6 September 2004

Lavenham:  A Quaint Town

If you look up the word “quaint” in the dictionary I am sure there is a picture of “Lavenham”.  This picture post card town has to be the prettiest place I’ve visited in all of England, and it is practically next door to Hadleigh.

Lavenham is still filled with ancient Elizabethan houses, mostly because the industrial revolution passed this little town by.  Back in the 1400’s Lavenham was the 14^th riches town in all of England (according to the tax records).  This money came from a thriving wool industry, a real “cottage” industry where wool weavers and carders worked out of their stately homes. 

A lot of that wealth came from the use of “indentured” servants.  Despite what you may think, this type of servitude had quite a status.  The apprentice had to serve for seven years with a master craftsman.  The servant had to work for and obey the master.  The master had to house, feed and cloth the servant, as well as teach him his craft.  All this was spelled out in a contract.  The contract was then cut in half, using a jagged pattern (or “indents”).  The indentured servant and the master each held half, and could prove the contract was authentic because the pieces matched when joined together.

But after the wool industry went bust in the early 1500’s, no one cared much about this out-of-the-way little town.  While the rest of industrial England was being demolished and rebuilt – Lavenham just sat still and waited.  Today there is a thriving main street filled with antique shops, the Swan Hotel, and china shops all housed in thousand-year-old houses.

One of the houses, Crooked Cottage, sets the tone for the entire town.  The cottage leans quite a bit to the left and then juts out towards the street.  They claim this place was the inspiration for the nursery rhyme (“There was a crooked man…” Whole blocks of these cottages do the same thing, yet they are sturdy and still lived in by folks willing to pay a lot of money for the pleasure.

And speaking of nursery rhymes, the little girl who wrote “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” lived just off the main square.  It somehow seems fitting.

The centerpiece of the town is the Lavenham Guildhall of Corpus Christi.  In its early days the guild was made up of the local woolen merchants, who then formed the local government.  They were responsible for regulating trade and commerce in large towns and cities.  The Lavenham guild was established in 1477, with the Guildhall being built around 1529.

In 1547 the guild was dissolved because England’s reformation pretty much closed down everything that was associated with the Catholic Church.  The hall then spent the next couple of hundred years serving as a warehouse, a prison, and a workhouse for children.

During the World War II the hall served as a welcome center for many of the children that were evacuated from London during the German blitz.  The British Red Cross also ran a restaurant there for military personnel, and the US Army units that were stationed nearby spent a lot of time there.

Today the hall is owned by the National Trust and is filled with a display of 700 years of the medieval woolen cloth trade, as well as a tearoom and gift shop.  The photographs, and tools tell the story of the birth, death and rebirth of this beautiful town.

Even though this place is full of history, it is its quaint atmosphere that I will remember.  It seems that every street is filled with buildings that tell a tale.  It is a storybook place, the buildings lined with hollyhocks, their heavy wooden doors flanked by hanging baskets of colorful blue, white and purple flowers.

This is a place of beauty…a place that fills my senses with charming things to look at, hearty food to eat, and pleasant surprises around every corner.  It is a place where crooked men live with their crooked dogs in crooked cottages, and little girls stare up at the night sky in wonder.  It is the kind of place where people everywhere should live.  I feel lucky to have spent time here.