Yoxford, Suffolk

Corner shop

I didn’t know what to expect in Yoxford, apart from a picturesque thatched shelter on the main road (the A12), the sight of which encouraged me to stop and have a look round. Whatever I expected, it wasn’t this, a small shop with a split architectural personality of a kind I’d not seen before. To the front is a white-painted brick wall with sash windows above and an attractive bright red 19th-century shopfront below. The Ionic pilasters that frame the shopfront are made of cast iron – a common material for Victorian shopfronts, although less common now – more and more of these symbols of Victorian innovation and pragmatism disappear every year.*

But, having quickly taken my photograph before the Morris Minor roared off, I found it hard to take my eyes off the side wall, which boasts a succession of stepped gables and Tudor-arched windows, mostly in glowing 19th-century red brick but with stone dressings. If this all seems rather grand for a small shop, an odd backdrop for the waste bin, plastic trays and old signboards that keep it company, the reason is not so hard to guess when you’re there. Just to the right of this showy bit of brickwork is a pair of brick gate lodges in a similar style. They form one of the entrances to Cockfield Hall, a grand house just outside the village.† What a pleasant way for a local bigwig to enhance the villagescape – far preferable to the demolition jobs committed by some landowners to rid their neighbourhood of ‘unsightly’ nearby houses, pubs or shops. Long may the shop prosper.

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* This one should not disappear as the building is listed.

† Alas I did not take photographs of Cockfield Hall or the cottage ornée in its grounds, as the weather rapidly turned nasty and sent me on my way. A reason to return.