The Swans have been learning about what Stratford St Mary would have been like in Tudor Times. Last week, we looked at how our village is linked to the Suffolk Wool Towns. We learned about a man called Thomas Mors who was a cloth manufacturer who died in 1500. He gave lots of his money to the church and because of him, and his family, the church was transformed from a very small Saxon church into the church you see today. This is the reason we have ‘Mors Close’ off Strickmere.
Today, we went to the church and did a ‘Treasure Hunt’. The children enjoyed learning more about their church and the significance of Thomas Mors and his link to our village. We found many of his merchant symbols in not only the masonry, but also the stained glass window. The children also found the inscription on the north aisle which translates into modern English as ‘Pray for the souls of Edward Mors and Alice his wife and all Christian souls in the year of our Lord 1530 and Pray for the souls of Thomas Mores and Margaret his Wife who had this aisle built in 1499.’ We found the Mors family merchant mark on a buttress with an EA monogram (for Edward and Alice) and an AMR for the Blessed Virgin.
These posts on Statford St. Mary in Tudor times are very interesring for me, since my oldest known ancestor William Smythe lived there In those times. John Constable sketched a house William helped build back then called Ravenys. It is the subject of a picture by Constable entitled “a house in Water Lane”, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Lord of the Manor back then made a grant of the land on which it stands to William Smyth and William Wade in 1442 on condition that they rebuilt the house for which the lord would provide the timber. Apparently it still stands in Statford St. Mary, although I have never visited there, living thousands of miles way in California.