The Cabin Sudbury

The Local Area

Opposite the house is a gate leading on to the town’s famous water meadows, a protected site supervised by the Sudbury Common Lands’ ranger and his team. The water meadows surround the town on the south and west. There are numerous very pleasant, undemanding walks criss-crossing the meadows and the abandoned railway track.

Sudbury itself is an ancient market town with many very old buildings, including three splendid medieval churches and a number of houses dating back to Tudor times. A museum dedicated to the painter Thomas Gainsborough, who was born in Sudbury, is situated in the town. The town also has a very fine variety of shops and eating places. Its busy market operates on Thursdays and Saturdays and attracts many folk from the surrounding villages.

Sudbury provides easy access to a large number of picturesque villages, many of which are within ten miles of the town – Long Melford, well-known for its large number of antique shops, Castle Hedingham, with its magnificent Norman keep, Cavendish with its picture-postcard green and Suffolk-pink thatched cottages, Clare, with its beautiful church, Lavenham, famous for its beautiful preserved medieval buildings, especially the Guildhall, Kersey renowned for its ford across the road through the village – to name but a few! This area of south Suffolk and north Essex is rural England at its most peaceful and gentle.

Slightly further afield but still within easy driving distance, are the principal East Anglian towns of Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Colchester and Ipswich. If open country is more to your liking, then Constable country, centred on Dedham, with Flatford Mill close by, provides the essence of the idyllic English countryside. The coast, with Felixstowe, Clacton, Frinton, Walton on the Naze, Dovercourt and many other charming smaller resorts, is just over an hour’s drive away.