Bartholomew’s story the Wild Man becomes the Green Man, popular in medieval carvings as
a head surrounded by foliage, and he lists the churches in Suffolk where these carvings can be
seen: WOOLPIT – St Mary’s; TOSTOCK – St Andrew’s; THURSTON – St Peter’s;
NEEDHAM MARKET – St John the Baptist; GRUNDISBURGH – St Mary’s.
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In 1916, ENID BLYTON (1897-1963) came to SECKFORD HALL, now a hotel near
WOODBRIDGE, to stay with friends. She then moved to IPSWICH and trained as a
kindergarten teacher at Ipswich High School. She lived at 73 Christchurch Street until
1918 when she left as a fully-fledged Froebel teacher to work in a school in Kent. She was
already writing stories at this time, although none were published until the 1920s.
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ARTHUR RANSOME (1884-1967) set We Didn’t Mean to Go to Sea on the Orwell
when he was living at Broke Farm at LEVINGTON (1935-39). In Hugh Brogan’s
biography of Ransome, he describes how Ransome did not like Levington and told this to his
boatbuilder, Norman King. ‘Didn’t you know they were cannibals at Levington?’ King said.
‘We sent three missionaries to them once but they never came back.’ Ransome also wrote
Secret Water set in Hamford West, near Walton-on-the-Naze, in Essex, while he was living
at HARKSTEAD HALL, on the Shotley Peninsula (1939-1941). When King’s boatyard had
finished building Ransome’s boat Selina King, he gave a dinner for all the workmen at The
Butt and Oyster, PIN MILL, on 29th September, 1938.
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PIN MILL was also the setting for Ordinary Families, E. ARNOT ROBINSON’s (1903-
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1961) story, based on her own life in the village, of an eccentric English family growing up
in these Suffolk marshes, sailing, birdwatching and coping with the tribulations of
adolescence.
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After the Second World War, KATHLEEN HALE (1898-2000), the artist and creator of
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the Orlando the Marmalade Cat books for children, came to ALDEBURGH for a seaside
holiday with her family. She used it as the setting for Orlando’s Seaside Holiday, calling it
Owlbarrow. She loved the ‘fantaisie’ villas on the sea front, and ‘found these bizarre
constructions of red brick, white stone, turrets and battlements, which looked as though they
had been built of nursery bricks much more amusing to draw than elegant Georgian houses.’
She included in the book the Moot Hall, the Lifeboat and the old ship, now gone, which was
once beached above the tide, in which Orlando and his family spent their holiday. However,
she changed the Aldeburgh pebbles to sand on Orlando’s beach!
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