A cold and colourless day in East Suffolk, the wind rushing across the fields whipping the grass and the bare branches of the trees.
The lane lined with cottages that I walked down a couple of weeks ago is silent. There is no sign of life apart from a digger carving up a garden.
Now the path has left the coast, there is less beauty in the views. The sandy track winds its way through farmyards and cottages and my mind starts to wander. I bring up the small clusters of verse that I know. They all seem to be about life and death.
‘And death shall have no dominion, dead men naked they shall be one with the man in the wind and the West moon..’
‘What dreams may come when we shuffle off this mortal coil..’
‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time..’
It’s a Monday but I’m back here. Dad got a urinary infection yesterday and we thought it might be his final call. He couldn’t swallow and he was completely blank. Mum sent a group message to the family and, being in London, I decided to come back.
He looks pale and he stares at me but his mouth is turned down. No words. No smiles. None of the warmth that was always there. He stays in bed and we all hold our breath. Everything is on hold. Nothing can be planned. We can only live in the moment.
The last of the cottages – Suffolk pink like the one where I grew up – passes to my left with a miniature Christmas tree left by its bins turning yellow. Coal and blue tits come looping out of the hedgerow alongside the track one after the other as I get closer. Each one flies so quickly like a dead leaf in the wind only to land a few yards further on while another closer to my step comes rushing out and loops around the one before before the first has landed. And so it goes on, this whirling and looping like some game. It reminds me of a highland dance.
The track turns a bend and I can see Butley Church through some trees to the left. Stark and remote. The sand track now proceeds due North in a straight line. There are pigs in huts and bands of fir trees on either side. At one point a perfect lawn is suddenly stretched for hundreds of metres alongside the path and a silver strip beyond it is the Butley River. This is turf commercially grown to be sold for people’s lawns. It’s obviously suited to the sandy soil because there are swathes of lawn similar to it close to here. It’s so flat and so big 2 teams could play a proper game of cricket on it.
I keep on trying to hold on to the memories of how he was, not how he is now. He had a wonderful sense of ease with himself and with others. Wherever he was he was able to get chatting to people: when we were on holiday, or at occasions where he didn’t know many people or in church. He had this boyish enthusiam about life and a genuine interest in all people. I remember schoolfriends saying ‘Hey, your dad’s cool.’ And I guess he was.
I think about the times he used to take me fishing or camping when I was a boy. He and I camping in his orange tent on the moors at Midelney in Somerset. I guess it was 1982, only because I have photos of me in the England World Cup strip from that year beaming at the camera holding up a mud brown squiggle at arm’s length. It was an eel that I caught in one of the rhynes that managed to curl itself around the line and left slime all over my hands as I desperately tried to unhook it from that perilous, neat little mouth. Dad had warned me about the teeth. I was thrilled.
The track continues its pencil straight course past Low Farm. The view turns ugly and so does my mood. The land is being churned up by diggers while whole rows of pig houses with white flapping tarpaulin roofs have the air of a concentration camp. The wind also brings the smell of pig shit. I quicken my step missing the freshness and clean lines of the path when it does follow the coast.
I am relieved when the track meets a road and the landscape changes to marshland. The Butley River is coming to meet me meandering its way through reed beds to Butley Mill. The mill house is a beautiful red brick building all refitted to create a new home for someone. Butley Mills studios across the road is a nice contrast. Dilapidated red brick barns that seem all to be used as artist studios. Random sculptures are plonked around the plot. There’s a nice DIY feel to the place. The sort of place you feel like you could let yourself into one of the studios without it being an intrusion.
The path now joins the road and heads towards Chillesford. Looking back, I see the mills and Butley River surrounded by reed beds.
Shortly afterwards, the road reaches Chillesford and I peal off the path to take the road back to Butley.
Chillesford is a bit spooky today. It’s silent. No pedestrians, no cars on the road. The old school, now a house, is on the left and the last building on the way out of the village is the church set back about 200 metres from the road on a raised bit of land surrounded by gravestones.
This church is unusual for Suffolk because of its colour. It has a golden coloured stone which reminds me of the Ham stone churches of Central Somerset that get their stone from Ham Hill. Chillesford Church is made from Coralline Crag, one of only two churches in England to be built from this material. The other is Wantisden, less than a mile away. The quarry for the stone at Chillesford sits directly behind the church.
There’s something about the way it’s so exposed on its hill that makes it seem a bit bleaker, a bit rougher like we’re in a frontier town in the Wild West. Perhaps my imagination is getting too carried away but most churches in England here are enclosed either by hedge or by wall.
It’s not unlike when I went to Navan in Ireland and its surrounding area and was surprised by how several houses didn’t have a recognisable garden – the land stretched unhindered to the walls of the house.
On leaving Chillesford I walk the road for about a mile then turn off and walk across 2 fields to get to the road which heads straight and South East back from Butley village towards the smattering of houses near Carmen’s Wood where I started.
The sky is almost dark now and great dark clumps are moving from the South. I know that rain is due about 5 but there’s still a place that I want to see before I reach the car. After 20 minutes on the straight road I make out a dull orange glow through the woods to my right and the sound of a chainsaw.
Finally a small road turns off to the right signposted to Woodbridge and in a dip on the left of this road is the priory. Founded in 1171 by a justiciar to Henry II for the Canons Regular (or Augustinians) there is little of the old priory left apart from the incredibly well preserved 14th Century gatehouse which retains all of its features from when it was first built.
According to Wikipedia the gatehouse was built ‘to provide a grand entrance and accommodate important visitors.’ The entry also states how it is ‘one of the finest examples of Decorated Gothic architecture in Suffolk’.
Most impressive is the large heraldic display on the main facade with ‘5 rows of 14 chequered squares 35 shields of arms carved in high relief, with whimsical figures and grotesques crowding into their surrounds, alternate with carved fleur-de-lys set into flushwork panel. Sir James Mann identified the upper row as showing The Holy Roman Empire, France, St Edmund’s Bury, Christ’s Passion, England (before it became quartered with France in 1340), Leon and Castile, and Hurtshelve. In the second and third rows are English baronial families and in the fourth and fifth are East Anglian gentry’ (Wikipedia)
The Priory is now a wedding venue. There’s a long table with a white cloth laid out in the main hall. I’m rather pleased with this – that an old priory is still partly in use and not left in ruins.
It’s only a short walk from here across the field to my car. It’s almost dark and the wind is really up. This is Storm Brendan which hit the West Coast last night.
I want to ask Dad about Butley Priory. I know he would have an interesting anecdote about it but I can’t. I have to get used to this. Wanting to share, ask, listen but then remember I can’t. It’s time to see how he is. I reach the car just as the first spots of rain hit my jacket.
The Slow Walker 