In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Suffolk and Norfolk were the most prosperous industrial counties in Britain. The inscription in a Suffolk church "I thank my God and ever shall, It was the sheep that paid for all" sums it up perfectly. For three hundred years wealth poured into Suffolk, first from the wool staple and then from the cloth trade. Most of the churches were rebuilt and adorned during this period, and have been rightly praised. It is strange that so little notice has been taken of Suffolk houses. Suffolk has no building stone, but until Tudor times was rich in oak forests. Men have been building with timber since the earliest times, and by the Middle Ages had become master-carpenters with an immense skill in making and enriching timberwork. Not all of this went into churches, although, from a tradition which gave rise to the epithet "seely [blesséd] Suffolk", perhaps the best did. The timber-framed houses, however, had their own Golden Age which reached its zenith by the Great Rebellion. The later story of domestic building lies mainly in brickwork, where classical ideas were being imported from the Low Countries. There is a fascinating and almost entirely local development of ornamental plasterwork on the outside of houses; indeed beneath many a conventional front there is often hidden the rich timber-framing carried out several centuries before. Written by a professional architect with a deep understanding of his subject, this superbly illustrated book gives not only a scholarly account of the development of house building in the region, but also a vivid description of the character of the county itself.
