previously historic

Thanks to a visiting descendent we have this pic of landlords Mr and Mrs James Woodward outside the Framlingham Station.  They took the pub over from Sarah Hawes in 1881 and nothing much has changed since though the pic shows outside ground floor window shutters, ads for brandy and John Hopkins Old Mull whisky, a no longer existent building in the background and no stone protecting the corner of the building which has appeared by the 1930s but is now gone away.

Seems unlikely we know but this 1935 cigarette card shows Framlingham college and the school tie.

In the days of the Great Eastern Railway it took eleven staff to run Framlingham station and the dress code seemed to require facial hair.

Flooding at the bottom of Fore Street in Framlingham has been a popular pursuit for at least a hundred years and still is despite the coming of television to East Anglia.

We've seen 17thC tradesman's tokens for Saxmundham, Dennington and Woodbridge, the Civil war disrupted coin production causing a small change shortage, but this is the first Framlingham token we've seen.  It could have been spent in John Capon grocers and presumably would have been worth a farthing, one quarter of a penny.

Thanks to Michael Raynor-Green we have this 1948 aerial view of Framlingham.  People's first comment is Hasn't changed much but there's the cinema in Regal isolation top right, a building on what is now the car park at the back of Bridges & Garrard, and where the bookies was on the corner of Riverside and Bridge Street is quite different.

I don't know whether you would be interested in this picture.  It was taken in 1959 - yes 50 years ago - it's me on the left with my cousin.

In those days there was no safety rail on the inside of the wall walk and I think you can just about make out the lack of said rail in this picture.  Even as a young child I used to run around the wall walk - no-one worried then about the lack of rail - now I won't even go around the top of the castle.

Regards, Jane.

We don't know if the new head of Framlingham College is related to Batman but he did play cricket for Surrey so perhaps he will be engaging in super hero activities like one of his predecessors.  (The Framlingham Weekly News Sat 6 July 1935 - thanks Kitchen Range)

This is Fore Street, Framlingham 1906 or earlier, we're only guessing but maybe they didn't have a volunteer fire service then.

Like most of the universe nowadays Church Street, Framlingham is a sea of parked cars but it wasn't always like that.

What goes round comes round.  Once Framlingham post office didn't have a telephone box, then it did and now it doesn't again.

Dick Larter tell us there were once three places in Framlingham where shotgun cartridges could be bought.  What is now The Green Room in Church Street was a gunsmiths, possibly for around a hundred years.  The census shows Benjamin Norman living there in 1871 and in 1894 he became one of Fram's first councillors.  The shop was sold to Kit Ravensheare in 1960 who nineteen years later sold it perhaps to retire?  If you Google Kit Ravensheare you'll find he wrote a number of books on gunsmithing and is no longer alive.

Jane Bloom (the charming little nurse on the left to Bill Bulstrode's dad the then rector Martin Bulstrode) sent us this pic of the 1950 Rectory Fete in Framlingham.  Do you recognise any young faces?

FADS (Framlingham AmDram Soc) were formed in 1903 and have been at it consistently since 1922.  In 1929 the Christmas production was The Thirteenth Chair and the tupenny prog reveals a lot of honoraryness, surnames you'll still recognise and music by a seven piece orchestra.  They are still at it with the comedy Nobody's Perfect running this week at Fram College's Headmaster Porter Theatre until Friday.