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Stowmarket Town Council

WELCOME TO STOWMARKET
2000 YEARS OF STOWMARKET’S HISTORY
DID YOU KNOW?
WHY VISIT STOWMARKET
MID SUFFOLK LEISURE CENTRE
ARTS AND FESTIVALS IN STOWMARKET
STOWMARKET TOWN CENTRE
CHURCHES TOGETHER IN STOWMARKET
CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL
USEFUL INFORMATION
CITIZENS ADVICE BUREAU
OUR ADVERTISERS

 

Stowmarket Town
Council Contact Information


Stowmarket Town Council Offices
Milton House,
Milton Road South,
Stowmarket
Suffolk.
IP14 1E

Tel: 01449 612060

Email: Stowmarket Town Council
Stowmarket Town Website

 

2000 Years of Stowmarket's History

There is archaeological evidence that the land upon which Stowmarket stands has been continuously inhabited since at least the Roman times about two thousand years ago. A Roman villa alongside some Anglo-Saxon roundhouses was discovered near Sheepcote Hall Farm when the Cedars Park Estate was being developed; a Roman kiln was also found on the Elizabeth Way site. There have also been some fragmentary signs of Roman occupation nearer the town centre. One wonders if they had to deal with Boudicca and her Iceni warriors at any time during their stay. There is no knowledge of what the name of this encampment was although it is reckoned to be close to the Roman camp of Sito Magus which was known to be located in roughly the centre of what was to become the County of Suffolk.

When the Romans left, the Anglo-Saxon dominance rose (or more correctly for this region it was just the Angles) where the true Angleish [English] language was born. They divided the bulbous part of Britain facing the North Sea now known as East Anglia into two administrative sections: the Nord-fulk and Sud-fulk. It was these people who further divided the land into ‘hundreds’, where each would contain roughly one hundred settlements. The Hundred of ‘Stow,’ located roughly in the centre of the county, means the ‘place’ or ‘site’ of significance. After a relatively peaceful period, the country was invaded by the Danes and there has been evidence unearthed in the Danescourt area to suggest that a Danish camp was situated there. However, on or around that area now occupied by Danescourt Avenue, Beaumont Way and Finborough Road, even earlier signs of human occupation were discovered, such as flint axes and arrow heads from the Palaeolithic period of prehistory.

The Anglo-Saxons did eventually join forces and ousted the Danes and slowly united the whole country. However, this period was brought to a close in 1066 when the Normans arrived and quickly stamped their mark on everything. When the Normans took over this area they inherited the sites of Tornei, Ciltuna and Ultun, which would later evolve into Thorney, Chilton and Uptown or Upland.

It is interesting to note that the site occupied by the Houses of Parliament in London is also on the site of the area anciently known as Thorney, which also has a ‘Tot Hill'. It is suggested that it refers to Isle of Thorns and related to an area of higher land surrounded by marshland and bog which was a crossing point on the Thames. No-one could consider the Gipping or the Ratt as being on a par with the Thames, but the general layout around these rivers is very marshy close to the town and even proved to be a problem for the Victorian engineers when laying the railway tracks into the town in the 1840’s, as well as the construction company putting up the flyover for the A45 (A14) Stowmarket by-pass in 1975. The Normans created many manors to further sub-divide the settlements so that they could allocate land to Norman gentry, to dispossess the previous Anglo-Saxon landowners. Thus Thorney was split into the manors of Thorney Leesons, Thorney Mumpliers with Brasiers, Thorney Campsey, Thorney Columbers and Thorney Hall. It was the latter Thorney Hall that was mentioned as having a market in the Domesday Book of 1086. It was the market for the hundred of Stow which evolved into the Stow-Market (as opposed to the Hartismere Market or any of the hundreds etc.). There is still a Columbyne (Columbers) Hall and a Brasiers Hall locally to give clues as to where some of the other manors where. The site of the Thorney Hall was situated between the railway station and the Creeting Road roughly on the site of the Mid Suffolk District Council’s Creeting Road Depot. After the coming of the railway in 1846, the Hall, which had been the residence of the King’s Bailiff in the 12th century, was soon abandoned as a residence and converted into one of the many maltings that dominated the town throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but has long since been demolished.

Stowmarket eventually separated itself from the Thorney Hall side of the River Gipping and evolved into the triangular shaped piece of land wedged between the Ratt and the Gipping, with Stowupland starting at the Pickerel Bridge in Stowupand Street and Combs starting at Boulters Bridge in Ipswich Road. This set-up lasted until the 1930’s, when the town boundaries were changed to incorporate Newton Road and Creeting Road areas and also the Combs Ford and Poplar Hill areas. Up until then Stowmarket people had considered everyone from ‘over the river’ as ‘foreigners’.

Throughout the Mediaeval period Stowmarket has very little written about it, but there have been a few buildings identified as being built in the fourteenth century. David Stewarts’ Solicitors next to the traffic lights in the Market Place has an unusual heavily-sooted, scissor-braced roof that dates from the middle of the 1300’s and the empty building between the Queens Head and the Authentic Restaurant (ex BabyTime) dates from about 1400. A mediaeval moated site was found in the precincts of the ICI land during redevelopment work and became the site of an archaeological dig. Edward III granted the Town a market charter in July 1347 and the market continues to serve local people every Thursday and Saturday in the Market Place. The mediaeval heart of Stowmarket lies around the parish church of St. Peter and St. Mary and in the area leading down to the riverbank. The Tudor period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw a large increase in building in the town and despite losing several significant buildings in the developments of the 1960’s, many of these are still in existence, although often hidden behind Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian façades. Today the town has one hundred and thirty-one buildings listed by the Department of National Heritage as buildings of ‘special architectural or historic interest’ and one, the parish church, is classified as being of ‘exceptional interest’. The Town Centre and a large area around it is now designated as a Conservation Area to help conserve those buildings that remain.

The seventeenth century was the period of the English Civil War and although no battles took place in this area, Stowmarket did have a controversial vicar in Thomas Young. He had been John Milton’s tutor and it is believed the poet visited his old master on more than one occasion at his Vicarage, which is currently the home of the Town Council Offices, Citizens Advice Bureau and the Thorntree Rooms. Young opposed many traditions of the established church and had to flee to Germany for several years because of his extremist views. He was also against Cromwell’s ‘Commonwealth’ and favoured the monarchy and the stratified society that Cromwell tried to bring down.

Following this period the town seems to have been in decline. It was known for woollens, bombazines and stuffs, but during the middle of the 1700’s the malting industry began to flourish and Stowmarket quickly became one of the largest malt-producing towns in the country; at its peak it had seventeen large maltings spread around the town and was second only to Burton-on-Trent for its output.

In 1793 the River Gipping was made navigable to the tidal port of Ipswich and this helped to regenerate the town’s prosperity. Goods were sent down the river by barge, around the coast and up the Thames to London and in return most of the capital’s horse manure problem was sent by barges back up the Gipping so that it could be spread on the land as fertiliser. Ironically, of the many merchants this new-found trading boom attracted, one was the Prentice family who went on to produce an ‘artificial manure’ as well as various other chemical processes. Through the nineteenth century the maltings and chemical industries came to dominate the town and set the mould for its future development.

It was one of these chemical processes, the production of guncotton, which was to have a devastating effect on the town. On August 11th 1871, an explosion rocked the factory that was situated between the river and the railway line at the end of the Lime Tree Place and Bridge Street area of town. A second, larger explosion happened a short while later, just after two of the Prentice family arrived to see the extent of the damage and they were unfortunately killed, along with over twenty other people, some of whom were barely more than children. This event became headline news and was reported around the world. It also had the macabre distinction of attracting a large crowd of sightseers who arrived by train, as well as horse-drawn coaches, from many miles around to see the terrible damage done to the town. The Church windows were blown in, as were those of Combs church. The walls of the church tower were also damaged, but the true extent of this damage was not fully realized until the repair work of the 1990’s.

In the early years of the nineteenth century James Woods set up his Iron Foundry close to the centre of the town. He gradually bought up the gardens and premises behind shops and houses on one side of Bury Street and built workshops, foundries and ancilliary buildings that covered a wide area from behind the Baldwin’s store in Tavern Street, stretching up to behind Simpson’s in Bury Street. This works continued on that site for about one hundred years until taken over by the Tibbenham family, when it was moved to the Prentice Road site and became the Suffolk Iron Foundry (SIF) along the river and railway. For most of the twentieth century SIF became famous for its lawnmowers and mangles as well as SIFbronze welding rods and equipment. This business has been depicted on the parapets of one of the new bridges recently built over the River Gipping opposite Hollingsworth Road along Gipping Way. SIF became Atco-Qualcast and continued making lawnmowers; currently it is a part of the Bosch Group whose products continue to be made in Stowmarket today. The other bridge that links the town with the Cedars Park development (Navigation Approach) depicts the history of the Navigation, showing the horse-drawn barges and the maltings along the towpath etc.

Mention has already been made about the coming of the railway in 1846. This was when the Rev. A.G.H. Hollingsworth had just produced his book about the town’s history based on some of the old papers found in the ancient church chests. The railway brought about the decline and eventual death of the Navigation, but added to the general prosperity of the town by making better links with the outside world. Stowmarket has also benefitted greatly by the old A45 (A14) highway for the same reasons.

Into the twentieth century, the Prentice’s Guncotton and Chemical works became Necol, a branch of Nobel Chemicals, which then evolved into Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) and which is known by the world famous brands such as Dulux for home decorating as well as car-paint finishes for many of the top brands of cars.

The popular traditional Thursday and Saturday markets that have been at the heart of the town for centuries are today supplemented by monthly Farmers’ Markets and occasional Continental and specialist markets. As well as being a market town, Stowmarket still has a strong manufacturing and industrial presence and even today it has kept a link with the past, as the malt for the centre of every Malteser comes from the Muntons factory in Stowmarket - another major employer within the Town.




Whilst every care has been taken in compiling this publication and the statements contained herein are believed to be correct, the publishers and promoters cannot accept responsibility for any inaccuracies. Reproduction of any part of this publication in any format, without permission, is strictly forbidden.
Photographs courtesy of Stowmarket Town Council.