A walk from Westgate Street to the River Lea via Mare Street, St. Thomas’s Place, Meeting Fields Path, Ram’s Place and Brooksby’s Walk at a distance of 7.64 miles.                                                                 05.10.17

From my door, I was encouraged to see the new Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough put to use by man and animal. There is a most remarkable drinking fountain at one end whereby drovers, riders and general people may drink clean water but also animals may quench their thirst from long sojourn at a great stone basin that flushes regularly with water. Watching all who come is a marvel to view and takes many from the beer to the cleanest of god’s creations; pure water!

Today my walk led me through the parish in whose familiarity I have continual delight and am amazed that my flock, who struggle with space and food are industrious and seem happy. I wonder sometimes that ’tis this strength of character I see in their general banter and good humour, that sustains them through very trying times.

As I progressed I sadly noticed the long ground of St Thomas is now fair neglected and I know there is talk of the space to become a garden [to which event I most heartily would agree] and do so hope the several trees recently planted will remain as a kind of avenue, down which people will continue to walk much as I do today.

As I continued along the pathway, where the fields still meet and are even now being sold for building, and where the sheep that stocked the bounds have disappeared, I see some soul has placed a sign and wrote ‘Ram’s Place’ upon it, as though to conjure what was once a commonplace but has now gone forever.

I then Crossed the dampened ground of what is left of the hackney brook and it still startles me to see the great railway line and it’s huge archways, their gaping mouths remind me of the malnourished who were moved, their houses demolished and their lives destroyed to build this most brutal structure and although I do see the benefit of the revolution in communication, I lament and decry the upheaval upon people whom it unwontedly placed such awful change.

But at last to the Lea, the meadows as sweet still as when I first arrived and though I see in the distance the great Railway traversing this quiet landscape and feel that perhaps that in time these fields too will succumb to brick and stone, a part of me thanks our lord that not only am I witness to these great changes, I am in some small way a party to the continuity of the rural life around me as it strives to address the encroachment of the city.

Diary of The Reverend Henry Turnbull October 1878

attrib: Thomas Bell’s ‘The Turnbull’s of Suffolk’ pub 1949 by David Bell