industries and rigidly hierarchical posts. For the first time
in living memory there was regard for workers whereas in
the past they may have been hired for the summer and
turned into the workhouse for the winter, with as little
thought as someone today putting their lawnmower away
for a season; now workers were needed to power the new
economy  and  new  industries  such  as  the  railway,
engineering (Whitlock’s at Great Yeldham), flax mills (at
Liston) brick works (at Bulmer), textile factories (Sudbury),
feed mills (Long Melford) and a host of different industries,
unfamiliar just a decade before.

end to The Lion. The building had witnessed many central
emotions and events. It was the birthplace of David Ward;
there his father had gambled his livelihood and made a
successful business; it had been the substantial comfort for
Charlotte Ward and supported her fragile life after George
had died; but in this forward-looking age there was no room
for sentimentality and it was demolished to make way for
offices, a house and an off-licence. 27 At the west side of the
brewery (in what is now The Chase) better-equipped cask-
cleaning sheds and a long shed for storage were added
which enabled the wooden casks to be steam cleaned rather
than scrubbed by hand; the engine house was extended and
a new boiler room housed a coal-fired boiler that had been
fitted in 1904. Measuring 32ft 6in by 8ft 6in and weighing
26 tonnes it was nicknamed ‘Big Win’ By the middle of the
year the brewery was a rambling conglomeration and took
up nearly two acres of land.

David Ward’s radical ideal reflected the new social
dream - employees receiving a regular wage with clean
housing and running water; a self-contained world in which
nobody was idle; few people in absolute want, in which
there was no squalor nor hunger - Arcadia realised.

His own life was not without tragedy and after Louisa
lost her battle with cancer, David sought refuge in one of
her closest friends, Mabel Constance Andrewes,26 a loving
former companion and nurse to his late wife and niece to
Elizabeth Foster. By the spring of 1905 David had proposed
and when the couple married in style at Church of St Mary
Abbots, Kensington on October 3 later that year, it brought
the  alliance  of  two  distinguished  families  together.
Maymee’s adoptive family grew to adore her, the older
children welcoming her more as a stepsister than surrogate
mother.

The  extensions  to the building  proved  absolutely
necessary. In 1908 at the Brewers Exhibition in London,
Ward and Son won their first gold medal for their Imperial
Pale Ale which in a few years would become their flag-ship
beer.

The Suffolk Free Press commented that:

Messrs   Ward   and   Son,   brewers   of   Foxearth   are   to   be
congratulated  on achieving  the  distinction  of being  awarded
first prize and a silver medal with a diploma for their pale ale

at  the  Brewers  Exhibition  in  London  last  week,  the  highest
distinction in the bottled beer competition, which is open to all
in the United Kingdom.

Two years later and motivated by increasing demand for
Foxearth beer (there were agencies all over the Eastern
Counties including Ipswich, Felixstowe, Dovercourt and
one in Finsbury Park, north London) the June of 1907
witnessed further construction at the brewery and a sad

27 The off-licence was managed by Ursula Coleby who lived at

South View in the grounds of the Ward’s house The Cottage now
Hunters Lodge. She was a member of a well-known village family.

26 Maymee’s father Canon J.B Andrewes and wife lived first at

Little Waldingfield and then Prospect Place in Bulmer. The latter
was bought with a £100 mortgage arranged through David Ward

Her husband Lewis was gardener to David Ward and their son
Ken was later to become a good friend and bat-man to David’s son
Harold. South View was demolished in the 1950s.

and paid off at 4 per cent a year.
59
60