86 - South Suffolk and North Essex Clayland : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

The South Suffolk and North Essex Clayland National Character Area (NCA) shares a boundary with six other NCAs: Suffolk Coast and Heaths, South Norfolk and High Suffolk Claylands, The Brecks, East Anglian Chalk, Chilterns and the Northern Thames Basin. They all share a generally flat topography, with underlying bedrock geology of Late Cretaceous Chalk overlain by sand and gravel deposits as well as glacial tills. The underlying chalk aquifer supplies the population of East Anglia, functionally linking these areas.

To the north-east the landscape flows seamlessly into the flatter and more open South Norfolk and High Suffolk Claylands NCA, which forms part of the same boulder clay arable plateau. Intervisibility between the NCAs is varied due to the claylands’ low, undulating nature. Transport links include the A140 to Norwich and the Great Eastern Main Line between London and Norwich.

To the north-west the NCA abuts the dry, open landscape of the Brecks. Views from the elevated plateau extend across the Brecks to ‘the ship of the Fens’, Ely Cathedral. In dry years the rivers in the Ely Ouse catchment supply water via the Ely Ouse to Essex Transfer Scheme to the headwaters of the Suffolk and Essex rivers, the Stour and the Pant/Blackwater. Water is then abstracted from the rivers to the reservoirs of Abberton and Hanningfield in the Northern Thames Basin NCA, to supply the increasing demand for potable water from south Essex and London.

To the west, the broad-scale character of the East Anglian Chalk NCA rises away from the claylands. Intervisibility is often framed by beech shelterbelts, although generally views are open and panoramic. The Wadlow Wind Farm, north of Balsham, is a prominent feature across the NCAs’ dividing boundary. The River Granta flows westwards from the claylands, forming the River Cam in Cambridge. The M11 and A10 dissect the western claylands, linking the East Anglian Chalk to the Northern Thames Basin, while in the north the A14 and the Ipswich to Cambridge rail line create functional links.

Links to the Northern Thames Basin NCA are created by the rivers Rib, Ash and Stort, which flow south along watercourses incised into heavy boulder clays, while to the south-east the rivers Colne, Blackwater, Brain, Ter and Chelmer flow from the clay plateau eastwards to the North Sea. Flood storage areas such as the Sible Hedingham lagoons ease flood risk further downstream in the Northern Thames Basin and Greater Thames Estuary NCAs. Views extend to the shallow wooded ridgeline that swings round in an arc from Tiptree to Epping Forest, enclosing the area.

In the east along the lower part of the Stour Valley, the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) extends into the adjoining Suffolk Coast and Heaths and Northern Thames Basin NCAs. The River Gipping flows into the River Orwell at Ipswich, which straddles the boundary between the NCAs. The East Coast Main Line and the A14 and A12 trunk roads also create functional links.

Distinct areas

• The lower half of the Stour Valley – the Dedham Vale.

The South Suffolk and North Essex today

The South Suffolk and North Essex Clayland’s chalky, boulder clay plateau is dissected by small-scale undulating river valley topography. Views from the plateau, which rises to 161 m above sea level, are often extensive, with large, open skies. The winding river valleys are smaller in scale, with an intimate sense of enclosure, particularly in their upper reaches.

The area is underlain by Late Cretaceous Chalk that is exposed in redundant chalk quarries and pits that feature throughout the area, such as at Little Blakenham and Claydon. In places, London Clay and other Palaeogene deposits overlie the Chalk. Sand and gravel deposits are often exposed on the sides of the many deeply incised river valleys, particularly in the upper reaches of the Stour and its tributaries, as well as flanking the valley flood plains in the form of river terraces. They are often exploited by quarrying, which exposes important geological sequences. The overlying glacial till gives rise to heavy clay soils full of flints. The Chalk strongly influences the calcareous nature of many of the area’s soils, and consequently the semi-natural vegetation character.

Rivers including the Colne, Blackwater, Brain, Ter, Chelmer and Stour all have their headwaters on the clay plateau. Some streams are so close together that the interfluve is no more than a narrow ridge in many places. As they flow slowly south-east towards the North Sea, their gently winding courses, often lined with old willow pollards, form lush riparian corridors.

The area’s open yet wooded character is sufficiently endowed with copses and small woods to have wooded horizons, which give a large, distantly wooded character to the landscape – an impression that is sometimes missing at close quarters due to the loss of hedges and hedgerow trees. Larger woods are typically confined to the north and south of the area. Within the valleys, the main impression is of the blocks of willows and poplars planted on the valley floor and sides. Hedgerow trees are typically young elm (with hornbeam and field maple) in Essex. In Suffolk, oaks and ash, with some cherry and holly, give a more treed and hedged character. Many examples of ancient woodland survive, providing a strong sense of history – especially those with small-leaved limes. They include the National Nature Reserves of Hatfield Forest and Bradfield Woods; the latter is a working wood that has been under continuous traditional coppice management since at least 1252.

It is ancient countryside, and appears in many areas to have undergone little 20th-century rationalisation to excessively large fields. Close-grained irregular medieval enclosures, bounded by ancient, species-rich high hedgerows, are predominant in the north and east and in the numerous narrow river valleys, whereas later, larger fields are more characteristic in the south and west, where post-medieval Parliamentary enclosure has occurred. Farming utilises 84 per cent of the land area. It is primarily agricultural, except on parts of the river valley floors, where pasture contributes to a pastoral quality that is uncommon elsewhere in East Anglia. The moderately fertile soils along with an equable climate support profitable arable crops including, oilseed rape and sugar beet. Outdoor pig units are typical on the lighter soils in the north-east, while sheep with some cattle graze the valley pastures and wood pasture of estates such as Ickworth. Fruit farms and orchards are also found on the lighter land.

Semi-natural habitats of particular importance include sparsely scattered small lowland meadows and ancient woodland remnants that are among the richest in the country for flowering plants, including pignut, oxlip, moschatel and orchids such as the greater butterfly orchid (a Suffolk rarity) and the nationally scarce bird’s-nest orchid. Carpets of bluebells in the spring are a strong characteristic of the woodlands. These woodlands are also important for the dormouse and birds such as nightingale, blackcap and willow warbler. The mosaic of valley floor habitats (for example grazing marsh, fen and wet woodland) support European protected species including great crested newt, otter and pipistrelle bats, as well as the rare black poplar tree, which can still be found along the Suffolk-Essex border.

The area’s rich archaeology provides evidence of a long history of settlement and significant past wealth and importance, including the stone tools evident of a Palaeolithic presence, Roman sites, ruined medieval monasteries, Norman castles (for example, Hedingham Castle), medieval moated farmstead sites and a rich heritage of timber-frame barns. There are a few substantial houses and estates, such as Audley End, with its landscaped parklands designed by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, Ickworth, Kentwell, Melford Hall, Chadacre and Shrubland Hall; the Repton-enhanced landscape and Italianate gardens of the latter were designed by Charles Barry. Relics of the once-numerous Second World War airfield sites are also dotted across the landscape, underlining the NCA’s strategic wartime importance. Pillboxes of the 1940 military ‘stop lines’ also snake along this countryside as a further reminder of this tense wartime period.

The strong sense of history is reinforced by the dispersed settlement pattern of scattered farmsteads and small villages near the top of the valley slopes. They are often located around ‘tyes’ (commons) or strip greens, with isolated hamlets linked by an intricate maze of narrow, often sunken lanes with wide verges, deep ditches and strong hedgerows. Medieval towns and villages such as Lavenham, Cavendish and Thaxted retain a strong sense of character, with their idiosyncratic street patterns and the juxtaposition of a large, ornate church with a village green and groups of colour-washed medieval houses with their steeply pitched long straw thatch or pegtile roofs. Timber is the main traditional building material of the area, often with a pink-buff Georgian brick-facing to an older timber frame. Ornamental exterior plasterwork or pargeting is also characteristic, with good examples to be seen in Clare, Ipswich and Saffron Walden.

Much of the rural part of the NCA has a residual tranquillity, with much of the central part remote from main roads (for example around Great Bardfield, Thaxted and Cavendish; in the villages south of Bury St Edmunds; or even further south in Essex around Pleshey, north of Chelmsford). The sense of remoteness is enhanced by the woody nature of the plateau and the deep incision of the valleys. However, tranquillity is reduced close to the main transport infrastructure (for example the A12, the A120, the A14, the M11 and the airport at Stansted). The major towns (Chelmsford, Ipswich, Stowmarket, Bury St Edmunds, Bishop’s Stortford, Harlow and Stevenage) make the boundaries of the NCA less tranquil than its centre.

The area’s rural character makes it popular with tourists and day-trippers, particularly the Stour Valley, which sits on the Suffolk-Essex border. The variable topography of rolling hills and gentle valleys and the combination of features – trees, river bank willows, flood plain meadow, ancient lanes, traditional villages and farm buildings and the meandering river – produce a classic English lowland character that is quite distinct from the rest of Suffolk and Essex. This exceptionally picturesque landscape was made famous worldwide through the paintings of the landscape artist John Constable (1776-1837) and the lower half of the valley is designated as the Dedham Vale AONB. Many of the scenes that brought John Constable inspiration can still be seen today, especially at Flatford and along the banks of the River Stour.

The landscape through time

The underlying bedrock of the South Suffolk and North Essex Clayland is Cretaceous ‘Middle’ and ‘Upper’ Chalk, deposited as a pure limestone in tropical seas between 100 and 65 million years ago. Another mineral, silica, was left behind at this time and formed nodules of hard flint within the Chalk.

Sands and clays of the Lambeth Group and London Clay were deposited over the Chalk in the Palaeocene and Eocene Periods that followed. They have been exposed by river erosion in the lower slopes and floors of the major valleys such as the Chelmer and Stour, where the impermeable London Clay gives rise locally to many springs.

The ancestral River Thames flowed north-eastwards across the area about a million years ago, depositing a distinctive suite of gravels known as the Kesgrave Formation. The course of this pre-diversion Thames is picked up at several Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), such as Downfield Pit SSSI, and contributes locally to sandy soils.

The Anglian glaciation around 450,000 years ago covered the area with thick ice sheets and deposited vast amounts of chalk and clay on the land as glacial till (boulder clay) and associated outwash sands and gravels; these capped the bedrock. These unconsolidated glacial deposits made erosion by rivers ‘easy’, allowing well-developed valleys to form, as well as river terraces in them. As a result, many of today’s rivers and streams appear too small for their valleys. Where exposed, the sand and gravel deposits associated with the rivers have yielded significant evidence of Pleistocene vertebrates and Palaeolithic human life, as at Brundon.

The earliest occupation of this NCA is likely to pre-date the Anglian glaciations, with occasional finds of stone tools in deposits beneath the till, as well as welldocumented sites being found in neighbouring NCAs. Later settlement focused on the river valleys, which were extensively cleared and occupied in the prehistoric period. The muddy ice-laid material on the plateau tops made these areas very difficult to farm, leading to a history of thick tree cover on the higher ground. Archaeological remains associated with prehistoric and Roman settlement sites are visible as cropmarks and earthworks, such as the Bartlow Hills Roman tumuli (burial mounds). Roman occupation from 43 AD lasted for some 350 years and contributed trading settlements, such as Chelmsford, and roads that still provide the backbone of today’s transport links, for example Ermine Street, which now forms part of the A10.

Wealth within the area developed during the Anglo-Saxon period. This is evidenced by the establishment of Ipswich as a major early trading port and by the important ‘princely’ burial site at Broomfield to the north of Chelmsford.

The existing pattern of towns and villages was laid down by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086. Bury St Edmunds’ late 11th-century gridiron street pattern is an advanced example of town planning from this period. From the time of the Norman Conquest until the 19th-century spread of London, the northwestern part of Essex was the most densely populated part of the county.

Early medieval enclosure divided up the land into mostly small fields with wide borders that were grazed or cut for hay crops. There were also some much larger fields, particularly on demesnes (manorial land). Large estates were unusual, as small freeholders dominated. Where the land was too wet and heavy to farm, woodland was not cleared but instead managed for timber, as were hedges.

Today’s ancient deciduous woodlands provide a historic landscape record from this time. The unique Hatfield Forest, established in the late 11th century and the only remaining intact Royal Hunting Forest, is a prime example. It is thought to be the largest area in the east of England never to have been ploughed, and so provides a direct link back to the wildwood that was once extensive across the whole of the area. The river valleys contained the best soils and the lowlying valley bottoms supported rich pasture, while mixed arable farming dominated the valley sides. Where the heavy, wet land was ploughed it was mainly used for fodder crops such as cabbages and beans. From the 17th century, turnips were commonly grown on the slightly drier land, and a dairy-based industry remained important up until the end of the 18th century. Settlement was normally dispersed about the parishes, with scattered moated farmsteads and small villages around open ‘tyes’ (commons) or strip greens, which remained open until the 19th century.

The densely settled pattern intensified with the development of the wool and cloth trade from the13th to 17th centuries, which had the dominant historical impact on this area. The wealth generated by the industry is manifested in the timber-frame houses clustered in the towns and villages (for example, Long Melford, Lavenham, Thaxted, Halstead and Coggeshall), and in the ostentatious but magnificent churches such as Thaxted Church, with its 181-foot (c. 50-metre) spire. Sudbury was a centre for weaving and silk, while Thaxted prospered from its cutlery trade and Saffron Walden enjoyed the rewards of both cloth and locally produced saffron (used as a spice, a medicine and to dye cloth) until the 19th century, when artificial substitutes destroyed this latter trade. Towns such as Braintree, Great Dunmow, Halstead and Coggeshall were ‘bays and says’ towns, so called because of their production of baize or sergelike cloths from the 16th century onwards. Between the 15th and early 17th centuries this was the wealthiest part of England. The peak of prosperity was 1450-1550, with a minor boom in the 17th century. The woollen/cloth trade declined in the 17th century to focus on northern and western England, and development in the area stopped. There was little post-17th century architecture until the advent of 20th-century housing and commercial estates.

Most of the area was already enclosed into hedged fields by the medieval period, but westward of a line extending southwards from Bury St Edmunds to Haverhill, Saffron Walden, Bishop’s Stortford and Harlow (and to a limited extent in the Stour Valley) there were considerable amounts of open common fields that were the subject of Parliamentary enclosure in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the beginning of the 18th century the golden age of local agriculture commenced. The average landholding was probably 60 ha (150 acres), but increased grain prices, improved drainage techniques, mechanisation and the influence of the proximity of the London market spread throughout the area and resulted in the ploughing-up of pasture and the reduction in dairies. By late Georgian times, increases in wealth saw the building of grand houses such as Ickworth and Shrubland Hall. River courses were modified and opened up to traffic to help transport food and goods from Suffolk to meet the demand in London. The Stour Navigation (between Sudbury and Manningtree) opened in 1713, the Stort Navigation opened in 1769 and the Stowmarket Navigation, along the Gipping, opened in 1793. In the 1840s the railway arrived, and with it a large decline in water-borne trade. The historic industrial influence of the river navigations is now mostly lost amid today’s rural landscape.

The agricultural depressions of the mid- and late 19th century and the interwar period of the 20th century took their toll on agriculture here as elsewhere. There was a drift of labour to the capital, balanced during the last century by the southern drift of Scottish farmers who were prepared to take on derelict farms.

The onset of the Second World War saw military ‘stop lines’ drawn across the rural countryside, with pillboxes at key locations. Numerous airfields were constructed across the open plateau, such as Wattisham, Sudbury, Stradishall and Castle Camps.

Since 1945 this region has been well farmed, producing a wide range of food crops, often for the London, and latterly the European, market. Agricultural improvements resulted in changes to the structure of the countryside, which was defined by a dense network of fields, meadows, hedges and woods. Although rationalisation was not as extreme as in other areas of East Anglia, it resulted in losses of semi-natural vegetation, especially lowland grassland, ancient woodland and hedgerows. Although many villages and towns have accommodated significant post-war housing, the historic cores remain intact; little local industry has developed, and the character of these towns and villages has ensured their preservation.

After the Second World War, the Abercrombie Plan called for the establishment of a ring of new towns around London to ease overcrowding in the capital and the surrounding areas due to the mass devastation caused by the bombing during the Blitz. Stevenage was designated the first New Town on 1 August 1946, followed closely by Harlow. Twentieth-century development in Chelmsford followed the sale of land for railways, and the broad, shallow Chelmer Valley is now obliterated by recent development. The north-western part of Essex has largely avoided the massive 20th-century outward migration from London, which is a pronounced feature of the London Clay to the south. This is largely due to the effectiveness of Green Belt policy in preventing the coalescence of towns. South Suffolk has seen very little recent development, except significant expansions of both Sudbury and Ipswich and around Stowmarket, which, being on the main line railway line, now has some characteristics of a commuter town.

The lower half of the Stour Valley with its preserved, archetypal lowland English countryside, coupled with attractive vernacular buildings, was designated as the Dedham Vale AONB in 1970. From the 1970s onwards, Dutch elm disease had a profound effect by removing one of the most common hedgerow and field trees from the landscape. The peripheries of the area continue to change, with increasing pressure for housing, infrastructure and industrial growth associated with, for instance, the Haven Gateway and other strategic growth points such as Chelmsford and Stevenage.