An historic village by the banks of the beautiful River Gipping.

Needham Market High Street, including the historic Limes Hotel.

This walk takes us through the town with its amazing array of pretty and historic buildings and down along the banks of the River Gipping. It should take no more than two to three hours.

The ideal start/finish point is the “shoppers” car-park in Jubilee Crescent, just off the High Street.

SatNav; IP6 8AT.

There was a factory here, before the area was developed for housing. There is a rather plain brick plinth near the car-park with details of local history and people, commemorating the manufacturing process in Needham that dates back to medieval times.

On leaving Jubilee Crescent immediately turn right to head up the High Street with the large Christ Church Chapel now on your right.

Christchurch Chapel, formerly the United Reformed Church.

This imposing chapel that we see today is in fact the third to stand on this site, built in 1837. The original nonconformist church had its beginnings as far back as 1662 and famous former ministers include scientist Dr Joseph Priestley who preached here from 1755 to 1758. Priestley (1733 – 1804) was the inventor of soda water and the discoverer of oxygen. In a long and controversial life he moved around a lot and even gained French citizenship before finally emigrating to Pennsylvania.

Across the road you might notice a rather inocuous round blue plaque high up on a wall end. It marks the area where Luftwaffe bombing wreaked havoc down on the quiet Suffolk town on 19th October 1942.

Plaque remembering the Luftwaffe Raid of 1942.

The attack on Needham Market was by a single German bomber. It dropped two bombs on the High Street, killing four residents and causing considerable damage to several houses as well as the road itself. Christchurch also suffered some blast damage as did the local school. New houses were built here after the War, standing out like “sore thumbs” among the High Street’s more characterful historic buildings.

As we continue along the High Street we reach a splendid Victorian antiques shop, or rather several shops. This building is in fact the old Town Hall.

Needham Market’s old Town Hall.

This fine Italianate-style building was built in 1866 by local architect Frederick Barnes (1814 – 1898). Barnes was from London but he moved to Ipswich in 1843, working on new railway stations, including Needham Market (of which more later). After setting up his own practice in 1850 he was responsible for such magnificent buildings as The Old Customs House at Ipswich Docks as well as many Suffolk churches, including the Museum Street Methodist Church, Melton Church near Woodbridge and Framlingham School Chapel amongst many. With numerous railway stations too Barnes became very wealthy and very sought after. His architect practice became one of the largest and most successful in Suffolk. Needham Town Hall is perhaps one of his finest triumphs, perfectly capturing the grandiose era of Empire and Industry.

Before the Town Hall was built there was a cottage on the site here, the birthplace of Samuel Read (1816 – 1883), the son of a local shoemaker he abandoned plans to become a lawyer in 1841 to pursue a career in art. He became something of a renowned artist and was sent out to cover the Crimean War as the first ever War Artist by the Illustrated London News.

Next to the old Town Hall is a little road with a remarkable and unique place in Needham history. This road is known today as The Causeway, but its original name conveys it’s far more sinister past. That name was The Corpse Way, harking back to a time when the Town was blighted by The Plague in the 17th Century. Dead bodies were carried from the town up to Barking church, high up the valley. In fact until 1901 Barking church covered the parish of Needham, some might even say it “spawned” the town. Barking was an old established settlement while Needham became the “young upstart by the river” and of course it was the river and then the canal (and later the railway) that gave Needham it’s trade and communication links that allowed it to thrive as a busy cloth combing community that eventually outgrew little Barking.

The Plague struck in 1663 and raged through the town for two years. The local population responded by closing their little town off to the outside World, “chaining” either end of the town at Chainhouse Road and Chainbridge, two road names that still exist as a lasting legacy of a brave and determined community’s efforts to halt the epidemic in its tracks. Two thirds of the population were to eventually die though, their corpses buried in the fields near the Lion Inn. The local legend is that townspeople would leave vinegar-soaked money at the chains for those outside to take in exchange for food and medicine, a practice mirrored by the more infamous village of Eyam in Derbyshire, another community that chose to quarantine themselves from the outside World.

Needham Market’s timeless Post Office.

Continuing along the High Street you cannot help but notice just how many buildings along the road are old and interesting, in fact there are at least 99 Grade II Listed buildings in Needham, quite a staggering number for such a rural village. Of the more noteable ones in the High Street the old Post Office stands out. This 18th Century building was once the Quakers Meeting House and the graveyard behind contains the graves of many local Quaker families, in particular the Alexander family. In 1744 Samuel Alexander founded Alexander’s & Co a bank to cater for local farmers. Through successive amalgamations this bank eventually became Barclays.

A little further down the road from the old Post Office is the impressive Limes Hotel built in 1500 with a fine Georgian brick frontage added in 1771 and thought to be the Boule House frequented by pilgrims on their way to the abbey at Bury St Edmunds. As an inn it was originally called The Bull.

Across the road we eventually come to the quirky little church of St John the Baptist, which was not even built as a church but as a chapel-of-ease for the much larger, more important parish of Barking.

The church of St John the Baptist.

The church officially became the parish church of Needham Market in 1901, thus breaking free from Barking after at least 600 years of subservience. Barking, high above Needham on the hill to the west of the town was an older far more established community than its upstart neighbour down “by the river”

The church is most definitely worth a visit, it is full of surprises. Basically it was built in the latter years of the 15th Century but went through several Victorian-era restorations. The true beauty is actually inside, the roof, a magnificent double hammerbeam roof, a breath-taking vista of medæval timber architecture, quite unique and quite surprising in it’s vastness.

Continuing along the High Street we eventually come to Hawks Mill Road and on the corner a lovely old Tudor building that was clearly once a pub. This was the former Bull Inn, a beautiful old pub with a 16th Century carved oak corner post and with the words “Tolly Cobbold” emblazoned proudly across the frontage, witness to the old Ipswich brewing barons who dominated the pubs and taverns of Suffolk with something of a monopoly for close to two centuries. The Bull closed in 1985 after nearly 400 years as a pub, although this former Guild Hall was known variously as The White Horse and The Compasses before becoming The Bull in 1784.

Into Hawks Mill Road now where there is another little pub just on the left, The Three Tuns. All along here there are old cottages, the road raises on the left high above the road before dipping under the railway line and entering into the River Gipping floodplain. Just in front of us now is the impressive redbrick Victorian Hawks Mill, built in 1884.

Hawks Mill, including the 18th Century road bridge in front.

With the opening of The Ipswich-Stowmarket Navigation in 1793 Needham Market became an integral part of a burgeoning waterways system that opened up a new era in industrialisation and transport. The canal linked several watermills along the Gipping including Hawks Mill and the nearby Bosmere Mill as well as others at Creeting, Baylham, and Sproughton. The 16-mile canal also included 15 locks including a sea-lock at Handford and there was a proposed “branch” through a tunnel at Mendlesham to Eye. The double arched brick road bridge in front of Hawks Mill dates from this early construction. Barges plied their way both ways carrying goods such as slate, coal, manure and gun cotton.

However the writing was soon on the wall for canal traffic with the opening of the new railway line in 1846. This ran almost parallel to the canal and soon took all trade away with a slow and undignified death as locks and banks became dilpadated and overgrown. The Navigation formally closed in 1934 but the last barges ceased working as early as 1922. There then followed a long period of decay until the local branch of the Inland Waterways Association took on the mammoth task of restoring it. The River Gipping Trust now lead this work, with several locks being restored and the Gipping Valley River Path being restored to it’s pre-railway glory.

This towpath can now be followed all the way to Needham Lake (also referred to as Station Lake) which can be circumnavigated clockwise. This lake was formed by a flooded gravel pit, witness to excavations carried out on the new A14 dual carriageway built in the 1970s to bypass Needham Market that was by now becoming somewhat of a bottleneck on the main route through to Stowmarket from Ipswich. We now skirt past the back of Bosmere Mill before following the railway line a little way and then finally turning left to walk under the railway line in a quaint little cattle tunnel.

Needham Lake in Winter.

This tunnel immediately leads out to the splendour of the Station Yard, and in front of us the rather grandiose Needham Station, a veritable masterpiece of Victorian railway architecture, far too elegant for a country “stop” on a busy line that now sees London to Norwich express trains thunder through at break-neck speeds, although none stop here.

Opened in 1849 the fine “Jacobean” style station was originally designated as just Needham not Needham Market. The architect was Frederick Barnes, mentioned earlier here he also designed Needham Town Hall.

Needham Market’s fine station building at dusk.

The station was controversially closed to passengers by British Rail in 1967 only to be reopened four years later after intensive local campaigning. This time it took the name of Needham Market Station. The main building was granted Grade II Listing and like many others, became “detached” from railway use. It was restored in 2000 and won an award in the 2002 National Railway Heritage Awards and in 2015 further improvements followed. The two platforms now serve a “cross-country” service with stopping trains calling at several rural stations en-route to Cambridge.

From the station yard we now head back to the High Street and immediately in front of us are two of Needham’s finest hostelries, presenting us with the golden opportunity for a spot of well-deserved refreshment. The 16th Century Rampant Horse to our left is run by the local Calvors Brewery, well worth a visit just to partake of an ale named “Smooth Hoperator”. Across the road the Swan is also 16th Century, formerly known as the King’s Arms.

Two of Needham’s finest pubs, the Rampant Horse and the Swan.

Before we return to the car park just a little way up the road to our right it might be worthwhile turning left to view Theobolds House, a beautiful timber-framed building built in the 17th Century as a free grammar school with money from the Will of Sir Francis Theobald, Lord of the Manor of Barking and Needham Market who died in 1632. It was also, for a while home to Lloyd’s Bank before becoming a private residence, one of Needham Market’s finest.

From here it is just a short walk back to the car park, ending a pleasant day in what is truly a pleasant little town.