A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



tion which took place at this time throughout 

 the country, and in which Suffolk shared in 

 somewhat piecemeal fashion. A railway from 

 Norwich to Yarmouth in 1844 was an essential 

 part of Mr. Peto's scheme to connect Lowestoft 

 with this line at Reedham. This was accom- 

 plished in 1847. Previous to this the Eastern 

 Counties Railway from London to Norwich, 

 opened in 1845, had crossed the north-west 

 corner of Suffolk and touched at Brandon ; and 

 in 1846 the Eastern Union Railway had opened 

 a line from Colchester to Ipswich from which 

 branch lines were constructed to Hadleigh and 

 Bury in 1847, and the main line continued 

 through Stowmarket to Norwich in 1849. A 

 line from Sudbury to Marks Tey was also opened 

 in 1849. In 1854 Bury was connected with 

 Newmarket, and in the same year the East 

 Suffolk Railway brought Halesworth and Beccles 

 into communication at Haddiscoe with the line 

 from Norwich to Lowestoft. 1 The continuation 

 of the East Suffolk Railway from Halesworth to 

 Saxmundham, Woodbridge, and Ipswich was 

 completed soon after, and a branch opened to 

 Framlingham. Thus before the end of the fifties 

 the greater part of the present railway system of 

 Suffolk was completed. The various portions had 

 been constructed by some half-dozen separate 

 companies, but by 1858 most of these had been 

 absorbed by the Eastern Union, which served the 

 centre of the county, and the East Suffolk, which 

 ran along the coast. 2 In 1862 these two com- 

 panies along with the Eastern Counties Railway 

 and others were themselves included in the 

 amalgamation since known as the Great Eastern 

 Railway, which undertook the completion of 

 the lines connecting Long Melford, Clare, 

 Haverhill, and Lavenham with Sudbury, Bury, 

 and Cambridge, 3 and subsequently established 

 branches to Aldeburgh, and to Felixstowe, and 

 connected Bury with Thetford. The Great 

 Eastern Railway Co. also took over the harbours 

 of Lowestoft, and has just constructed a large 

 additional basin for use as a fish-market. 



It would be a mistake to suppose that the 

 modern development of Suffolk industry was 

 solely or even primarily due to these new 

 facilities of communication. That development 

 had already begun in the early decades of the 

 nineteenth century and was itself one of the 

 causes of improvement in land and water transport. 

 But the establishment of direct connexions with 

 the resources of a world-wide commerce together 

 with the almost simultaneous removal of tariff 

 restrictions on imports were the indispensable 

 conditions of the great progress subsequently 

 achieved. 



Apart from these more fundamental causes it 



1 White, Direct, 48, 553. 



* Stat. 19 and 20 Vic. cap. 53 and 79 ; 21 and 22 

 Vic. cap. 47, and cap. ill ; 24 and 2 5 Vic. cap. 1 80. 

 1 Stat. 25 and 26 Vic. cap. 223. 



is interesting to note the other material con- 

 ditions to which the industries of Suffolk have in 

 a secondary sense owed their development. For 

 this purpose they may be conveniently divided 

 into two main groups, one consisting of those 

 that have arisen out of the needs or activities of 

 the county as an agricultural community, and 

 the other of those which have arisen to replace 

 the old textile manufactures of the county. In 

 the former group the workers are almost all 

 men, in the latter they are at least two-thirds 

 women. 



It was perfectly natural, and indeed inevitable, 

 that the manufacture of agricultural implements 

 and of artificial manures, as well as the industries 

 of milling and malting, should spring up in the 

 eastern counties. What is remarkable is the ex- 

 pansion of these industries far beyond the scope 

 of local demand or supply. One favouring con- 

 dition has been the steady supply of fairly cheap 

 labour, owing to the constantly decreasing demand 

 for it for the purposes of agriculture. It is no 

 doubt from the class of displaced farm labourers 

 that Suffolk has drawn the five or six thousand 

 artisans who now find employment in machine- 

 making, and who form the main body of the 

 increased population in the eastern towns. But 

 geographical conditions have also played an im- 

 portant part in this expansion. Ready access to 

 the sea, so greatly improved by the enlargement 

 of the Ipswich dock and the Lowestoft harbour, 

 is one of these conditions, and another is the 

 comparative nearness of London by cheap water 

 transport. This, as will be seen later, has been 

 one of the main factors of the rapid growth of 

 the malting industry in the Suffolk ports. The 

 barley which is now brought from nearly every 

 quarter of the globe is malted on the dock-side 

 within a few yards of the vessel that brings it, 

 and the barges then take it round the Essex coast 

 to the London breweries with a minimum cost of 

 freight. The success of this Ipswich industry is 

 due to its having provided the cheapest link 

 between the largest supplies of material and the 

 greatest demand for the product in the world. 

 It has no longer the least dependence on the 

 supply or the demand of Suffolk. And the same 

 is true of the manufacture of fertilizers and feed- 

 ing stuffs. 



A very interesting attempt in the opposite 

 direction, i.e. to set up an industry which would 

 call forth a local supply of material, and so in- 

 crease the opportunities of the agriculturist, was 

 the experiment made about thirty-five years ago 

 in beet-sugar manufacture at Lavenham. A 

 factory was established there in 1869 by Mr. 

 Duncan, who made arrangements with farmers 

 to grow sugar-beet, for which he was to pay 201. 

 per ton delivered at the factory. Although there 

 was a considerable advance from year to year in 

 the quantity of roots grown, and in the percent- 

 age of sugar obtained, the average of which 

 increased from 8-39 in 1869 to 11-84 ' n 



252 



