Constable College...
The enchanting 500-year-old home where one of England’s greatest painters went to school
ARTIST John Constable turned the romantic river-valley views of his boyhood home into some of Britain’s most famous works. His pastoral masterpieces The Hay Wain and Dedham Vale have come to define English country life at the start of the 19th Century.
Now, 200 years later, a Suffolk boarding school that was already a period property when Constable was a pupil there has come on to the market for £895,000. Located in the idyllic village of Lavenham, deep in Constable Country, the traditional pink and timber facade of The Old Grammar School is part of the East Anglian heritage that inspired him.
Constable wasn’t a great scholar – one headmaster described him as ‘knowing little Latin and less literature’ – but his artist’s eye must have appreciated the beauty of the last great merchant’s house to be built in the prosperous village before the collapse of its wool trade.
Today it is the cherished family home of Simon Wade and Caroline Moffatt. The couple bought The Old Grammar School six years ago after a house-hunt that encompassed the West Country, northern Cyprus and the Breton coast.
‘We were both coming up for retirement and started to look for a house in which to enjoy this new part of our lives,’ says Simon. ‘We looked in places to which we had a sentimental attachment but somehow got progressively closer to home. We’d gone to see another house in Lavenham, then stumbled across The Old Grammar School, but it was already under offer. Fortunately for us, that deal fell through a couple of days later and we knew that our long search was over.’
The Grade I listed house was built about 1530 and has an extraordinary history. In addition to being a school between 1647 and 1887, it’s been the site of a horsehair supplier (for use in wattle-and-daub building), a pickled-onion factory, and an engineering works.
It fell into disrepair in the middle of the last century, but was meticulously restored in the mid-1990s. ‘Apart from making it our home and improving the integrity of it where we could, we have had very little to do,’ says Simon.
‘We have always considered ourselves its custodians and while we’re sad to be moving on, we are confident the next owners will love it as dearly as we do.’ Set on a quiet lane in Lavenham – which was used as the backdrop for the village of Godric’s Hollow in the film Harry Potter And the Deathly Hallows Part 1 – The Old Grammar School has intricately carved timbers, brick floors, and a panelled, Georgian-style dining room. There are four bedrooms, two bathrooms and an Aga kitchen, while outside there is an abundantly planted garden, as well as a studio/office, a double garage and off-road parking. Simon, 63, a former furniture designer, and 66-year-old Caroline, who used to work in social services, are moving for family reasons but staying in the area. They are full of praise for Lavenham, a stunning medieval village with 340 listed buildings, and now on Britain’s foodie map courtesy of its celebrated restaurant with rooms, The Great House. ‘It looks like a chocolate-box village but it has all the things that give a place heart – a butcher, a baker, a little supermarket,’ says Simon. ‘It is a wonderful community with an old-fashioned high street an and a lovely social life. It’s rural, af affordable and unspoilt. ‘All the things we were looking fo for when we started our househ hunt on the Continent we ultim mately found here in Suffolk.’ Lavenham has a healthy tourist t trade and The Old Grammar School, with its Constable connection, is one of dozens of houses of note. ‘There is a curiosity factor for people who love Constable and his work,’ says Simon. ‘They come to see his childhood.’ The artist, born in the neighbouring village of East Bergholt in 1776, was sent to board at the school by his parents when he was 11. But he was beaten and treated cruelly by one of the masters until his parents, Golding and Ann Constable, took the enlightened decision to withdraw him. They enrolled him in another grammar school at nearby Dedham, and it was there that his interest in calligraphy and drawing flourished and carried him all the way to the Royal Academy.
Constable was the first to acknowledge the influence of his surroundings in the Stour Valley. They ‘made me a painter and I am grateful’, he once wrote.
Gazing out from The Old Grammar School across the rooftops and church tower of one of the most picture-perfect villages in England, it’s easy to see why.