RED GABLES

IPSWICH ROAD

Although the main part of the property is currently known as Red Gables, it first started life as Woodfield and was built for Mr. Eustace Carey Prentice in the late1850's. Eustace C. Prentice was one of the large Prentice family that was involved with the industrial expansion of the town throughout the nineteenth century which included artificial manure, guncotton explosives and malting etc. Eustace's younger brother Edward and his nephew, William, were two of the twenty-eight people who died in the guncotton explosion on August 12th 1871. Eustace, 23, son of Thomas Prentice (deceased) married Anna Welham Hewitt, 20, daughter of William R Hewitt on 17^th April 1857. (Listed as Merchants in a White's Directory of 1855 are: Prentice & Hewitt, slate, timber & iron etc. Stowupland Street and also Thomas Prentice & Co. cake & manure etc. Stowupland Street). Their first child, Eustace Rupert, was born at 'Hillside House' December 1857, their second child, Clement Hewitt Prentice, was born September 1859, at Woodfield. 

The new house was quickly shrouded in sadness, when first in January 1860, Clement Hewitt died at Woodfield aged only four months, followed on 1st April the same year by his mother Anna, aged 24. After a respectable period of mourning, Eustace married Elizabeth Comely Olive, probably in her home town of Northampton, and their first child was born at Woodfield in August 1863, as were Agnes Mary, 1866; William Henry, 1867; Harriet Louise, 1871; & Edward, 1875. The grounds were extensive, stretching from the current position of Temple Road (not in existence when Woodfield was built), bordering the Ipswich Road down to the river at Boulter's bridge and Woodfield Lane. The 1881 census Shows Eustace aged 47, listed as a chemical manufacturer employing ninety men, his wife Elizabeth Comely Prentice, 42. Their children were Eustace Rupert, 23, chemical manufacturer, Harriet, 9 and Edward, 6, both scholars. The household had two live-in servants: Honour Alexander, 27, domestic servant and MaryAnn Manuel, 28, housemaid the servants lived in attic bedrooms and would have used the back stairs to get to their workstations.

^{In 1937 0. Seaman and Son, the local building contractors bought the estate from the Misses Savory (daughters of Mrs. Savory). Work started on building Lockington Road as a part of the Red Gables development but was suspended due to the outbreak of war. At about this time, Octavius Seaman built a library for the town, in the grounds of Red Gables, to commemorate his daughter, Phyllis's twenty-first birthday. The Red Gables building was sold to Stowmarket Town Council and became the Register Office etc. It currently houses the offices of a number of local voluntary organisations.}

^{The library building was used for many years until the new library was built in Milton Road in the 1980's. Many people of my generation who have lived in the town for a few years will probably remember going through the wooden swing-back gates inside the building, passing to the left of the centrally placed reception and book stamping area. After you had chosen your selection of reading material you would exit through a similar gate on the opposite side. I can remember going to the children's section to find my Biggles books, which was on the left-hand side of the building, roughly where the kitchen now stands. At the bottom of the steps leading to the front door of the old library used to be a metal grill, set into the concrete, which served as a boot scraper and I would take great delight in jumping from the top step onto it making it clang (oh, for the simple pleasures of childhood!). Now that all the bookshelves have been removed it is difficult to visualise it as it used to be.}