The walk starts and finishes in Hadleigh, attractively sited on the banks of the River Brett, a tributary of the River Stour. From Norman times to the end of the 16th century, Hadleigh grew wealthy, first from wool, then cloth. At the height of its cloth-making career in the 1500s, it was the third richest town in Suffolk, after Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds.
The showpiece at the heart of Hadleigh is the group of medieval buildings set round the churchyard: the flint and freestone church, the half-timbered Guildhall, and the red-brick Deanery Tower. The oldest of these is St Mary's Church, built in the 1200s, then enlarged during the 14th century and again in the 15th century. The tower, belonging to the original Norman church, supports a lead-covered spire which soars above the town. At the bottom of the spire, there is a clock bell dating from the mid-1300s, one of the oldest in East Anglia. On going into the church, notice that the vaulted ceiling in the porch remains unfinished — almost certainly because the Black Death of 1348 killed off the masons. Outstanding features inside the church include the traceried chancel roof, fine vaulting in the vestry, and splendid bench-ends.
The East Anglian martyr-king was decapitated by the Danes under Guthrum in 870 at the Battle of Hoxne. Eight years later, Guthrum himself was defeated by Alfred at the Battle of Edington. To escape execution, he accepted Christianity and was subsequently allowed to remain as ruler of the Eastern counties. He died at Hadleigh in 890 and is buried there, beneath the present church near the 14th-century "Guthrum tomb" in the south aisle, it is said.
Beyond the churchyard stands the 15th-century Guildhall, which for over 300 years was the hub of Hadleigh's commercial life. The western side of the close is dominated by the Deanery Tower, a Tudor gatehouse built in 1495 by Archdeacon Pykenham as a grand entrance to his new rectory. He died prematurely before work ever started on the house. Apart from its superb brickwork, the tower is also famous as the birthplace in 1833 of the Oxford Movement — a group within the Church of England that rejected the Protestant elements in Anglicanism and eventually developed Anglo-Catholicism.
The churchyard complex lies just off the High Street, a long, wide thoroughfare of enchanted old inns, shops, and dwellings with overhanging eaves and plaster fronts, some of them pargetted. Pargetting, a form of decorative plasterwork, is traditional to Suffolk as well as parts of Essex and Cambridgeshire. The decoration ranges from elementary combed marks and simple geometric patterns to intricate plant motifs and even murals. Nearby Angel Street, George Street, and Benton Street present a delightful kaleidoscope of building styles.
Just to the south of the churchyard stands Toppersfield Hall, under the Normans one of Hadleigh's first "manors". Nearby is Toppersfield Bridge, the only major medieval bridge still in use in Suffolk.
The village of Kersey is often described as Suffolk's most picturesque village. Its main street — a charming collection of half-timbered, color-washed cottages — plunges down both sides of a steep valley. At the bottom, in front of a superb Tudor red-brick house, is a ford across the stream that gives Kersey its name, where ducks have priority over cars.
At the top of the hill on the south side stands Kersey Church, its battlemented flint tower dominating the landscape. The present building largely dates from the 14th and 15th centuries when an extensive reconstruction took place (again interrupted by the Black Death, which devastated the village). But although the exterior has changed little during the last 500 years, the interior was badly damaged at the Reformation and then much restored in Victorian times. Some original features remain, however, including elaborate ceiling tracery in the south porch, a delicately carved font and eagle lectern in the nave, and the rood screen with colored panels in the north aisle. Also in the north aisle is a 12th-century font.
The very first church on this spectacular site was Saxon, and the fact that there were two reconstructions so close together indicates Kersey's growing wealth won from wool. The Domesday Book shows that sheep farming was already extensive, and during the next five centuries cloth-making became increasingly important, especially during the 1400s and 1500s. Tradition maintains that the village specialized in a coarse, narrow-ribbed cloth known as kersey; Shakespeare mentions it several times, though there is doubt as to whether it originated in Kersey.
When the woollen industry collapsed, Kersey relied on agriculture. The last century and this one have seen a fall in the population, and those who remain either work locally or are retired.
From Kersey, the route heads back across country to Hadleigh, and its final section follows a pretty woodland path along the River Brett.
