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TOURING AROUND THE BLAXHALL AREA - July 7, 2006

A couple of amazing castles, two different sorts of windmill, an incredible archeological treasure, and a pirate raid!

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This is a poorhouse within the old castle….and notice the decorative (and completely non-functional) chimney put up on top of the old tower in Tudor times…....

UPDATED with photos…..

July 7, 2006

Slept in a bit – good thing, as we somehow didn’t get to bed until after midnight.  (July 17 - that happened a lot on this trip…it took me a while to realize that when the sun isn’t going down until after 9:00 p.m., it’s easy to find yourself still doing things indoors at 12:00!)  Regular cold breakfast, then off to Framlingham Castle.  Lovely thing with 13 towers, 12 still extant, most with one or two Tudor chimneys - all but two or three strictly decorative.  Fascinating story of the Bigod (truly) dukes, the Howard dukes, and others – all of whom couldn’t quite remain loyal to the king for long, so the castle kept being confiscated, then returned later….and several of the more careless owners lost their heads or were imprisoned.  The walls are pretty well complete, and one climbs up and walks around the entire circle…here’s the view of the countryside…
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...below in the bailey is the well, and a poorhouse begun in the 1600s and enlarged in 1729 or so…..there is a museum in the poorhouse manager’s apartments showing a lot of local history.  Very nice indeed.  We bought a postcard with an aerial view of the entire place, to go with the close-ups.  Nearby is the Framlingham Church, with a really nice organ…
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which had been carted off to the castle centuries ago, along with the entire loft, and was finally returned here and renovated so it could resume playing for divine worship.

From there, we were off to Saxtead to see the “post mill”, a windmill whose top swivels with the wind – the entrance to the part where the works are had a ladder with a giant wheel that it rolled all around on, whenever the wind shifted and came from a different direction.  Wish I had a photo, but the point is that it wasn’t just the part of the mill that holds the sails that rotated to face the wind.  The entire housing rotated along with the sails, including a good share of the works, as well as the entrance door to the mill, thus necessitating the ladder that rolled in a huge circle around the mill.  It must have been VERY inconvenient for those bringing grain or picking up flour - you’d have to be extremely careful where you parked (or stood!) in case the wind shifted.  Unfortunately, it’s open only on weekends, so all we could do was look from the street.  We sat on the side of the road nearby and ate our lunch, getting dessert from the ice cream truck parked there and doing a great business with folk stopping on their way past.

The Helmingham Hall Gardens were closed – open Wed. and Sat. only.  We drove in the drive and past the house, and grabbed a pirate shot of the Hall, which is NOT open, but is nevertheless magnificent.  A car followed us out of the grounds, and for miles along our route—I was sure they were tracking us to get the photo back, but eventually we left him in a small town.  Heading for Sutton Hoo and the Saxon Treasure, we saw the sign for the Tidal Mill and went right down.  When the tide comes in, a basin is filled (the original one was be six acres in size, but was sold in 1962 for a yacht harbor, since the water wheel’s “axle-shaft” [a 22x22-inch oak beam] broke in 1957 and the mill stopped working) and when the tide gets half-way down, the water is allowed to run out of the basin and drive the water wheel.  They got about four hours per tidal cycle (twice/day) with the big pond – about 30 minutes with the current one, which exists solely to demonstrate how it worked.  Talked to the wonderful docent (who used to catch crabs from the mill pond during WWII, never knowing that there was a working mill inside what he thought was “a shed”) and toured the place for 45 minutes and then got to watch the water released and the machinery all work….except that no grain is ground. 

Next we rushed to Sutton Hoo, where a 90-foot boat with a “king” buried in it was excavated in 1939.  Incredible stuff was found, including an enormous gold buckle – all of it estimated to be from the early 600s A.D.  It’s beautifully presented, and they are STILL finding new stuff in the immediate area – in 2000 they began to dig up bodies outside the burying ground originally found, and these appear to be executed folks.  There is no agreement on exactly what these finds represent, and there is even more awaiting discovery and interpretation.  The owner of the land won a lawsuit against the government establishing her ownership of the treasure, and then donated it all to the nation…..a good old girl!

They tossed us out of the museum about 5:00 and we wandered a bit, and then decided to go by Orford Castle on the way home – thought it was a ruin that we could just walk around in, but found that it had been “finished” in the recent past, and we had 25 minutes to see it all.  A GREAT castle! 
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It’s an 18-sided “drum” (they say - though I tried and tried to count 18 sides…it may mean that without the towers, it “would be” an 18-sided drum), with three square towers plus an entrance structure.  Built by Henry (II?) to counter the strength of powerful barons and dukes in the area – all the floors have been restored, and there is a wonderful audio tour that explains everything you see.  You can climb the main stairs to the top, and look out over the countryside….
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There are also tiny circular stairs inside the wall that you get to climb, to get to a chapel, sleeping and other chambers, kitchens, etc.  One could easily spend a couple of hours, but we got a good introduction in the time available.  It was really fun….  Imagine being a foot soldier approaching this:
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Then “home” to the hostel for supper – a bunch of people in tonight, including a dad with his 10-year old daughter.  Wonderful memories of my times with Laura at that age.  She was deep in the “family romance” - could not leave him alone, or let him pay attention to anyone else.  Running her fingers through his hair while he talked to others in the lounge, laughing at him as they played scrabble, telling him he couldn’t come into “her room” (the female dorm), etc. etc.  He was wonderful….always in his adult, never treating her like a child, or being irritated with her.  It was nice to watch.  At one point when she was off somewhere, he told us that he and she were out together (there are other kids in the family) because he remembers how special it was when his father took him hosteling and hiking (just the two of them) when he was young.  A lucky, lucky little girl.

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