2024 Suffolk with Friends of the Whitworth

2024 Suffolk with Friends of the Whitworth

Image - 'Scallop' by Maggie Hambling, Aldeburgh - copyright Susan Jenkins

The study tour to Suffolk in April 2024 was a wonderful opportunity to experience the culture of Suffolk ‘through the centuries’. With excellent guides welcoming us with background talks at many of our venues, we were even given a glimpse of the area in ‘pre-history’, before coastal erosion and silting of rivers changed the landscape. Clearly riverine access to parts of Suffolk has been vital to its development – our visit to Sutton Hoo with its burial mounds and ship burial (one of only two outside Scandinavia) was a reminder of this.

The accumulation of much wealth in the mediaeval period also flourished thanks to both plentiful water for ‘dyeing in the wool’ and ready access to ports for export to Europe. This growing wealth of past centuries funded many of the remarkable buildings we visited – including beautiful Churches, Moot and Guildhalls. Family prosperity helped to fund the artistic developments of Gainsborough and Constable – both of whom featured in our tour with visits to Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury and to Flatford Mill and Willy Lott’s Cottage (we just needed the Hay Wain crossing the river to transport us back two-hundred years to the landscape of Constable’s painting!!).

The Philip de László: ‘Master of Elegance’ exhibition unfolded tales and memories of 20th century European history and included iconic portraits of HRH Queen Mother, HRH Queen Elizabeth II as a child, portraits of two young brothers poised to leave their family for military service in WWI, and a portrait of the remarkable Lady Apsley in riding costume. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and her sister Millicent were among other inspirational woman ‘encountered’ in our tour, courtesy of Aldeburgh Museum, close to their childhood home.

Reaching the 21st Century Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears and Maggie Hambling made their mark on our journey - with visits to the Red House and to Maggie’s ‘Scallop on the Beach’ in Aldeburgh. The finale of our tour was a private exhibition (set up purely for our group) of a selection of Sybil Andrews’ Art Works, ranging from her early water colours through to her captivating lino prints. Weaving their way through this tour, dragons (and other fantastic beasts) kept ‘popping up,’ for example - in the interlace Anglo-Saxon jewellery work, the 15th century church wall paintings in Troston and Wissington, the extraordinarily beautiful (& well preserved) depiction of St Margaret of Antioch (‘The dragon-slayer’) in the retable at St Mary’s Thornham Parva, the misericord carvings in St Peter and St Paul’s Lavenham, and even at Kentwell Hall, where the eclectic collections included a fine Chinese robe embellished with many dragons, denoting the high rank of the Imperial official it had once belonged to.

A wonderful trip with wide-ranging topics of interest – thank you to Joan Gem, Jane Brand and Travel Editions for compiling this fine itinerary!