Suffolk Pride
Last week I took a trip down to Sudbury, Suffolk. A tiny little town sitting on the River Stour, smack bang on the border with Essex. Its a very quant little town with lots of Chocolate box houses. Well what’s special about Sudbury, well its where I spent my formative years, though I was born in Newcastle, making me a Geordie, I grew up and went to school in Sudbury.
I suppose that makes me an honouree Silly-Suffolk, Silly coming from the Angle word selige, which means holy, supposedly in reference to the many fine churches and the fact that the original patron saint of England, St Edmund came from Suffolk. Females from Suffolk are called Suffolk Fair-Maidens due to the supposed beauty of people born in the county, but don’t tell my baby sister or brother that, it might go to their head!
Sometimes I act like I hate Sudbury, its a quiet town with absolutely nothing to do, when I worked at Tesco there, we used to joke that on a weekend the only thing to do was to get so drunk you forgot everything so you would have something to do the next weekend! I do prefer the hustle and bustle of life in Newcastle, but sometimes I do yearn for the slower pace of life in Sudbury.
But there are a few good reasons to be proud to have lived in Sudbury, for one it was the birthplace of the great 18th century painter Thomas Gainsborough, and any child who goes to school in Sudbury will be intimately familiar with his paintings and indeed the house in which he was born! But that does give you an appreciation later in life for the sheet beauty of his works, today there is a statue of Sudbury’s greatest son stood in the middle of the market place.
Also originally the Woolsack in the House of lords was stuffed with wool from Sudbury because of the towns great wealth and influence, something it certainly doesn’t have today! After the original was damaged in World War II it was restuffed with wool from all of the nations of the Commonwealth to symbolise unity of the different nations of the Commonwealth, not a bad replacement by any means.
In the centre of Newcastle there is a great monument to Earl Grey, thanking him for the Great Reform act of 1835, which abolished the “Rotten Boroughs” and guess what, Sudbury was one of those Rotten Boroughs, though it wasn’t fully disenfranchised until 1844. In fact we were taught at school that Charles Dickens reported on the Sudbury election of 1835 for the Morning Chronicle, and it was the inspiration for the famous Eatanswill election in his novel Pickwick Papers.
One thing about Sudbury, which does make me very proud to have lived there is the fact that in 1841, Sudbury became the first parliamentary constituency to return a member from an ethnic minority. Sudbury elected the son of an Indian queen, David Dye Sombre, alas he didn’t take up his seat however as he was declared insane before he could, but the fact he was elected does make me proud to have lived there.
Have Fun
Michael

