The Little History of Suffolk by Sarah E. Doig

Author:Sarah E. Doig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

THE ECONOMIC TOURIST

Celia Fiennes was born in 1662 near Salisbury, the daughter of a colonel in Cromwell’s army. She began her travels around England on horseback for the sake of her health, ‘by variety and change of air and exercise’, visiting various spa towns up and down the country. Celia was accompanied on some journeys by her mother or her sister, though for her longest journeys she took only servants. Her journal provides a vivid portrait of a still largely unenclosed countryside with few and primitive roads, although signposts were appearing. She describes these as: ‘posts and hands pointing to each road with the names of the great towns or market towns that it leads to’. Celia sought out new buildings, and new developments in agriculture and industry that would promote the prosperity of the country.

On her travels, Fiennes saw many of the finest baroque English country houses while they were still under construction. Contrary to the widespread conception that the visiting of stately homes began after the Second World War, they have been accessible to travellers of good social standing since Fiennes’ time if not earlier, and her comments are one of the most interesting contemporary sources of information about them. Essentially, Celia anticipated the genre of ‘economic tourism’, which became a staple of travel writing throughout the next two centuries.

Celia Fiennes toured the eastern counties of England in 1698. Whilst she complimented Bury St Edmunds on its pleasing situation, she was less impressed by prices of goods. She records of Bury, ‘So much company living in the town makes provision scarce and dear. However, it is a good excuse to raise the reckoning on strangers.’ She also had a mixed view of Ipswich:

This is a very clean town and much bigger than Colchester is now. Ipswich has 12 churches, their streets of a good size well pitched with small stones. Their market cross has good carving, the figure of justice carved and gilt. There are but 3 or 4 good houses in the town. The rest is much like the Colchester buildings, but it seems more shattered, and indeed the town looks a little disregarded, and by enquiry found it to be through pride and sloth.

After Ipswich, Fiennes took the road up to Beccles via Wickham Market and Saxmundham. Travelling between these two towns, she records:

Thence to Saxmundham 8 miles more: this is a pretty big market town. The ways are pretty deep, mostly lanes very little commons. I passed by several gentlemen’s seats, one, Mr Dormer’s which stands in a fine park. The entrance from the road through rows of trees discovered the front and building very finely to view, being built with stone and brick and many sashes: Looks like a new house with the open iron bar gates between pillars of stone the breadth of the house.

Before crossing the border into Norfolk, Celia Fiennes comments on Beccles and, as she does in other places on her tour, she describes the nonconformist meeting house (as she

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