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Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-1783) - One of the most famous and influential landscape designers of the 18th century, Brown was born in Northumberland and worked on various garden projects in the 1740s before becoming an independent landscape gardener and architect around 1750. Based initially at Hammersmith on the outskirts of London and later at Wilderness House, Hampton Court, he had a thriving nationwide business.
In Suffolk, he worked at Branches Park, Cowlinge (1763-5 for Ambrose Dickens); Redgrave (1763 for Rowland Holt); Euston Park (1767-9 for the 3rd Duke of Grafton), Ickworth Park (1769-76 for the 2nd Earl of Bristol); and at Heveningham Park (1781-2 for Sir Gerald Vanneck). He was also consulted, in 1782, by Sir Charles Egleton Kent about Fornham Hall, Fornham St Genevieve, but it is uncertain whether any of his ideas were implemented. Brown is also often said to have worked at Elveden c.1766/8-9 for Admiral Keppel, but this is an error – the records indicate that Brown worked for the Admiral’s cousin, General Keppel, at Dyrham in Gloucestershire.
Redgrave Park 1818
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A type of wet woodland which occurs on poorly drained or seasonally wet soils and is typically composed of alder, willow or birch
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An East Anglian building technique that used large, unfired, clay bricks set in a clay mortar. The bricks were made of local clays mixed with chopped straw, shaped using a simple wooden mould and air-dried. The sizes could vary from about 22 x 12 x 5 inches to 18 x 6 x 6 inches. The wall surfaces were originally finished with a clay plaster, which was often tarred for weatherproofing and then sanded to take a colour-wash, but by the 1920s cement rendering was the most frequent surface treatment. In some cases the clay lumps were hidden behind a brick facing. A brick or stone plinth was usual to give the blocks a dry foundation
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Clay Lump cottage at Buxhall
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A form of hard chalk used as a building stone. The mains sources of this material were on the north-west edges of Suffolk – at Lakenheath on the fen-edge, at Thetford in Norfolk and at Burwell (‘Burwell stone’), Orwell and Barrington (‘Barrington stone’ a grey-green variety with glauconite) in Cambridgeshire. lthough hard enough to be worked into blocks, it was still susceptible to rapid weathering if exposed. So, for external walls, its use was mainly limited to vernacular buildings in its source areas, as can be seen in Lakenheath. In many cases it was combined with flint or brick to make more durable structures But it was also more widely used in medieval church interiors, where the material’s softness could be protected from weathering and exploited for richly carved decoration, as in Wingfield church.
Clunch wall
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Occurs where fixed sea defenses prevent the natural migration of saltmarsh inland as estuaries become subject to sea level rise
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A field system with one prevailing axis of orientation. Most of the field boundaries either follow this axis (axial boundaries) or run at right angles to it (transverse boundaries). This type of landscape can be most clearly seen on old maps of the South Elmhams and IIketshalls in north-east Suffolk. Unfortunately this area suffered from a high rate of hedgerow removal in the 20th century and the patterns are now much weakened.
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This refers to the ‘washing’ or painting of the walls of buildings with plastered or rendered surfaces with coloured paint. Today this is done with modern masonry paints in a variety of colours, but in the past distemper or limewash were used. Distemper consists of whiting (ground chalk) mixed with size (weak glue) and water, while limewash consists of slaked lime and water. Both could be used uncoloured as ‘whitewash’ or coloured with pigments. Earth pigments such as red or yellow ochre were most common, giving a range of colour from cream through pink to red. Tales of the use of animal blood in colour washes are probably apocryphal, but sloe juice may have been used.
Documentary evidence suggests that, up to about 1900, most house walls were either left a raw ‘plaster white’ or given a coat of whitewash. There was then a gradual increase in the use of colours – firstly creams and pinks, with brighter colours such as lavender, orange and red being mentioned by the 1930s. By the 1970s there were authoritative statements about a traditional ‘Suffolk pink’ house colour. In part this might be confusion with ‘pinking’, a technique of decorating exterior plasterwork with lightly incised marks that is mentioned as being prevalent in north Suffolk in the 1920s. The commercial marketing of ‘Suffolk Pink’ as a colour has also undoubtedly been a factor in its perception as a long-established tradition.
A preservative brown staining used on weather-boarded barns and farm buildings is mentioned in 1783 and red-painted timber barns can be seen in John Constable’s pictures, such as his 1815 view of Golding Constable’s flower garden in East Bergholt. A red barn also features in the infamous murder of Maria Marten at Polstead in 1827. It is probable that these timber stains and paints were oil-based rather than washes. By the 1830s, it was an established practice to give timber-clad barns a preservative coating of tar and by the end of the 19th century black-tarred farm buildings of timber, clay-lump or clunch were a common sight in the landscape.
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Land in communal use. Most frequently this is grassland or heathland used for animal grazing (see also greens and tyes), but the term can also be applied to arable, meadows or woods. Historically, the soil of the commons belonged to the manorial lords, but its use was subject to the common rights of the tenants. The number and definition of the common-right holders varies from common to common, but is often limited to the properties bordering a particular common. The pasturing of a set number of animals (variously called a beast-going, gate, share or stint ) is the most frequent common right, but additionally the tenants could have rights to take firewood (estover), timber for ploughs, gates or house repairs (bote), to dig for peat for fuel (turbary) or for ‘stone’ for road repairs.
Since the Commons Registration Act of 1965, greens and commons have become legally distinct: commons are subject to communal grazing rights, but greens are used for exercise or recreation – but in the past the terms were interchangeable.
Sth Elmham Common
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Trees cut down to ground level and then allowed to regenerate. Most native trees, with the notable exception of pines, will regenerate from stumps (stools) or will send up suckers from the root system (notably elms).The vigour of an established root system will quickly send up a number of fast-growing shoots that will produce a crop of straight poles that can be used for fencing, wattle-work and fuel. The poles are harvested at intervals and allowed to re-grow again. The process can go on indefinitely and in many woods the oldest trees are the coppice stools – some may be as much as 1000 years old.One problem with coppicing is that the young shoots are vulnerable to attack from grazing animals, so they need to be excluded from recently coppiced areas.
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18th-century antiquarians borrowed this Latin term, meaning a ‘racecourse’, to describe a particular type of Neolithic (qv) monument, exemplified by the Dorset Cursus, the largest and best-preserved of them. This consists of a very elongated enclosure that is 10km (6¼ miles) long but only 82m wide, marked by parallel earthen banks with external ditches. However most cursuses are now only visible as cropmarks, their banks having been flattened long ago. Through aerial photography over 150 have now been recorded, the majority occupying low-lying positions beside rivers and streams. In eastern England, Cambridgeshire has 5 or 6, Suffolk has 3, and Essex and Norfolk have one each. The Suffolk examples are beside the River Lark at Fornham All Saints (1.9km or 1.2 miles long x 25-40m wide), and two beside the River Stour, one at Stratford St Mary (290m long x 68m wide) and a smaller one at Bures St Mary (190m+ long x 24m wide).
The characteristic straight sides of these monuments suggest that they were laid out in areas already cleared of forest to give an open countryside that allowed clear viewpoints. Their purpose is not fully understood, but a ceremonial or ritual use is most likely, and this could have included races or processions. Many have concentrations of cropmark rings around their terminals, which are either flattened burials mounds or other ritual monuments. Excavations on the cursus at Springfield in Essex revealed a circular setting of posts, 26m in diameter, at one end and small pits nearby contained sooty deposits and cremated animal bones. In general, these monuments date from c.3,500-3,000 BC and the example at Fornham appears to overlie an earlier Neolithic ritual monument in the form of a causewayed enclosure. 
Fornham All Saints Cursus
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