Walk 39 : Manningtree (round walk)

John Constable was born in 1776. At the age of 33, he met Maria Bicknell, granddaughter of the rector of East Bergholt. As a lower-class miller's son, he had to wait for her parents' deaths before he could marry her. Maria died of tuberculosis in 1828, leaving him with seven children. Constable died in 1837, at the age of 61. He never went abroad, concentrating on painting landscapes in Suffolk, Hampstead, Salisbury and Brighton (they moved south for the sake of Maria's health). The walk passes the grammar school houses in Dedham where Constable was a pupil, and the scenes for many of his paintings, including those entitled The Hay Wain, The Cornfield, Dedham Vale, Dedham Mill, Flatford Mill and The Valley of the Stour.

St Mary's Church, Lawford, has long views over the River Stour and its estuary. It was probably built by Sir Benet de Cokefield, Lord of the (Lawford) Manor, in about 1340. It has a fine chancel in the Decorated Gothic style and a timber roof typical of the area. The discovery of treasonable correspondence led to the church's forfeiture by the Crown during the Reformation. The wretched Puritans destroyed or defaced its medieval glass and stone carved statuary in the seventeenth century.

The village of Dedham prospered with the wool trade in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Work started on the Parish Church of St Mary, Dedham, in 1492. Constable attended services at this church, and its tower is a feature in his paintings. The church was renowned for its preaching and contains a seventeenth-century monument depicting a preacher known as 'Roaring Rogers' with a book in his hands.

Stratford St Mary contains a henge: circular sanctuary constructed by the sun-worshipping Beaker Folk who invaded Britain in dug-out canoes around the year 2000BC. The henge can only be detected from the air. The oldest house in the village dates from 1334, and the timber-framed Priest's House has solid oak beams, four to five inches thick. The church, a fine example of Decorated Gothic, is far larger than needed by the village, which had a peak population of 673 - it was built as big as their prosperity from agriculture could afford, to honour God. The letters of the alphabet are depicted around the exterior, to remind passers-by that all the sacred scriptures can be composed from these letters.

The Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, East Bergholt, contains a possibly fifteenth-century inscription that reads: 'What ere thou art, here reader see, in this pale glass what thou shalt be, despised wormes and putrid slime, then dust forgot and lost in time.' In its churchyard is the tomb of Constable's parents. The tower was never completed, it is said, because of the death of the church's benefactor, Cardinal Wolsey, in 1530. The bells were therefore 'temporarily' housed in a bell cage, built in 1531 - one that is still used and is unique, in that the bells are rung, not by wheel and rope, but by force of hand.

Old Hall, East Bergholt, has had many incarnations: a country house (painted by Constable), a nunnery and then a friary. In 1972, it was set up as a commune by a group who advertised in the Guardian for middle-class Greens, and has matured into an organic farming community with 40 adults and 20 children.

The Granary Collection Museum (tel 01206 298 111), next to the Flatford Mill Field Centre, has a collection of objects from Constable's lifetime - everything from a Vickers machine-gun to vintage cycles and a meteorite that fell nearby. It is open from 11am to dusk daily in summer, and whenever there is good weather in winter. Admission is a very reasonable 30p.

This text was taken from an older edition of the book, and is a little out of date. Please check the updates for this walk.