WI Notes
AT THE MEETING in January Mr Andrew Jackson gave the W.I. an illustrated A-Z
Whistle-stop tour of Suffolk Villages. We started at Aldeburgh with a slide of
the Moot Hall where the first lady doctor, Elizabeth Garrett-Anderson,
officiated as the Mayor. We also saw a slide of the shell-like sculpture on the
beach, a memorial to Benjamin Britten. It was at The Plough Inn in Blundeston
that Dickens got ideas for "David Copperfield", and at Clare the Swan
Inn has a sign which is the oldest inn sign in England actually built on to the
inn itself. In Debenham there is a cider factory which first started business
in 1738.
So many of the villages we visited have connections with famous people - Cockfield and Robert Louis Stevenson, Eye where Frederick Ashton lived behind a crinkle crankle wall, Hartest and Terry Waite, Long Melford and Beatrix Potter and Pettistree and Arthur Ransome. At every stop and every slide there was a story to tell. It was a most fascinating talk and made many of us want to spend a holiday touring Sufflok.
On the 20th February we shall be having a visit to Waitrose in Newmarket commencing at 6.30pm.