more freedom to practice their beliefs. They were against the rituals within the Church of England that still resembled The Roman Catholic Church. Although the singing of Psalms was deemed appropriate, they believed choral music too closely associated with the Catholic church and did away with it. Musical instruments, such as the organ, were also not allowed.

In April 1635 we see Rachel on the passenger list of the ship Planter with her family. It set sail in the first or second week of April and arrived in Boston on the 7^th June the same year. They had been relatively affluent when they emigrated, but four years after their arrival in Ipswich, New England, Rachel’s father died and her mother was forced to rent out parts of their home to lodgers. Rachel’s mother has suffered with deteriorating mental health and by 1666 she was declared insane. Rachel was recently married at this time to a man named Lawrence Clinton. Their marriage was not happy and there was scandal on both parts due to extra-marital affairs. Lawrence treated Rachel very poorly and was largely responsible for the loss of her financial security. Rachel had petitioned for divorce, but her husband had not waited for this to go through before re-marrying someone else and starting a family. Rachel was forced to beg for money to support herself and it was around this time that the first accusations around witchcraft began to surface.

Between the Spring of 1692 and Summer of 1693 more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft in the Massachusetts colonies. Several residents of Ipswich were called to give depositions against Rachel in the April of ‘92. She was arrested in the May.The accusations against her ranged from murder by supernatural means to shape-shifting. Ultimately Rachel was released in the January of 1693, although 19 people would go on to be executed for witchcraft during the course of the trials. A handful would also die while awaiting trial in gaol. Rachel would only live another couple of years, dying destitute sometime around the turn of the year into 1695. One wonders what her life would have been like had her family stayed in Sudbury. Would she still have relatives visiting this church where we stand now?

///fuss.spoon.joints

GRID REF: TL 86892 40986