Dedham history...

Dedham is best known for its Constable connections.

The English painter John Constable is ranked alongside Turner as one of our greatest landscape artists. Constable eschewed the artistic conventions of his compatriots and developed his own techniques of rendering the landscape in a more realistic manner.

Constable was born in East Bergholt in the Stour valley and grew up in and around Dedham. The Stour valley and Dedham Vale in particular are famed for their ‘big skies’, wide open countryside with gentle contours and little to distract from nature. Today, this whole area is protected as an area of outstanding natural beauty and much of the meadowland and river is owned by the National Trust.

Working extensively in the open air, Constable did sometimes resort to the studio where he produced his famed ‘six-footers’, huge landscapes replicated from more rudimentary oil sketches.

Dedham Mill, a building that still stands to this day, although now it is a collection of expensive apartments rather than a working mill.

The River Stour, to one side Essex, to the other Suffolk.

The Haywain, Constable’s best-known work. Painted looking across the mill pond at Flatford, the scene looks very much the same to this day. Time has stood still and the only thing missing is the hay wain itself.

Almost five hundred years old, listed and mentioned frequently in historic surveys and reports, the Essex Rose at Dedham is a fine timber-framed building looking out across Royal Square and towards the church...

The fine detail on the upstair ceilings is mentioned specifically, although this part of the Essex Rose is not open to visitors.

Dedham has an especially grand church and has one of Constable’s original paintings on display when it’s not on loan to other exhibitions.

The Essex Rose has served many diverse purposes over the centuries but it found fame as a tea house more than half a century ago when Miss Loe began to cater for the tourists that were flocking to the area.

The pen and ink sketch is a copy of an original still in the possession of the owners, Wilkin & Sons Limited of Tiptree.