Bury St Edmunds and surrounding areas, September 2024

Our final two-day tour of the year saw an enthusiastic band of Turret Clock Group members meet in the Bury St Edmunds area on Friday 27 September 2024. This cathedral and market town in West Suffolk, England, contains two historic landmarks – Bury St Edmunds Abbey and the cathedral church of St Edmundsbury.

As with our previous recent tours, we used a coach as our main form of transport. Whilst it removes the treasure hunt aspect of the past it does provide a more relaxing and friendly time for us all.

Day one

From the hotel, we travelled to our first port of call at St Leonard, Horringer where we met with Graham Newman who had, with all his local knowledge, made this tour possible. Thank you Graham!

The church was almost entirely rebuilt in 1818 by the Hervey Family, Earls of Bristol at Ickworth Park. It is remarkably light and airy inside despite much stained-glass. The clock is a Benson flatbed unusually with a compensated pendulum and now fitted with second generation winders. The dial was restored recently.

From Horringer we travelled to see a private collection where six tower clocks were housed – including an unusual Peacock of Huntingdon with asymmetric crutch, compensated pendulum and Ting-Tang half hour chime. This turned out to be a great location for not just clocks, but even an automatic piano organ and a traction engine! The hosts very kindly supplied refreshments, with all proceeds going to charity.

The last stop before lunch was at the very impressive church of St Peter & St Paul, Lavenham. It is a notable Wool church and regarded as one of the finest examples of late perpendicular gothic architecture in England. The clock is signed by Thomas Watts in 1775 and is a pagoda-framed clock of which there are a number in East Anglia. It is possible that these clocks were actually made by either William Smith or Charles Penton of Moorfields, London. The separate chiming unit is a later addition and surprisingly there is no external dial.

From Lavenham we travelled to The Food Museum, Stowmarket. This museum, originally called the Museum of East Anglian Life, opened in 1967 and presents items in the collection of local people. It serves to preserve, restore and display objects from rural East Anglia. In 2022 the name was changed to the Food Museum as so much of the collection had the same common thread. The site runs for some 84 acres and includes seventeen historic buildings.

Here we viewed an ancient wooden framed clock, originally situated in Stowmarket parish church, with a large diameter tune-playing barrel. An unusual feature of this clock was the screw gear arrangement for driving the fly on the striking train. This is a fascinating museum with several interesting items on display including farm machinery and another traction engine. After viewing the clock we headed across to one of their many buildings for lunch provided by the catering team at the museum. An excellent opportunity to catch up with everyone and discuss the clocks we had seen so far.

Refreshed we headed to the nearby church of St Peter & St Mary on foot. In the tower is a three-train Gillett & Johnston flatbed, with gravity escapement, dating from the early twentieth century.

From there we returned to the luxury of the coach and travelled north west to St Mary, Badwell Ash where we found an early iron-framed clock signed ‘J. Rosier Lavenham’ on the setting dial. There are many things to enjoy in this fifteenth-century church. The porch has Marian monograms in the flushwork and, low on the south-east buttress, a blacksmith’s anvil and tools. Inside, the angels on the hammerhead beams were restored in the nineteenth century. There are also figures on the wall posts and an ornate fourteenth- century font. In the west window there is a panel of glass depicting a fork-bearded man.

Our travels drew to a close with a visit to St Peter & St Paul, Bardwell. Their clock is an early timber-frame but the maker is unknown as the setting dial is blank. The original clock is believed to date from 1659 and was lowered to a different level in 1670. Quite a bit of detail has been discovered in the church records about the maintenance and those responsible for the winding of the clock, but very little about whether the original clock had been replaced.

The porch at Bardwell features fine flintwork, niches with carved figures, and coats of arms of the de Berdewell and de Pakenham families. It was built at the same time as the tower and the rest of the church in the late 1300s. Inside there is another magnificent hammerbeam roof with carved and painted bosses.

From Bardwell the coach transported us back to the hotel, before returning to take us for the Group Dinner at Ashlar House Masonic Centre. Here we were amazed to find that the centre pieces for each table were not a floral decoration, but a turret clock!

Graham Newman and his team had done a marvellous job to make us feel very much at home for our dinner. The food was good and the staff very helpful and friendly. After the dinner, Graham went around each of the clocks to tell us more about them. An excellent evening was had by all.

Day two

Day two dawned sunny but chilly for the end of September, but after a good breakfast we all headed off on foot across the car park and churchyard to the Norman Tower. We again met with Graham and one of the bell ringers, to be given the opportunity to see both the ringing chamber and the bells. Sadly all that is left of the former clock are the weights at ground level.

A peel of twelve bells is located in the Norman Tower. The original ten bells were cast in 1785 by Thomas Osborn of Downham Market. In 1973 the bells were rehung in an iron frame at a lower level in the tower. Following a public appeal a further two bells were added at Easter 2021. A thirteenth bell was added in 2013 which allows beginners to practice a full octave without having to use the three heaviest bells. The bells are rung on a Sunday before the morning and evening services and also for weddings and other special occasions.

The Norman Tower was previously the main gateway to the Abbey. It is detached from the Cathedral and was built between 1120 and 1148. The tower is one of the oldest buildings in the UK and one of the most complete Norman buildings in England.

Martyn Taylor, local historian and chairman of the Bury Society, gave us a potted history of the area on the green outside Bury St Edmunds Cathedral.

After Martyn’s very interesting talk about St Edmund we walked up the road to St. Mary, Bury St Edmunds, where we were welcomed by Rosie Perham, guide and church warden, who gave us not only an interesting talk about the history of the church, but also tea and biscuits.

The first church to stand on the site was built in the seventh century. A second church was built in the twelfth century replacing the first, as it was demolished to make space for the construction of the south wing of the Abbey church. The oldest part of the existing building is the decorated chancel (c. 1290). A major renovation between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries saw the building of the nave, aisles and tower. Mary Tudor, Queen of France and favourite sister of Henry VIII was buried in the abbey at this time. When the Abbey was destroyed her remains were brought to St Mary’s and reburied. The west window is believed to be the largest of any parish church in the country, measuring 35 ft 6in by 8 ft 6in.

An excellent example of a tavern clock by George Graham is in the nave and situated above a memorial to the fifty-five men who drowned off Cape Town when the HMS Birkenhead, a steam frigate, went aground in 1852.

In the tower is a large three-train turret clock by Gillett & Johnston. The clock has suffered from modernisation and then relocation into the rather hostile environment of the belfry. As a final ignominy the previously removed parts saved in the 1970s were scrapped after an architect’s report suggested their removal despite being labelled, reported and deemed safe. Unfortunately the parts could not be found and so were lost. A warning to us all!

From St Mary we walked via Angel Hill to the Moyse’s Hall Museum – noting the projecting double-drum clock of Dipples, the Jeweller, which is a Potts flatbed timepiece.

At Moyse’s Hall, Bury St Edmunds we were welcomed by Alex McWhirter, their Curator. Alex looks after the Frederic Gershom Parkington Collection, the early Norman Tower clock on display and a three-train Moore in the tower, which we were able to visit.

The Grade I listed, Moyse’s Hall is thought to have been built around 1180. There is much debate as to whether or not it was a Jewish merchant’s house. It has certainly had a great number of uses. In 1895, before it became a museum, part was in use by the Great Eastern Railway as a Parcel Receiving and Enquiry Office, with another section being incorporated into the Castle Hotel. It has also been used as the town’s jail, police station, and as a workhouse.

Lunch was next on the agenda and several of us took the opportunity to eat outside in the sunshine at The Market Square.

A short walk back to the War Memorial at Angel Hill with time for an ice cream, we boarded the coach for the last leg of the tour.

Our first stop was St Mary, Culford. Situated next to Culford Hall, which is now a school. It contains an ancient two-train iron-framed clock resembling that from the Norman Tower.

The church was used by the families who lived at Culford Hall almost as a private chapel. Consequently it has many interesting memorials from the Bacon, Benyon, Cornwallis and Cadogan, as well as two crypts for the burials of the Cornwallis and Cadogan families.

Next we visited West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village where we discovered a number of tower clocks and other exciting items to see in their store.

West Stow is the site of an early Anglo-Saxon village, occupied from AD 420–650, over 400 years before the Norman Conquest. In 1976 the West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village Trust was formally established to manage the site. At that stage there were three reconstructed houses within the village. The trust was registered as a charity by the Charity Commissioners in 1977. West Suffolk’s Heritage Team currently manages the day-to-day running of the reconstructed Anglo-Saxon village on behalf of the trust.

Following tea and cake in their cafe we walked back to the coach.

Our tour ended at St Mary, Mildenhall, where the coach was able to drop us off at the bus station.

Here we found another interesting timber framed clock and tune player.

This church is reputed to be the largest in Suffolk and has many original features. The decorated chancel survives from an earlier building. The forty metre tower was completed in 1460 with later Victorian stair turret. The north porch is vast with a vaulted ceiling of great quality. Inside, the hammerhead beams do not support anything but feature figures with grotesque faces. The carvings on the spandrels, however, are exquisite.

We thoroughly enjoyed our Bury St Edmunds Turret Clock Tour and would like to thank Graham Newman and his team, as well as Martyn Taylor, Rosie Perham, Alex McWhirter and Kevin the coach driver, from St Edmunds Travel, for their help and all their local knowledge which made our visit possible.

AHS TCG Committee

All photos used with this report were taken by Sue Hines. The text has been somewhat abridged. The full version will appear in the TCG Newsletter.