Framlingham, Suffolk

Moat Tea Room

My parents Angela and Leslie Jecks-Wright bought the house in the picture on the right and made a successful business called the Moat Tea Room of it!  Our house was at 64 Fore Street. We used to get coaches visiting the castle, and we were kept very busy when that happened. We used to let the college boys use the upstairs room as a sort of "clubhouse".  A lot of GIs used to visit and eat there. I currently live in California. Whilst in a line in the bank we all started talking to each other.  One man on hearing my accent told me he remembered the Tea Room and my Mother's wonderful cakes. He said to me, "If you can cook like your Mother, will you marry me?"  What a compliment from a stranger so many miles from Fram!!
Dad had a small vegetable patch in the back garden. I remember each year he would dig up something of historical interest. Once it was an arrow barb and point, and another time a stone cannonball.  The fireplace in the main area was originally made of stones from the castle (long before we obtained it!)
Miss Rivers, a wonderful elderly lady in her 90's lived in the house at the very end of our building.  She was a blind lady, but kept her house spotless!  She used a board to wash her floor (the old fashioned way, on her knees!) She would wash up to the board, then moved the board and do the same.  She was very sweet and I have lovely memories of her.
One day whilst visiting Miss Rivers, Mother heard a racket going on upstairs in the tearoom. She thought Dad was moving furniture up there. On going back, Dad was surprised to see her. He thought she was upstairs moving the furniture! On inspection of the student's "Club house" nothing was moved or out of place!
Up against the wall of the pond across the street, my motorcycle (650cc BSA and sidecar) caught fire.  A fireman was in the Castle Pub and saw it, so he got on his bicycle and was peddling frantically past me, he yelled "do you want the firetruck?" I yelled back "Yes!!" He went up and sounded the alarm. The firetruck was a very welcome sight!
The building is all now a private home but it is still full of memories for me...

Suffolk - A Second Selection Photographic Memories

This 16th-century building with an 18th-century façade was built after 1564 on the site of St Mary’s Guildhall. Aubrey Thomas Wicks traded from London House. In an advertisement of 1907 he described his shop as ‘the leading house in the District for Keen and Thrifty buyers of all kind of Millinery, Drapery, Ready made clothes, outfitting, Boots etc. All goods marked in plain figures at lowest City Prices’.

Suffolk Photographic Memories

The castle was built in 1190 by the famous Bigod family, and was one of the first castles not to include a keep. Instead, it has thirteen separate towers, linked by a curtain wall, a Saracen idea brought back by returning Crusaders. It was at Framlingham in 1553 that Mary Tudor organised her army of supporters to march on Lady Jane Grey, and here, later, she proclaimed herself Queen.

East Anglia

The castle, built between 1190 and 1210, is amongst the earliest castles in England to be constructed with a fortified curtain wall. The Poor House (left) was built at the direction of Sir Robert Hitcham (d1636), who owned the castle. The gable wing dates from 1637, and the remainder from 1729. The Poor House, closed in the 1830s, had a variety of uses; at the time of this photograph it was a dwelling, and in the 1980s it became a museum.