For three hundred years the Hermitage lasted, and a long line of hermits lived here. Some were pious and industrious, keeping the road in repair; others had neither piety nor industry, spent their time in taverns, were smiters, and got drunk and fought, so that the road became scandalously neglected, and many Colchester worthies received apostolical black eyes from eremitical fists. Such an one must have been the hermit who lived here in the reign of Henry the Fifth, and was indicted in 1419 for having an unclean ditch. Finally, in 1535, when the dissolution of the monasteries took place, the Hermitage was closed, and the then occupant turned out, with a warning that if he solicited alms henceforward he would be regarded as a "sturdy beggar," and dealt with accordingly.
The road to Ipswich was the scene, in the second half of the seventeenth century, shortly after the first coaches had started running, of many highway robberies. The borough of Colchester was deeply concerned at this lawlessness, and in 1679 three men were rewarded with £6, 8s. between them "for apprehending those yt robbed the Ipswich coach." Again, in September 1698, three men were rewarded "for pursuen hiewaymen," and for "going to Ardlegh" on that business; but as they received only two shillings each and an extra shilling for "drinck," it looks as though the pursuit was unsuccessful.
COLCHESTER.
The high road, to which we have now returned, has already been described as an excellent highway, but Dilbridge, a hamlet, and a roadside inn on what was once Ardleigh Heath, alone break its solitude. It has, however, the advantage of commanding the best general view of Colchester, with the inevitable Jumbo prominent, and the new-risen Town Hall tower in rivalry with it.
Suddenly, when six miles from Colchester, the road changes its character and drops sharply down by an almost precipitous descent, to where a lazy river is seen flowing picturesquely in loops and bends between the grey-green foliage of willows lining either bank. It flows through a land of rich green meadows and yellow cornfields; a land, too, of noble elms and oaks. In the far distance the waters of a salt estuary sparkle in the sun, while in between, from this Pisgah height, rises the tall tower of a church. The river is the Stour, dividing Essex and Suffolk, and the pleasant vale, the Vale of Dedham. The estuary is that of the Stour at Manningtree, and the church tower that of Dedham. This, indeed, is the Constable Country, and that fact explains the homelike and familiar look it wears, even to the stranger. Constable, born close by at East Bergholt, painted these scenes lovingly for over forty years, and remained constant to his native vale all his life. By the magic power that comes of sympathy, he transferred the spirit of these lanes and fields and trees to canvas as faithfully as he did their form and colour; with the result that the veriest stranger viewing them becomes reminiscent.
Nor did Constable only paint his native vale; he has described it in almost as masterly a way. To him it was "the most cultivated part of Suffolk, a spot which overlooks the fertile valley of the Stour, which river separates that county on the south from Essex. The beauty of the surrounding scenery, its gentle declivities, its luxuriant meadow flats sprinkled with flocks and herds, its well-cultivated uplands, its woods and rivers, with numerous scattered villages and churches, farms and picturesque cottages, all impart to this particular spot an amenity and excellence hardly anywhere else to be found. He tells an amusing story of travelling home by coach down this very hill. He shared the vehicle with two strangers. "In passing the Vale of Dedham, one of them remarked, on my saying it was very beautiful, 'Yes, sir, this is Constable's Country.' I then told him who I was lest he should spoil it."
From this hill-top to the left of the road, and in what are now the woodlands of Langham Hall, Constable painted his best-known Vale of Dedham. In one respect the scene has changed. The willows still fringing the Stour, formerly "cobbed" or pollarded, are now allowed to grow as they will, and the river is not so visible as it was once. Otherwise the Constable Country is little altered. Even on this hill, close by Langham church, Church Farm, the original of his "Glebe Farm," remains as it was, thatched and gabled, close by the church tower. Only the foliage has changed, and the little guttering stream been drained away.