IT’S TIME TO MAKE HAY IN CONSTABLE COUNTRY
Caroline McGhie discovers the pastoral delights of East Anglia that inspired one of our greatest artists
Imagine waking up one morning and finding yourself inside a painting by John Constable. The River Stour unfurls through gentle watermeadows and stooped trees, the lanes and hedgerows reveal themselves dense with detail. This is what life is like for Mike and Rose Murray, who live at Gosnalls Farm next to Flatford Mill, where Constable spent most of his life. “The sound of water escaping from mill dams etc…, willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things.” This is how the artist recorded his intense feelings for the Stour Valley and Dedham Vale, where he painted so many of his pastoral works, including Boat Building Near Flatford Mill, Flatford Mill, Cottage at East Bergholt, The Haywain and Dedham Vale. The Murrays live just downstream from the beating heart of Constable country. Next door is Flatford Mill, once owned by Constable’s father. There too is Willy Lotts cottage, the low-slung thatched dwelling depicted in one of Constable’s paintings, and Bridge Cottage. All are now in the care of the National Trust, though part of it is leased to the Field Studies Council, which runs arts courses for all ages. Mike and Rose bought Gosnalls Farm seven years ago. “We were going for a walk one winter’s day and noticed it,” adds Mike. “The house was uninhabitable but the garden amazed us. There was six acres of it running down to the river.” Tens of thousands of visitors come each year to see the places Constable painted and appreciate this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that inspired him. But the Murrays have it on their doorstep. “We can watch the weather coming in along the river. It is very dramatic,” says Mike. They renovated Gosnalls Farm and extended it, then bought a canoe so that the grandchildren could paddle off into the Constable landscapes. The locks of his day have vanished and the river traffic now is purely leisure craft. “In our bedroom we have French doors leading out onto a balcony and we wake in the morning to see it every day,” says Mike. On the river bank a family of swans with five signets have settled in. “In the winter it is a flood plain and all the water fowl arrive. We can sit in the summerhouse and watch them, and we see foxes and deer as well.” The house, cottage, two barns and cart lodge are now for sale through Savills (01473 234800; savills.co.uk) and Grier & Partners (01206 299222; grierandpartners.co.uk) at £2million. This beautiful area of East Anglia, where Suffolk and Essex meet, was already being marketed as Constable Country at the end of the 19th century. It was advertised on railway posters, and Thomas Cook & Son started recommending it as a destination for American tourists. Historic charm is what presentday newcomers love about the place, and the prettiest houses are those made with materials hewn from the landscape in which they sit. Slumped cottages and medieval timber-framed houses are built of handmade bricks, lath and plaster, and painted in soft pinks and yellows. These traditional properties are most highly prized by the many commuters keen to settle here. “It is the most vigorously fought-over patch we cover,” says Tom Orford of Savills in Ipswich. “Around 80 to 90 per cent of our buyers are commuters, and the higher the value of the property, the higher the percentage of commuters.” East Bergholt, where Constable was born and had his studio in one of the elegant brick buildings that surround the church, is a particular commuter hot spot, although many would say that Dedham is the most sought-after village, just over the River Stour in Essex. Constable made many paintings of the church spire here, but the village is also well known for its association with Sir Alfred Munnings. He was another great East Anglian painter, whose pictures hang in his old house here, which is open to the public. A former alehouse in the village, with four bedrooms and old apple stores, is being sold by Abbotts (01206 322811; abbotts.co.uk) at £475,000. Art courses, both residential and day classes, are held at nearby Dedham Hall for budding artists (dedhamhall.co.uk). Constable also took his sketch book out to Stoke-by-Nayland, just over the border in Suffolk. Savills (01473 234831) is selling Cross Keys, a four-bedroom house built in 1970 in the vernacular which Constable knew so well, at £925,000. Lavenham, where the artist was sent to boarding school for a short time, is perhaps the most beguiling of all the villages with Constable connections. The many drunken timber-frame houses mean it is often called “the finest medieval town in England”, but it is now also prized for its wonderful restaurants. Savills (as above) is selling the fourbedroom medieval timber-frame Molet House at £900,000. These were the areas which really formed the artist. He later attended the Royal Academy, but unlike other painters he wasn’t drawn to different parts of the world for inspiration. Instead, he became completely absorbed by this part of East Anglia and in finding the depth in nature. It is hard to measure Constable’s influence on painting and the way he has changed our view of the English countryside over the past two centuries, but a major exhibition
of his work opens at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London (vam.ac.uk) on September 20, reassessing his paintings in the light of those who influenced him and the techniques he used. It aims to look at how he “would ultimately transform landscape painting, and in the process shape the popular image of the English countryside”. “The world is wide, no two days are alike, nor even two hours, neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of all the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from each other,” is how he put it.