An obelisk at Somerleyton, remembers Sir Christopher Cockerell’s 1950s invention of the hovercraft, created in his shed by Wherry Dyke. - Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Heritage Open Days 2022 together with some of Suffolk’s fab crop of local museums are a great way to discover our awesome, innovative and quirky creative past for free
In Suffolk, big horizons, big hearts and big ideas seem to go hand in hand. Tune in to our history and you’ll find it piled high with an outstanding and hugely varied crop of impressive legacies, courtesy of great home-grown minds.
Pioneers, entrepreneurs and explorers; philanthropists, architects, artists and engineers; even game-changing abolitionists and Nobel Prize-winning scientists – Suffolk has been home to them all and still has a reputation for them today. We’ve an undeniably special and long-established affinity with folk who are often considered to be free-thinkers, but somehow, give or take the occasional blue wall plaque, we just don’t seem to give them pride of place.
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1964 for enabling the mass synthetic production of penicillin. - Credit: Archant Archives
Fortunately, this year the ever-popular Heritage Open Days scheme (HOD) has been doing its own spot of blue-sky thinking. Setting out to showcase astounding inventions - whether successful or otherwise - its September events across the county are on a mission to change the status quo and help us to take a closer look at the amazing legacies on our doorsteps.
Discover the home of radar or innovative swing bridges. Climb a tower built by the Normans or step inside the UK’s first ever concrete church building. There are Arts & Crafts architecture walks and 1960s progressive music talks, seaborn jet adventures and all sorts of hands-on craft and culture activities. From the Lowestoft town hall that’s finally re-inventing itself to Lavenham’s beautiful half-timbered Little Hall and one-time weavers’ showroom, the legendary insights into Suffolk’s industrious past just keep coming. What’s more, the brilliant and often family-friendly events are all free. Combine them with visits to Suffolk’s impressive selection of free-entry museums and these eye-opening insights into our historic hive of inventive activity are sure to get you buzzing.
Now in their 28th year, Heritage Open Days take place over two weeks in mid-September. Hosted by local heritage organisations and civic societies, clubbing together with councils and wider organisations, the scheme has become a national treasure in its own right, with thousands of volunteers and organisations putting on events across England. In Suffolk, although some events cluster in enterprising enclaves like Lowestoft, Bury St Edmunds, Ipswich and Felixstowe, there are inspirational offerings throughout the county’s countryside from Horringer’s Ickworth House to Giffords Hall near Stoke by Nayland and Flatford’s amazing Valley Farm.
Visit Ickworth House - inspirational heritage days out. - Credit: Barry Pullen
The amazing mechanical music collection at The Grange, Palgrave. - Credit: Lindsay Want
Look out for its great array of musical offerings too, from concerts in churches and Buffalo Bill extravaganzas in old railway parcel halls. Sounds awesome, but don’t know quite where to start? Here’s a short introduction to some of the wonders, blunders and breakthroughs which have emanated from our Suffolk stall, recorded on everything from boiler plates to blue plaques. There really is something for everyone. Go on, head out, see for free and enjoy!
Dorothy Crowfoot (Hodgkin) found the perfect recipe for success when she convinced her Beccles schoolteachers to let her do chemistry rather than cookery. In 1964, she won the Nobel Prize for work enabling the mass synthetic production of penicillin. Woodbridge’s Norman Heatley had an early hand in helping the world to battle infection by purifying penicillin in bulk, whilst Edwin Lankester of nearby Melton made a major contribution to fighting cholera.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson - Credit: Archant Archives
As the first English female doctor, Aldeburgh’s Elizabeth Garrett Anderson maybe remains Suffolk’s most locally recognised medic, but perhaps we should spare a thought for Needham Market’s dissenting clergyman-scientist, JB Priestly (1733-1804). His discovery of oxygen was pipped at the post by others!
Did you know? Penicillin ‘inventor’ Sir Alexander Fleming often worked in a shed at his Barton Mills country retreat, The Dhoon, near Mildenhall.
Don’t miss: HOD tours of Ipswich School, once attended by Nobel Prize-winning neurologist, Sir Charles Scott Sherrington.
WWI Felixstowe highflyers turned fantastical flying boats, worthy of any Jules Verne adventure, into a reality. Those early seaplanes were regrettably short-lived, but the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum has a rare restored cockpit, rediscovered as a potting shed! Felixstowe’s wartime air coastal station was the biggest in the world and also home to Flying Officer Frank Whittle who invented the jet engine.
Felixstowe class flying boats like this one took the name of the Suffolk seaside town all over the world. - Credit: Archant Archives
A Felixstowe F.5 flying-boat, flying between 1922 and 1923. - Credit: Archant Archives
Just across the Deben at Bawdsey, the first operational radar station is now a superb interactive museum. Further north, boffins tested atomic bomb fuses in the ominous pagodas on Orford Ness.
Don’t miss: HOD tours of Thetford’s former atomic weapons bunker, or a chance to see a reconstructed enigma machine.
Not just the oldest in the county, Lowestoft lifeboat station is one of the oldest in Britain. 2022’s Heritage Open Days opens its doors - and the coastguard tower at Pakefield too, in celebration of the coastguard service’s 200th anniversary.
The Frances Ann lifeboat which was stationed in Lowestoft between 1807 -1850 - Credit: Archant archives
Did you know? An obelisk by the green at Somerleyton, remembers Sir Christopher Cockerell’s 1950s invention of the hovercraft, created in his shed by Wherry Dyke.
Lowestoft shipbuilders, Brooke Marine, helped Richard Branson break the transatlantic sailing record in 1986 with Virgin Atlantic Challenger II. Why not seek out special HOD sea adventures of your own with a boat ride along the coast, or step on board the historic vessels Mincarlo, Lydia Eva and Excelsior at Lowestoft harbour. Whatever you choose, you’re sure to discover plenty of fishy stories and red herrings along the way.
The historic Lowestoft smack, Excelsior - Credit: Sail Training School
Did you know? Herring oil was very effective at protecting ships’ sails - until rats got a taste for its fishy flavour!
In this fertile county, it’s hardly surprising that Suffolk’s most well-known inventors and inventions are linked to the mechanisation of agriculture. In 1789, bright-spark Robert Ransome forged ahead with his innovative ideas for a cast iron plough in Ipswich, and 150 years later, his company was at the heart of cutting edge technologies as a world-leader and mega-manufacturer of lawnmowers.
Ransome's lawn mowers became known the world over. - Credit: Courtesy Lindsay Want
Wickham Market’s Whitmore family foundry produced first class Victorian milling machinery and at Leiston, Richard Garrett introduced the UK to its first ever assembly-line at his purpose-built ‘Long Shop’, went full steam ahead producing traction engines and built a whole town for his workforce. Like James Smyth who manufactured ground-breaking seed drills at his Peasenhall works, all these Suffolk companies took on the world, exporting right across the globe.
Top Tip: Like a spot of steampunk? Then, you’ll love the HOD event at Thetford’s Guildhall and the town’s historic Charles Burrell traction engine works.
Did you know? Inventors at Martlesham Heath’s BT research and development centre near Ipswich have been making major contributions to telecommunications and battery technology advancement for decades. They even almost won the title of inventors of the world famous hyper-link which enables click throughs across web pages, but a legal dispute found in favour of a US rival.
Thomas Cavendish of Trimley St Martin was amongst the first Englishmen to circumnavigate the globe. John Eldred of Great Saxham brought England its first taste of nutmeg, whilst Halesworth-born botantist Joseph Hooker sailed the seas with Darwin and ‘discovered’ all sorts of plant species.
Even Captain Oates of Scott’s Antarctic expedition had roots near the home of the 1939 ‘Haughley Experiment’ which saw Lady Eve Balfour and Alice Debenham cover new territory, leading to the founding of the Soil Association.
Botanist and explorer Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, - Credit: Courtesy of Chelsea School of Botanical Art.
The 2006 version of Dr Who’s famous robot-dog, K9, was created by Mickfield inventor Rex Garrod (1944-2019) who also made cheeky little children’s cartoon car star, Brum, and mean machines which battled on TV’s ‘Robot Wars’.
Suffolk inventor Rex Garrod (left) and Martin Smith from BBC's Robot Wars. - Credit: EDP
Woodbridge lays claim to the creator of kids’ TV favourite Bananas in Pyjamas, Carey Blyton, whose aunt Enid (of Famous Five and Secret Seven fame) was once a Sunday school teacher at the The Quay church in Woodbridge. Why not pop in on a HOD tour and take a look?
Engineer and inventor Tim Hunkin's quirky clock on Southwold pier. - Credit: Nick Butcher
Don’t miss… famous whacky automaton like Southwold Pier’s water clock or Under the Pier Show courtesy of inventor, Tim Hunkin. Alternatively, head to Laxfield Museum for examples of work by local legendary toy maker, Ron Fuller.
Top tip: For larger and even more colourful examples of impressive automaton, check out The Grange’s superb mechanical music collection featuring everything from historic gramophones to mighty fairground organs.
Cardinal Wolsey who designed Hampton Court Palace for himself also planned an ostentatious college in Ipswich to rival Oxford University. He made a start, but Henry VIII soon quashed his ambitious plans. Wolsey Gate is all that remains. Check it out along with the Ipswich Charter Hangings on a HOD visit to St Peter’s by the Waterfront.
The Charter Hangings are on display in St Peter's Church, Ipswich. - Credit: Archant
The Charter Hangings are on display in St Peter's Church, Ipswich. - Credit: Archant
Lowestoft had Morton Peto. In Aldeburgh it was Newson Garrett. Halesworth had Patrick Stead and in Felixstowe, Cobbold came up trumps over Colonel Tomline. Branching out to make the most of new-fangled railways or optimise river and sea transport to move goods and people as efficiently as possible, all these Victorian entrepreneurs helped changed the face of Suffolk forever.
The coast saw bridges, piers and docking basins soon turn sleepy fishing villages into fine seaside resorts, and Ipswich gave birth to an eminent collection of architects like TW Cotman, whose elegant architectural legacies make up some of the Suffolk’s finest architectural gems today. Perhaps the majestic Harvest House on Felixstowe’s cliffs presents the whole of Suffolk’s journey of self-invention in microcosm. Originally designed as a hotel, Cotman’s work was commissioned by a brewing giant, made rich from Suffolk’s fertile barleylands.
Harvest House in Felixstowe. - Credit: Clifford Hicks
Later, it became the HQ home of fertiliser manufacturer Fisons – just metres away from the cliffs where early Cambridge Minerology Professor, John Stevens Henslow, first identified the phosphatic stones which helped to make its fortune. It donated parts of its gardens for public access, eventually became apartments and now, taking pride of place in Felixstowe’s future as well as its past, seeks to share its wealth of beautiful Suffolk history by occasionally opening its doors for special tours and festival events - Heritage Open Days included. Don’t miss out. Go see and celebrate Suffolk and all its inventiveness for free.
Heritage Open Days - September 9 -18, 2022
Access is free of charge to events at participating sites. These may be held on specific dates/at specific times only and some may require pre-booking. As some venues, tours and activities can be very popular or have limited space, do plan ahead to avoid disappointment. Explore and find out more at heritageopendays.org.uk
The Grange Collection Mechanical Music Museum The Longshed, Whisstock’s Place, Woodbridge
Suffolk & Norfolk Aviation Museum, Flixton