Blundeston Pound

This circular brick enclosure, which stands at the junction of Pound Lane with Church Road, was built for the temporary accommodation of stray animals found on the loose (mainly, livestock), until they were claimed by the owner(s). A small fine was then charged for release, which went into the coffers of the lord of the manor. What can’t be seen in this shot is the open-barred wooden gate, which faces straight down Pound Lane and which allowed both animals and human beings to enter and exit the pound.

The structure dates from the late 18th-early 19th century and has its bricks laid in Flemish bond (alternating courses of headers and stretchers, thereby forming a pleasing pattern), which was very popular at the time. A rounded top course of coping bricks finishes the whole thing off. During late medieval times, and for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a local man would have had a part-time job as pinder, whose task it was to round up stray animals and impound them, prior to recovery by the owner(s). There are three other structures of this type in our part of North-east Suffolk - at Wrentham, Beccles and Somerleyton.

The first named stands out of the village, near a cross-ways where Beccles Road, Falcon Inn Road, Guildhall Lane and Chapel Road all meet, thereby providing easy access from a number of different directions. Its precise location is at the junction of Priory Road with Chapel Road, and it has a wider open-barred gate than its Blundeston relative, with rectangular, overhanging, stone coping-slabs capping the brickwork - which is laid in mainly stretcher bond, with some header spacing in places, and is buttressed by brick pilasters.

Again, the structure dates from the late 18th-early 19th century - as does the one in Beccles, which stands on a bend in the road where Pound Road and Common Lane North meet. There has been partial rebuilding of it in one section of its circumference (to the left of yet another wide open-barred gate) and an X-shaped tie-iron in the new masonry - replacing an earlier one - reminds us that the wall undergoes an outward thrust in its construction, at this point.

The brickwork, this time, is in English bond (alternating courses of headers and stretchers) and is surmounted with rounded coping bricks, like the Blundeston one. Which brings us to the fourth and last structure, that at Somerleyton - the most interesting one of all, for the writer. It stands on the edge of an ancient track, known as Waddling Way, or Waddling Lane, where a another track coming straight up from off Somerleyton marsh joins it - an ideal location to secure stray animals which had managed to wander from their grazing areas.
 

The coping course is missing from the brickwork and so is the wooden gate - but no further comment can be made, because it is some years, now, since the writer last passed this way. Anyone wishing to see it can access it from Station Road, near Waveney Grange Farm.

The village of Blundeston, of course, is noted for its association with the Dickens novel, David Copperfield, but there can be no exploration of that here - except to make one passing reference from Chapter 1, paragraph five: “I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk …” An adjustment of spelling which is, perhaps, worth thinking about!