Lavenham Part 2.

 Have struggled to begin posting on Lavenham for 2 reasons. One, there have been many things to take up my time including birthdays with B.B.Q's, Grand children staying,various mission outreaches, catching up with the garden and life in general.
This last week has been too hot to sit at my computer with the temperature hitting 90f and extremely high humidity and of course no air conditioning unless one is sitting in the car.

The second reason is that I took over 300 photos of Lavenham alone and even though I won't be posting them all I could not decide how to organise them as staying in the village for a week and    taking shots on different occasions it felt like a muddle.

I have therefore decided just to post them mostly in the order they were taken with just a few under certain headings.

We stayed in a beautifully modernised luxury cottage on the High Street so  all our needs were within a few minutes walking distance.

Of course we visited gardens and country houses etc. in the area but initially I will be concentrating on the village itself. 

Just one and a half hours drive from home, Lavenham in Suffolk is one of England's finest mediaeval villages. It has over 340 listed buildings, mainly because it's rich industrial past gave rise to really wealthy merchants and trades people who invested in property.

Lavenham was the 14th wealthiest town in England in 1524 with13 cloth making businesses

The village is awash with Tearooms, this one combining with a knitting and wool shop

Even the butchers had a tea garden

This wool Emporium was interesting and sat just 2 doors from where we were staying

It sold the most beautiful garments hand knitted from Alpaca wool 

I did not feel it right to photo the garments inside

I learned that the colours were not dyed but were the natural colour of the wool. Needless to say very exclusive and expensive

A craft shop and tearoom 

Shops and houses all intermingled 

and this one obviously waiting for it's new owners

This crooked house is now a Tapestry gallery

The Greyhound Pub that sold the best 'takeaway' fish and chips I have ever tasted

A kind of 'allsorts' shop

The Swan Hotel (more on that in a later post)

The Curiosity Corner Shop

That's 37 pictures so enough for one post I think

Do come back, there are many, many more to delight the eye and you certainly won't be disappointed with the Market Place

Back From Holiday

An everyday post before posting some of the hundreds of photos I took while away. I need to organise them into bite size chunks.

The rest of the photos from our June trip will have to wait till later.

The first thing I do when I come back from holiday is have a wander around the garden to see what needs dead heading.

My whimsy corner is making some progress. I put up some USA number plates given to me when I was staying in Texas in the early 90's

and then I bought a dragonfly and a butterfly while away and some peacock feathers.

Plus a 'stone owl' and a 'frog' mounted on a stone

There is still a lot to do to get the slabs levelled on the left side but 'my corner' is on it's way

I have bought some great fabric to make some bunting when the fancy takes me (I am not a sewer)

For now the Grandchildren are here

Oliver staying for some of the school holiday and Bekah going home tonight but coming back to stay on Thursday

Here they are saying their goodbyes

and Bekah is sad because she cannot stay tonight

Until I get some photos sorted I will leave you with a few shots of plantings in the Olympic Park