JAN 2025 - BOOM & BUST IN MEDIEVAL LAVENHAM - A TALK BY JANE GOSLING

 

BOOM & BUST IN MEDIEVAL LAVENHAM - A TALK BY JANE GOSLING

Jane had been Manager of the Guildhall in Lavenham for almost 20 years before taking early retirement from the National Trust. She described herself as a timber-frame buff, so living in Lavenham was a bit like being a child in a chocolate factory! She had studied medieval architecture for many years and had helped establish the Suffolk Historic Buildings Group in 1993, and was still Chairman.

Through excellent illustrations, Jane took us from pre-historic times through to Lavenham’s heyday - the 15^th and early 16^th centuries. The town was fortunate to have as its Lords of the Manor the De Vere’s, Earls of Oxford, and although their seat was at Castle Hedingham, they seem to have taken a particular interest in their Lavenham holdings, and over the centuries helped to stimulate the financial growth there. They, and some of Lavenham’s wealthiest merchants, were responsible for the re-building of Lavenham’s impressive church, shortly after 1485.

In 1257 the De Vere’s were granted a market charter, which proved so successful that they later decided to move the entire nucleus of the town from the hill near the church, up to what is now the Market Place. The streets that radiate out from the market today all date from this time, although no buildings from the period survive.

We heard that Lavenham’s wealth came from a thriving industry in cloth production. Jane was keen to stress that although cloth is not possible without wool, the villages and towns around South Suffolk – ironically known nowadays as the ‘wool towns’ – were primarily agricultural areas, with the wool for the cloth being brought in from Lincolnshire and the Cotswolds.

What began as a cottage industry, with individuals working for themselves and selling to local markets, had by the late 1400s become a well organised and highly successful industry unrivalled in Britain. Men known as cloth merchants or clothiers took control of the whole process, becoming very wealthy and re-building Lavenham in the latest building styles. Such was the success of the cloth that Lavenham specialised in – a thick, course broadcloth dyed with woad and known as ‘Lavenham Blewes’ – that in 1524 Lavenham is recorded as the 14^th richest town in England, paying more tax in that year than cities such as York and Lincoln. The market expanded to export all over Europe, with Blewes being famous as far away as Northern Russia.

But inevitably, bust followed boom. Wars on the continent, heavy taxation and competition from Flemish weavers, who brought finer, more fashionable cloth, meant that great numbers of workers were already being laid off by the 1530s, and such was Lavenham’s reliance on the cloth trade, there was nothing to cushion the sudden lack of money and employment.

The irony is that, had the wealth remained, the wonderful buildings that Lavenham is so famous for today would have been swept away as style and fashion evolved. Nobody could afford to rebuild them, and those that were not lost at the time were covered over or divided into tenements. No new building took place for around 300 years, when the coming of the railway brought new industries such as horse-hair weaving, coconut matting and sugar-beet processing.

Before taking us on a visual tour of some of Lavenham’s fine buildings, Jane showed us how to recognise the signs of a medieval timber-framed building, the general plan of which changed little over three centuries. We learned how the oak frame would have been erected, how the open hall would have been a communal space with little furniture, and how a person’s wealth could be conveyed by the amount of decoration, carving and wall paintings they could afford.

Jane showed us some lovely examples, ending with some pictures of the sad state of many of Lavenham’s buildings in the late 1800s, with many literally falling down or being dismantled and moved elsewhere – even to America. By the 1940s, more of the ancient buildings were condemned by the local authority, being considered unfit for human habitation.

But happily, over 300 of them remain, now listed and protected for future generations.

Jane thanked her audience and hoped to be invited back in the future.

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2 illustrations: The Weavers House (top), demolished and re-erected in Walberswick on the Suffolk coast around 1890, and Little Hall, one of Lavenham’s earliest buildings dating from c1380.