Theatre Street & Burkitt Road
The Area in 1560
The earliest comprehensive description of Woodbridge is given in the 1560 Extent of the manor of Woodbridge late Priory. The road from the market to the junction with what are now called Hasketon Road and Grundisburgh Road was then referred to the common leading from the market at Woodbridge towards Hasketon. What is now Queen’s Head Lane was the lane leading to the lord’s pen called Le Pynfold. The latter was a pound into which stray animals were put until they were released on payment of a fine. It is believed that the entrance to the pound was on the western side of the lane. By 1589 the road from the Market to the junction with Grundisburgh Road and Hasketon Road was called Pound Street. What is now Queen’s Head Lane probably became Pound Lane at about the same time.
The map on the right shows all the other features mentioned in the survey overlaid on the road layout from the 1881 OS map. The shaded green area was agricultural land which was part of the demesne of the manor. This land had formerly been retained by the lord of the manor but, by 1560, it had been divided up into plots of various sizes which were rented out. The coloured dots mark the locations of buildings mentioned in the survey. Along the north side of Pound Street there was a line of 3 messuages (houses) and behind them was a meadow called Dowerells Fen. Beyond these messuages Pound Street ran alongside demesne land called Burtoffe Felde.
Key features mentioned in the 1560 Survey
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Along the southern side of Pound Street there was a line of 4 messuages, 1 cottage and 3 granaries between the Market and Pound Lane. Beyond them Pound Street ran along demesne land.
Major Changes from 1560 to 1840
The Poor Rate returns for Woodbridge are the first detailed record of where people lived. In 1748 there were 18 families living alongside Pound Street. By 1766 this number had risen to 24, by 1807 it was 38 and, by 1830, it had jumped the 60. The changes from 1748 to 1807 were probably due to a rise in the number of families sharing dwellings, whereas the large change from 1807 to 1811 to 30 was mainly due to the building of new dwellings. The total number of families living in Woodbridge increased by 285% between 1748 and 1830 whereas for Pound Street the increase was 333%.
In 1577 the neglected state of education in the town caused concern to Thomas Arnott, a Lowestoft merchant who had been born in Woodbridge. He thus bequeathed tenements to provide money to support a Free Grammar School for boys “knowing that the town was poor and populous and for the love he bore it”. He had previously set up a similar institution in Lowestoft to provide education for 40 boys. There he stated his intentions thus 'Lowestoft being a populous town facing the sea, inhabited chiefly by mariners and sea faring men, being replenished with a great number of youths, who are very uncivil and ignorant for want of good instruction and education, of my goodly zeal towards the bringing up of the said youths in virtue and learning, I bequeath…' It seems likely that his intentions were similar in Woodbridge where his school was set up, on Pound Street, in the building shown on the right.
Legal action over the terms of Arnott's bequest reduced the money available to the school which eventually had to close. Vincent Redstone gives the date of closure as 1607 but others suggest that it was 1647. After the school closed the building was bought by William Bearman, who in 1668 bequeathed it 'towards the relief of the poor of Woodbridge'. In 1672 the building was converted to a Workhouse because the parish’s combined House of Correction and Workhouse on New Street was overwhelmed by Dutch prisoners taken during the battle of Sole Bay.
Arnott’s school was established in the white building which is now 11 Theatre Street. The building later became the parish workhouse.
The parish’s new Workhouse was in use until the Woodbridge Poor Law Union was created in 1835. The Union was made up of 48 parishes around Woodbridge and the Union Workhouse was at Nacton. The Governors of the Union retained the building formerly used as the parish workhouse and, for a time, may have used it for their meetings. The Charity Commission eventually instructed them to sell the building in 1862.
In 1804 Suffolk County Council built the House of Correction and subsequently Pound St was called Bridewell St. The austere premises replaced the jail, erected at Melton in 1164, for the 64 parishes of the Liberty of St Etheldreda. By 1842 all prisoners were sent to Ipswich and the building became a police station. It was converted into 5 houses after the new police station on Hasketon Rd was built in 1931.
The House of Correction. In 1931 it was converted
into 5 dwellings and is now 16 to 24 Theatre Street.
During period 1812 to 1828 thirteen new theatres were built across East Anglia by David Fisher, the proprietor of The Norfolk and Suffolk Company of Comedians. It took almost two years to make the complete round of these theatres, with a season of up to two months in each town. Visits were timed to coincide with Assizes, fairs, races and other crowd-pulling events.
In 1813 David Fisher selected a site for a theatre in Woodbridge. It was a 100ft by 32ft rectangle which had been part of the premises of “The Angel". Most of the site was behind a house with a frontage on Bridewell St and it was accessed via a long, 12ft wide, passage. A local builder erected the building at a cost of £2000 and the theatre opened on 5th February 1814.
A family home was also built adjacent to the Theatre. This house may well have been the first permanent home David Fisher and his wife Elizabeth ever had. Sadly she died there only a few weeks after the opening of the theatre and was buried in Woodbridge churchyard.
In 1828 the Pound was moved to the bottom of North Hill and two years later the lower part of Pound Street became Theatre Street and, because Burkitt Meadow was part of the grounds of Woodbridge School) the upper part of Pound Street became Burkitt Road.
When David Fisher died in 1832 his second son Charles took up the management role at a time when theatres throughout England were enfeebled by declining patronage. In 1843, Woodbridge theatre reported 'little support in comparison with former times' and a much more dramatic falling away was evident in the smaller Fisher theatres. In 1844, after more than fifty years, the company was dissolved, the victim of a changing social pattern. Leases were terminated and theatres were sold one by one.
Until January 1863 the Woodbridge premises continued to be used for a variety of performances and it was sometimes billed as "Theatre Royal, Woodbridge". In 1862 the managers of the National School rented it for an Infant School and in 1883 it was auctioned with them as sitting tenants. Soon after two cottages to the left of the entrance were demolished to make space for a playground (now a private car park). The school moved out in 1955 and the building was acquired by Dr Littler of Melton who used it as a store. From 1963 it has been used as the auction room of Neal Sons and Fletcher.
The entrance to the auction room. The private car park
to the left used to be the playground of the infant school.
The dilapidated cottages in the centre of this photographs were in front of the theatre. They were demolished circa 1910. Part of the entrance to the theatre was on the right. When this photograph was taken the theatre was being used as an infant school.
The National School, now St Mary’s Primary School opened on Burkitt Road in October 1813. Its pupils had to pay ½p a week. This was increased to 1p a week in 1818 and parents who could afford it were asked to pay 24s a year. The increase in school fees was hard for poor parents and the school records show that some children were excluded for non-payment of fees. From 1844 to 1863 the National School rented what had been the parish workhouse and opened an infant department there. When the Poor Law Union sold this building in 1863 the infant department moved into the former theatre across the road.
In 1870 the government declared, that it was going to participate directly in elementary education. At the same time it was clearly stated that voluntary bodies – e.g. British Schools, the National schools – would continue to play a major roll. Such schools were given grants the size of which depended upon reports made by School Board inspectors. Over the years these grants fell as the School Boards set higher standards. In 1890 legislation was passed to make elementary education free. This immediately made the imbalance between the funding of Board Schools and voluntary schools worse. In 1907 the non-conformists closed the British School on Castle Street but the Church of England continued to support the National School. In 1953 the National School was given 'aided status' by the Department of Education and Science. The following year the name of the school was changed from Woodbridge National School to the Woodbridge Church Primary Aided School.
The National School started in this thatched building. It is still at the heart of the expanded school.
Between 1811 and 1815 a house was built near the junction of Burkitt Road and Pound Lane and a cottage was erected alongside Pound Lane. It is likely cottage was on the site of the Pound (Pin Fold) because, by, 1840 there was field beyond the National School which was named Pound Field.
By 1827 a ‘mansion’ had been built in extensive grounds called Mount Pleasant. These grounds, which were behind a 5ft stone wall, ran all the way from the house at the junction of Burkitt Road and Pound Lane to the National School.
By 1840 the mansion was called Burkitt Lodge, presumably because two large fields on the other side of Burkitt Road were called Upper Burkitt and Burkitt Meadow. Burkitt Lodge has since been named Woodbridge Lodge.
By 1840 a line of six cottages were built between the National School and the entrance to Buttrum’s Mill. This tower windmill was built in 1836 by William Trott for his second son Pierce. In the 1840s the mill was bought by John Buttrum and he modernised it and put in a roller mill. When John Buttrum died his wife employed a manager until their son George was old enough to take over. He operated the mill until it closed in 1928/29. In 1934 the mill was sold to Suffolk County Council. They restored it to working condition in 1954 and is now a visitor attraction.
Buttrum's Mill circa 1930
Between 1818-19 an earlier tower windmill had been built between Pound Lane and the Market Hill and the entrance was on Bridewell Street. The mill ceased operation sometime before 1937. By then Stewart Tricker, a coal merchant, was using the site. The cap and sails were subsequently taken down and what remains has been incorporated into Mussidan Place, a complex of retirement homes built in 1973.
What is now called Tricker’s Mill had a short life as a
working mill before it was taken over by a coal merchant.
White’s 1844 trade directory is the earliest publication to indicate that Bridewell St had been divided into Theatre Street and Burkitt Road and that Pound Lane had become Queen’s Head Lane. By that year, alongside Theatre Street, there were two corn millers, two public houses, the Angel Inn and a beer house which later was named the Royal William. There were also 5 shops, a blacksmith and a cabinet maker. By 1874 the two corn millers and the 2 public houses were still in business as were 4 shops, a boot and shoe maker and a timber merchant with a steam driven saw mill in what had been the workhouse.
By 1937 there were still two public houses but one of them, the Royal William, was soon to close. Only 2 shops remained and corn milling had ceased but a coal merchant was using the site of one of the former mills. Today the only commercial venture left is the Angel Inn. Many other streets in Woodbridge have gone through a similar decline. Only the Thoroughfare has more businesses than it had in 1844.
In 1865 Woodbridge Grammar School was relocated to meadows which abutted the northern side of Burkitt Road. The school was expanded in 1895.
By the 1960s some of the cottages on western side of Theatre St had become dilapidated. Two cottages by the entrance to Theatre Street were demolished to make space for the public toilets. The area in front of the toilets was left open and became used as an unofficial parking space but in 2006 this area was blocked off by a low fence and planted up.
Also in the 1960s, a group of pre 1840s buildings on Theatre Street was demolished to make way for a public car park and a fire station. Sometime later an annex was added to the fire station to create a police station.
Marryot House opened in 1864. It was the first of the buildings to be erected when Woodbridge Grammar school was relocated to the meadows abutting the northern side of Burkitt Road.
During the early 1970s all but one of the buildings between the fire station and Queen's Head Lane were demolished to build the Woodbridge Red Cross Centre and Mussidan Place, a complex of retirement homes. They were both completed in 1973. Most of the land used for this development and previously been the site of of Tricker's Mill and thankfully the mill tower was incorporated in the Mussidan Place development.
The extent to which Theatre St has changed since 1840 is clearly shown the map on the right. It is an annotated extract from the 1840 Tithe Map. The blue dots identify the buildings which were demolished after 1840. While the red dots identify the buildings which were found to be wholly or partially timber framed when a survey was conducted in 2004. Only three timber framed buildings remain.
An annotated extract from the 1840 tithe map.
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Last Edited 2 Sep 23