Announcing our award winners!
Amenity Society leaders
Community
Landscape
Ecclesiastical
Architectural historians
Details of each of our winners can be found below. Congratulations to all our nominees and grateful thanks to those who took the time to send in their recommendations.
The winners will received their certificates at our award ceremony during our summer event – find our more here
Thanks also goes to our generous sponsors:
John Norman 1947 – 2024
Nominated by: The Ipswich Society
John Norman made an outstanding contribution to the heritage of Suffolk and Ipswich in particular as Chair of the Ipswich Society since 2012. He was also a member of the Ipswich Borough Council’s Conservation and Design Panel (for over 20 years) and a member of the Ipswich Waterfront Partnership, which helped to guide the transformation from dilapidated docks to the vibrant waterfront of today.
John was also a Trustee and Chairman of the Suffolk Architectural Heritage Trust, which has recently merged with the Suffolk Building Preservation Trust to form Historic Suffolk. He was also a trustee of the Ipswich Building Preservation Trust and The Northgate Foundation. He was an adjudicator of the Civic Trust Awards and RIBA Suffolk, Annual Craftsmanship Awards. He was a member of the Ipswich Maritime Trust, Ipswich Heritage Forum, Suffolk Family History Society and Ipswich Transport Society.
John also arranged and led walks and talks, and wrote articles about Ipswich’s heritage which educated and enthused others.
We were sorry to learn of John’s death In February and send our heartful condolences to his family and friends. He will be greatly missed.
Martyn Taylor, Chair of the Bury Society
Nominated by: Melanie Lesser, SPS Member
Martyn Taylor has made a longstanding contribution to protecting and promoting the heritage of Bury St Edmunds. He has lived in Bury St Edmunds all his life and is the go-to person when it comes to all things relating to the history of Bury.
Martyn has been Chairman of The Bury Society since 2016. He is also involved in many other heritage groups in the town including The Past and Present Society and The Abbey Partnership Group. In 2012 he was instrumental in getting eight new Blue Plaques installed around the town which included author Charles Dickens and artist Sybil Andrews. In 2023 he was part of a group who successfully lobbied Greggs to start repairs to their 17th century building in Abbeygate Street which had become very rundown.
He is a published author of 11 books on the town including Secret Bury St Edmunds, Bury St Edmunds in 50 Buildings, and Abbey 1000. The latest book, Bury St Edmunds Through Time was published in 2023 and he has a weekly column in the Bury Free Press, often describing little known nostalgic gems of information. Always keen to share the town’s history, Martyn is also a popular tour guide for the town and Abbey.
Trustees of the Excelsior Trust
Nominated by Jamie Campbell, chair of Excelsior Trust
The Excelsior Trust was founded in 1982 to rebuild the sailing trawler Excelsior LT 472, built in Lowestoft in 1921 by John Chambers. The reconstruction was completed and the vessel was recommissioned in 1988. Excelsior is the most authentically restored sailing smack in the UK and is included in the National Historic Ships Register as one of only approximately fifty most important historic vessels in the country. She is also the only surviving smack to be equipped with a traditional 50′ beam trawl to fish in the time-honoured fashion. Excelsior is built from roughly 100 tons of oak and is maintained at The Excelsior Yard on Oulton Broad. The yard is a working shipyard but retains a bias towards heritage and wooden vessels.
Today Excelsior earns her keep as a sail training vessel for young people and since 1990, with the help of a dedicated group of volunteers, has taken around 11,000, often disadvantaged young people, to sea.
Excelsior’s survival has been a massive effort by a wide range of individuals including: three full time crew, a yard manager (who is also a Relief Skipper), a part time PR person, sales and admin officer and a book keeper. Trustees are essential volunteers and there are a large number (probably another fifty) that freely give their time towards either fundraising or maintaining the boat. This award recognises the enduring effort of many people to maintain this important maritime heritage while delivering significant social capital.
Paupers Graves Volunteers
Nominated by Onehouse Parish Council
At the turn of the millennium Onehouse Parish Council purchased the Paupers Graves site to the rear of the former Stow Union Workhouse which was in a completely neglected state. Since then, a small but extremely dedicated group of volunteers has looked after the site and the hundreds of bodies buried within with great care and dedication every week regardless of the weather.
They have cleared the site of dead and fallen trees/brambles, identified where the graves are; located and displayed artefacts found onsite such as the cast-iron grave marker crosses along with information boards. In addition to this they have opened the site to public access with a proper entrance and footpath around the site as well as siting a couple of benches to allow quiet reflection in this tranquil little spot.
The Pauper’s Care Team at the moment are John Baldwin, Richard Cook, John Corker, John Emsden, Ian Fraser, David Nicholson, Phil James and Ray Taylor they have a combined age of 637!
The have been supported over the years by other volunteers Mike Chase, Arlene Cruickshanks, Pauline Llewellyn, Margaret Fishburne, Ron and Jill Raisey, John Batchford, Audrey Russell-Howes, Ken Brown.
Gary Battell
Nominated by: Lady Greenwell, trustee of Orford Museum
Gary Battell has worked tirelessly, selflessly and inspirationally in woodland management and education since 1974. Now Suffolk County Council’s Woodland Advisory Officer, Gary previously worked for the Forestry Commission and the National Trust. His passion for trees started as a boy scout.
Gary’s friendship with the late Dr Oliver Rackham brought him additional landscape history and ecology knowledge which he now passes on to a wide audience. He is a valued adviser to numerous organisations as well as helping individuals to get into forestry or set up their own businesses.
Gary supports the management of Suffolk’s Staverton Forest, 4,000 magnificent, ancient oaks, owned by the Kemball family. At the Woodland Heritage tree nursery in the forest, he raises acorns for young oaks and organises volunteer groups with the AONB (Coastal and Heath Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty). Gary has helped raise the profile and understanding of Acute Oak Decline (AOD), to help protect our oak tree heritage from disease.
Gary has also helped at Orford Museum, giving talks on Staverton Thicks and guided walks for no charge in turn to help raise funds for Orford Museum.
The Hadleigh Society for protecting and researching an ancient landform or “Hollow way”
Nominated by Susan Clements on behalf of Residents Group
The name Holloway comes from the Anglo-Saxon word which literally means ‘sunken road’, many going back as far as the iron age. They started life as either drove trails used to move animals from farms to markets, routes from inland to the sea ports, pilgrimage routes or simply boundary ditches.
The Hadleigh Holloway, formerly known as Bacon Lane or rather less flatteringly as Bridleway Number 11 (north of Hadleigh off Gallows Hill and Castle Road) overlooks the Brett River Valley, is tree lined and possibly Medieval in date. The Hadleigh Society agreed with local residents that it should be considered for inclusion in the Local List on the basis of the Town’s Social and Agricultural development. It is also recognised as being an important local archaeological feature and was formally added to the Hadleigh Local List in September 2023 and the Suffolk Historic Environment Record.
Accordingly, the special historic and cultural importance of the Bacon Lane “Holloway” must now be taken into account when looking at planning applications, thus affording it some level of protection.
The Hadleigh Society, with the assistance of Hadleigh Archive carried out detailed studies using both old and new maps and historic records and documentation to investigate further. The local community feel that the Society is deserving of this award given the time expended by a really small team of volunteers.
Suffolk Unforgettable Gardens Story project volunteers
Nominated by: Linden Groves, Head of Operations and Strategy, the Gardens Trust
Working with Suffolk Gardens Trust, the team of passionate and hardworking volunteers from the Suffolk’s Unforgettable Gardens Story project have learnt new skills and contributed their time and expertise to research and record over 20 historic parks and gardens.
The result of this important work includes new additions to the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest, through which the sites will be nationally designated and therefore given a better level of protection in the planning system. The intention is to also add research to the Historic Environment Record, helping support those conserving historic parks and gardens in Suffolk.
These brilliant volunteers deserve an award for being so willing to tackle new challenges and make such a significant contribution to the conservation of Suffolk’s historic parks and gardens for future generations The Gardens Trust is replicating the project in other areas of the country, using the knowledge and experience gathered from the Suffolk volunteers along the way. More at https://thegardenstrust.org/campaigns/suffolks-unforgettable-garden-story/
Hugo Smith
Nominated by: Gill Hicks on behalf of Little Saxham PCC
St. Nicholas Church, Little Saxham has one of Suffolk’s most spectacular Norman round towers, according to Nicolas Pevsner. It also has some of the most fascinating 16th and 17th century monuments, which have been hidden, locked away from public view in the vestry since 1893.
It has been Hugo Smith’s vision, dedication and drive to raise the money to have two of these monuments restored, and most importantly, to reopen up the space to enable all those visiting St Nicholas to see these magnificent monuments.
Hugo’s determination to raise the thousands of pounds needed to do the job properly led him to apply to many charitable organisations. He encouraged the local parishioners to contribute generously to the appeal and helped organise a variety of fundraising events. The result of his hard work has seen restoration work commence in December 2023, which will hopefully be finished by early summer . It was just in time: the two monuments were about to fall off the wall as their supports had almost rusted away. The present generation, and those to follow, owe Hugo a great debt.
Lynda Aldred, lead volunteer on the digitisation of Suffolk church guides
Nominated by Geoffrey Probert, chair of the Suffolk Historic Churches Trust
The project to digitise the Suffolk parish church guides was initiated by the Historic Churches Trust and launched in 2023. It was led by Lynda Aldred one of Suffolk’s redoubtable band of Church Recorders.
Lynda volunteered to co-invent and act as the manager of the project, and without her tireless work this dream would never have been realised.
She gave many hundreds of houses curating the just launched Suffolk Historic Churches Trust ‘Guides to Suffolk Churches Online’, tracking down guides, cajoling authors and churchwardens, scanning the guides and loading them onto the site.
Simon Knott, Suffolk Churches online website
Nominated by Geoffrey Probert, Chair Suffolk Historic Churches Trust
Writer and photographer Simon Knott has been chronicling East Anglian churches for over twenty years. His hugely popular website covers every parish in Suffolk (as well as Cambridge, Norfolk and Essex). Besides chronicling thousands of sites and villages, often revisiting them, his writing betrays an inquiring Christian mind eager to share discoveries and indeed wonders. He allows the reader in to this silent English inheritance that reaches back to the early Christian world and travels through history, from Viking Danelaw, to the birth of England, the Reformation, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the transformation of our Roman Catholic heritage into a new Anglican world.
Whether it be cycling miles of hot East Anglian summer lanes or driving through flat, sparse winter landscapes, Simon always had his trusty Nikon D5300 ready to photograph a new church, often touring a dozen in a day – a practice, indeed a love, he has successfully handed on to thousands of church visitors across the East of England, both secular and religious.
John Walker, Timothy Easton and Philip Aitkens – a triumvirate of architectural historians
Nominated by Edward Martin on behalf of Suffolk Historic Buildings Group
The nominees have led the way in the understanding and appreciation of Suffolk’s rich heritage of historic buildings, particularly its timber-framed domestic buildings. As well as their academic writings, they have all taken their discoveries and ideas to a wider public through countless talks and courses on these buildings across the county for well over 30 years. They have provided the bedrock for us to understand and effectively conserve an important part of our built heritage.
All three can be seen communicating their ideas on these videos from the 2021 Vernacular Architecture Group Spring Conference 2021: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP-ojFvaknzXcpXJFt2g-LDFnogyuAllq
Philip Aitkens is a retired historic buildings consultant. He worked on the Listed Buildings resurvey of Suffolk in the 1980s and contributed sections on aisled halls and aisled barns to An Historical Atlas of Suffolk (1988, 1999).
Philip co-authored The Farmsteads of Suffolk. A Thematic Study in 1998 (https://heritage.suffolk.gov.uk/media/pdfs/farmsteads/suffolkthematicsurvey1998rd.pdf). He also contributed a chapter on ‘Queen-post roofs in East Anglia’ in Walker (ed.) The English Medieval Roof: Crownpost to Kingpost, 2011.
Philip has also written numerous reports on individual important Suffolk buildings.
Timothy Easton is a professional artist. He was a contributor to the 1970’s study of Debenham’s buildings with the resulting exhibition ‘Behind the Facade’. This study included the discovery of a unique surviving theatrical grandstand that led on to the interest in entertainment sites and the commissioned work for the Shakespeare Globe Theatre Trust.
Timothy was the first to draw attention to the use of paint on early brickwork (papers in Post-Medieval Archaeology 1986 and in P. Oliver (ed.) Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World, 1997). He was also a pioneer in recognising the presence of a variety of apotropaic marks and symbols on buildings and has written widely on the subject (chapters on ‘Apotropaic Symbols and Other Measures for Protecting Buildings against Misfortune’ and ‘Spiritual Middens’ in R. Hutton (ed.) Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain, 2015).
John Walker is a retired civil servant. Formerly based in Essex, he has lived in Suffolk for over 20 years; he is a former chairman of both the Essex Historic Buildings Group and the Herts and Essex Architectural Research Society.
He is a specialist in the interpretation of timber-framed buildings, and has written many studies of buildings that have been published in the journal Vernacular Architecture (‘An unusual timber-framed house in Essex’ 1996; ‘Late-twelfth & early-thirteenth-century aisled Buildings: A comparison’ 1999; ‘A square medieval timber-framed kitchen’ 2000; ‘A lobby-entrance house of 1615: Model Farm, Linstead Magna, Suffolk’ 2003; The carpentry of a twelfth-century aisled hall: Burmington Manor, Warwickshire’ 2013; ‘Baythorne Hall, a raised-aisled hall in Birdbrook, Essex, and its relationship to other raised-aisled halls’ 2014). John also edited and contributed an introduction and an overview to The English Medieval Roof: Crownpost to Kingpost, Essex Historic Buildings Group 2011.