Let’s hear it for the country’s best loved landscape painter. This is the 250th anniversary of the birth of John Constable, the man who revolutionised the genre. Constable loved what he saw, and his greatest love was for the countryside where he grew up, around the River Stour in Suffolk-Essex. Constable country is celebrating him this year and this, then, is the time to visit, though the Stour Valley is enchanting at any time.
You can easily make a day trip to the places most closely associated with Constable if you’re a walker: Flatford Mill, East Bergholt and Dedham, in any order. Or, for a more expansive look at the anniversary events and places, make a couple of days of it. But given the numbers of visitors with the same idea, try and go at other times than weekends. The Dedham Vale National Landscape and the Stour Valley have very good walking guides online.
Manningtree station isn’t that far from London. From there, you can walk to Flatford Mill — site of The Hay Wain — in 40 minutes or more. Willy Lott’s white house is still there — The National Trust has seen to it that the view is pretty well as it was in the painting. The house itself is leased to the Field Studies Council, which runs terrific week-long courses in art and nature, and rooms in both the house and the medieval farm opposite are available to stay at other times.
At Flatford Mill, it’s practically obligatory to have your tea at the National Trust tearooms on the grass by the river. Bliss. From there you can take a riverboat along the Stour from the bridge — all run by volunteers — as far as Dedham. That, on a fine day, is impossibly picturesque; the banks flanked by twisted willows and cattle, like a Dutch landscape. Or walk to East Bergholt, the site of Constable’s birth.
Not far off, there’s Fen Lane, the track that leads from Flatford Lane down to the river, the route Constable would have walked to the grammar school in Dedham. Miraculously, it looks pretty much as it did in his day. The house where he was born is, alas, is no more and the present one is unforgivably bland; the little studio still exists, however. The Red Lion pub is the place to eat here — fine fish and chips and a good wine menu — but the great thing is the church, which Constable painted from umpteen aspects. It has an unfinished tower and a freestanding cage-bell.
And so to Dedham, which is another historic village of great charm. In the church there, you find one of Constable’s few straight religious works, The Ascension. The church itself is worth a visit for its fine tower and interesting monuments, including one to a lady who died after accidentally swallowing a pin. All these churches, most medieval with bits added in the 15th century building boom, have fascinating graveyards. In Dedham, there’s another excellent lunch spot, The Sun Inn on the high street, which has a terrific menu.
A later local celebrity painter was Alfred Munnings, famous as the arch-enemy of modernism and best known for his accomplished horse paintings; his well-preserved house and museum is here, and a very good tea room besides. Yes, Constable country is rich in tea and cake.
At Stoke-by-Nayland, there’s The Crown, part of the very good Chestnut group, which offers comfortable rooms — mine had an outlook on the meadows, where you could watch bunnies and birds from your bath — and an excellent breakfast. There’s also a lovely church which Constable painted.
There are two important exhibitions associated with the anniversary, both accessible by train; you could do both in a day. In Ipswich, where The Hay Wain will be exhibited from July to October at the excellent museum at Christchurch Mansion, there’s a notable exhibition, Constable: A Cast of Characters, which gives you an overview of his circle and some lovely, unexpected life drawings he did as a student at the Royal Academy.
At Gainsborough’s House at Sudbury, a museum which is worth a trip in its own right, there’s a marvellous exhibition, Gainsborough, Turner and Constable: Inventing Landscape. One painting by Turner of Abergavenny Bridge hasn’t been seen since 1799. What are you waiting for?
Rooms at The Crown from £95; crowninn.net
