The sound of water escaping from mill dams ... willows, old rotten banks,
slimy posts and brickwork. I love such things ... As long as I do paint, I
shall never cease to paint such places. They have always been my delight.”
John Constable underplayed the charms of the Stour Valley, that green river
country he immortalised, when he wrote those words to his friend John Fisher
in 1821. Any walker can still find old rotten banks and slimy posts along
the River Stour, now as then. But what lifts the eyes and the heart here is
the subtle beauty of clear, ever-changing light at play on the sinuous river
and its lush meadows, low wooded hills and old houses peeping between the
oaks and willows.
“I may yet make some impression,” wrote Constable, “with my ‘light’, my
‘dews’, my ‘breezes’ — my bloom and my freshness — no one of which qualities
has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world.” The
impression that the Suffolk miller’s son made with the light he infused into
his pictures was a profound one, on his fellow artists and the great world
public alike. Constable ’s paintings of his native countryside, the five or
so square miles around East Bergholt, Dedham and Flatford on the
Suffolk/Essex border, are the most frequently reproduced landscapes of all.
Flatford Mill, The Cornfield, The Hay Wain — they hang in our pubs and
offices, on our school walls, above our beds and mantelpieces. It’s
astonishing how many people, not just in Britain but all round the globe,
gaze daily on the Constable family’s mills at Flatford and Dedham, the flat
grazing meadows around Fen Bridge Lane, Willy Lott’s white-walled cottage,
and the lock gates and sluices along the River Stour.
It is hard to believe that these classic scenes of rural peace and
tranquillity, fixed for ever by the artist as they were in the early 19th
century, have not changed horribly for the worse since then. But somehow,
miraculously, they have not. Main roads have passed by this slip of country.
On a riverside stroll from Dedham down to Flatford, you can recognise the
sites of dozens of Constable’s best-known paintings, all but intact. The
slow sailing barges with their heavy horses have gone. The trees have grown
and thickened in the meanwhile. But small boys still fish in the Stour, dogs
still run and bark at the river, and that wonderful East Anglian light still
glints on leaves, grasses and running water, just as the painter lovingly
set them down two centuries ago — slimy posts, brickwork and all.
DEDHAM’S TALL church tower appears in many of Constable’s paintings, a tiny
grey vertical, like a beacon to fix position by. No wonder — the tower is a
landmark for miles around in this low-lying country, beckoning you into the
village from a long way off.
Constable’s father, Golding, a well-to-do corn merchant and miller, wanted his
boy to succeed him in the family business. That was never going to happen,
but John did work for a year in his father’s mills at Dedham and Flatford.
He painted them, too, over and over again for the rest of his life. The mill
and sluicegates that he recorded in 1820 in Dedham Lock and Mill are long
gone, but the present mill and weir form just the same grouping.
From the big car park opposite the mill by Dedham bridge, walk up into the
village and turn left along the main road. In 100yd, turn left into the
entrance to Dedham Hall’s drive, bearing immediately right along a footpath
marked “Public Footpath to Flatford”. In 300yd, ignore a path on your right
marked “Flatford by Farm” and continue ahead to the River Stour, where you
turn right along the river.
Down along the Stour, it’s a peaceful scene of cows in the meadows, swallows
hawking the river and pleasure boats being rowed where the Constable
family’s heavy grain barges used to glide. Cloud shadows chase across
willows, water and church tower, as Constable depicted them in The Leaping
Horse (1825), with its clumsy barge horse jumping over the towpath barrier.
These scenes complement the main feast of recognisable Constable settings
around Flatford Mill.
After a mile’s stroll along the river, you pass the footbridge at Flatford. In
Constable’s 1817 painting Flatford Mill, he showed a tiny boy straddling a
great ponderous horse at this spot, with Flatford Lock in the distance. An
earlier Flatford Mill (1812) was painted here, too, as was the charming
Landscape: Boys Fishing of 1813.
Continue on the right bank of the Stour past Flatford Lock, which appears much
as it did in A Boat Passing a Lock (1822-4). Just beyond, you can admire the
view of Flatford Mill and Willy Lott’s Cottage across the water as Constable
put them on canvas in 1819, in The White Horse. Then, return to cross
Flatford footbridge and turn right down the lane beside Bridge Cottage, with
its per- manent Constable exhibition mounted by the National Trust. On your
right, just beyond the cottage, you will see the open hollow of the
boat-building dock once owned by the painter’s father. This site, the
setting for Constable’s great depiction of slow work on a sunny day,
Boat-building near Flatford Mill (1815), was lost until a recent excavation
un-earthed Golding Constable’s barge dock, complete with its wooden stocks
and brick floor. From the dock mouth, Constable painted A View on the Stour
near Dedham, in 1822.
At the end of the lane, you will find the best-known Constable site of all —
Flatford Mill and Willy Lott’s Cottage. Constable was a great technical
painter, observant of minutiae such as cordage, caulking ladles and details
of woodwork. But his genius lay in showing the interplay of light, cloud,
reflection and sunshine. Two landscapes executed at Flatford Mill vividly
demonstrate these skills — The Mill Stream, which Constable painted in 1814,
and his most reproduced and most iconic landscape, The Hay Wain of 1821. You
can stand in front of Flatford Mill today and admire the scene just as the
master painted it — the swirl of the river and the play of the trees against
the sky, flanked by the brick chimney and red roofs of Willy Lott’s Cottage.
Return past Bridge Cottage to the foot of the lane to East Bergholt. Opposite
the disabled car park and Visitor Information Centre here, go up the path on
the left of the lane and on up beside the main car park, to the road at the
top exit. Turn left and descend to cross a stream. A path inside the
right-hand hedge climbs beside the road to the crest of the hill. Bear left
here (follow the footpath finger post) to cross the road and go through a
kissing gate into an open field by a National Trust “Dedham Vale” sign. From
this ridge, you will have wide views over Dedham Vale as Constable showed
them in Landscape: Ploughing scene in Suffolk (A Summerland), and Stour
Valley and Dedham Village, both painted in about 1814.
Follow the faint track down the field to go through a kissing gate and turn
left along Fen Bridge Lane. Here lies the setting of Constable’s 1826 idyll
The Cornfield, in which a careless shepherd boy drinks from a stream while
his flock strays towards the harvest field. You cross a stream, and in 100yd
bear right (“Dedham” finger post) on a causeway bank in a tunnel of trees.
You emerge in meadows and continue ahead to return to Dedham Bridge.
Nowadays, John Constable’s name is known all over the world. You couldn’t buy
his paintings for love nor anything less than a mountain of money. But in
his lifetime, the painter struggled to sell his work and to gain
recognition. His art was informed by his mood. The Hay Wain, created at a
time of personal happiness with his wife, Maria Bicknell, seems sunny and
optimistic. But his depiction of Willy Lott’s Cottage in The Mill Stream,
painted in 1814, when his sweetheart’s family was still refusing to let her
marry such a poor proposition, is cold and cloudy. Rain or shine, good or
bad fortune notwithstanding, the painter continued to plough his unswerving
furrow. Walkers in Constable’s footsteps today are the beneficiaries
of this sublime artist’s lifelong celebration of the light and beauty of the
Stour Valley, and his visceral attachment to his native landscape.
Getting there: Flatford is a 1hr walk along the River Stour
from Manningtree station (0845 748 4950).
Where to stay: The Angel Inn, in Stoke-by-Nayland (01206
263245), double B&B from £65. Comfortable, characterful, with fabulous
bar food; or The Old Vicarage, Higham (01206 337248), double B&B from
£52, in a lovely old house.
Map: OS Explorer 196.
