Stratford St Mary
| Stratford St. Mary | |
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 Stratford St Mary church in spring time |
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 Stratford St. Mary
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| Stratford St. Mary shown within Suffolk | |
| Population | 701 (2011) |
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Colchester |
| Postcode district | CO7 |
| EU Parliament | East of England |
Stratford St. Mary is a village in Suffolk, England in the heart of 'Constable Country'. John Constable painted a number of paintings in and around Stratford.
Stratford (the ford of the Roman Via Strata) with its attached hamlet of Higham sits on the Suffolk/Essex border on the River Stour, Suffolk. It is 58 miles (93 km) from London just off the A12 between Colchester and Ipswich. The village has a fifteenth-century flint faced church which is clearly visible from the A12. It is also served by a primary school, post office and village store, and three pubs.
Evidence of Stratford's antiquity includes traces of a henge from c. 4,000BC, and Roman remains on Gun Hill. The original Saxon settlement comprising 30 tenants and a mill mentioned in Domesday Book was abandoned as settlement grew along the river and the road to Bergholt.
A series of manorial court rolls beginning in 1318 reveal that many of the medieval families were connected with the wool trade which accounts for much of its early prosperity. Benefactors included wealthy clothiers like the Mors (or Morse) family who generously endowed the church. Stratford's long, straggling main street lined with inns, provides evidence of its bustling prosperity in the coaching days when the town catered for a continuous traffic of cattle, turkeys and geese bound for the London market. The parish was in the hundred of Samford.
The national censuses from 1801 and 1901 record just over 500 inhabitants in the parish.
Lowe Hill House, the finest of the surviving houses, dates from c.1480 and is described in the 1619 manorial survey, although it is probably not the original manor house.
Ravenys on one of the sites is the subject of a picture by John Constable entitled "a house in Water Lane", now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Lord of the Manor made a grant of the land on which it stands to William Smyth and William Wade in 1442 on condition that they rebuilt the house for which the lord would provide timber for the "grounsill, overweys and prynspales", the two Williams being responsible for the cutting and carting of it. It is impossible to be certain of the earlier names of the other two cottages, but the second structure, which incorporates a small portion of an earlier building stands on or very close to what was the home of the Wynter family. For 240 years from 1318 the Wynters farmed a smallholding in the meadows just south of it. The third house in the lane was most probably the home of the Selbricht family until it died out in 1558. The remaining house in this part of the village, which stands two hundred yards nearer to the river, was occupied by Matilda Hunt in 1481. The barn behind it is still known as Hunt's Barn.
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Wikipedia