UK2013: Sudbury Town

These are some pictures from wandering around the town in Sudbury.

Painted houses feature strongly in Suffolk architecture. The houses are made from wattle and daub; this is a technique using thin wood strips or twigs woven together to make walls, and then coated in daub, which is made from hay and earth and water mixed together and allowed to harden. This is then painted in the variety of bright colours that one sees around Suffolk.

Some older buildings have exposed timber frames.

As does this pub in town. I like the strong windows here too.

And some go for really intense colours, and not a right-angle in the place...

Paler tones abound on this street.

These houses adjacent to the cricket pitch all complement each other.

This is the Mill House Hotel, where I have stayed in the past. It is alongside the water meadows. It contains a water wheel in the bar/restaurant area, which the river runs through.

Market day is on Thursday in Sudbury, and takes over the town centre.

This stall had some lovely fruit and vegetables.

Look at all this rhubarb! You can get it in Texas but it's imported and expensive.

This is the Quay Theatre, with some early morning fishermen.

And some ducks, making patterns on the water.

This is the old Corn Exchange. It is now the town's library. I should have taken a picture on Tuesday evening when the lights were on; it has some very unusual patterns in the glass windows.

Detail of the archway over the front door. Not sure why there's fish represented on a corn market, unless the tradesmen expanded their repertoire.

The statue in front of St Peter's here is of Thomas Gainsborough, a famous English artist who made his home in Sudbury.

Close up of Mr Gainsborough in the rain, the next morning.

The dog here is a Dalmatian. His head sits on one of many red pillars around town; these form a historical trail and each pillar has something different on top. The dog is looking across the street at a memorial flowerbed/sink dedicated to Dodie Smith, who wrote '101 Dalmatians'. In one scene, the dogs come through Sudbury town, and that passage of text is inscribed on a plaque next to the sink basin.

This is the top of an archway that used to lead to a pair of schools, but is now (sadly) a parking lot. Note that the schools share the same saints names as the local churches.

Lastly, this mosaic work is above a shop on North Street. I did not see any more mosaics. There's probably a story behind this one somewhere. I wonder what happened in 1876?