BNP Funded by Suffolk Toff.

Friston Scene.

Friston is a village near Aldeburgh. Nearby is the home of a scion of the Wentworth family, Charles Vernon Wentworth  – once the most prominent aristocrats of  the district. During many years the  hamlet was very much “an estate village”. But their property has gradually been sold off, including the family home,  Blackheath Mansion. Even so Wentworth retains some of the clan’s fortune. He lives, apparently at Friston Hall. (More here) The gentleman farmer has been revealed to be a the biggest cash  donor to the British National Party. Personally I find his Suffolk and class background more interesting than the marriage to a woman of Serbian origins.

Friston was also home, in retirement, to my father and mother. Their house, Windmill Cottage, was bought from the Estate. They were Chair and Secretary of near-by Leiston Labour Party for over a decade. That’s to say, I know the village well. Though they moved from Friston at the end of the ‘eighties, and have now passed away, I still keep an interest in the place. The pubs in Snape, however, are better than the Chequers.

It’s worth saying that the hamlet should not be remembered as the residence of a loud-mouthed reactionary. Friston is better recalled as the site of great Chartist agitation,

One leading local chartist put Friston on the map in 1839. He was Thomas Hearn, a local shopkeeper who opened a branch of the Working Men’s Association in the village and aimed to make Friston the ‘metropolis of chartism’. The Friston meetings were held in the Chequers Inn and the Baptist Chapel and the following was good. A rally for farm-workers was held in Friston wd 1,000 people were present. The farmers were alarmed at this and laid on alternative entertainment, and one threatened dismissal for any worker found attending. Later in the same year, on Boxing Day, 5,000 people attended a second rally, some of whom had walked from Ipswich to meet up with Hearn’s group and others at Carlton. Although the Chartists failed to get their demands at that time, Thomas Hearn continued to support the movement. In 1851 he was living in Grove Road, probably on the site of the later grocer’s shop.”

There is more information in this book here.

Back to Charles Wentworth. I have always heard that he had a ‘colourful’ freedom-loving youth. Yet still, according to the Daily Mail, his upbringing and breeding tells,

His inherited wealth includes a 660-acre farm in Friston – a pretty hamlet of pink-washed cottages and narrow lanes. The village green and meeting hall also belong to him, so parishioners must seek his permission to stage fairs and other events there, just like commoners of old.

This fact (rather well-known to inhabitants) might be a reasonable explanation why Mary Wright, Chair of the Village Hall Committee (and former Independent Councillor for the Coastal District)  refused to comment on the BNP to the Ipswich Evening Star.