Qualla: Stowmarket

Stowmarket: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geographer, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 11 August 1871, the local gun cotton factory at Stowmarket exploded. Twenty-eight people died and seventy-five were injured. Gun cotton, otherwise known as nitrocellulose, was the new generation of military explosive that had just begun to displace black powder, and like many genuinely useful chemicals it was also genuinely lethal to make. The site of the explosion is now a paint factory, which is a quietly Suffolk way of dealing with industrial trauma: change the chemistry, keep the location, do not put up a big sign. Stowmarket has spent a long time being a working town that things happen to, rather than a museum of the things that happened.

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Image: Geographer | CC BY-SA 2.0

Stowmarket: The Principal Place

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martinevans123, CC BY-SA 4.0. The name comes from the Old English word stow, meaning 'principal place'. Edward III granted Stowmarket a market charter in 1347 and a market is still held twice a week, on Thursday and Saturday. The town sits on the A14 trunk road between Bury St Edmunds and Ipswich, on the Grea...

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Image: Martinevans123 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Stowmarket: The Astronomers

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LakeKnowledge, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stowmarket has a strange astronomical history for a market town. On 8 June 1918, the first UK observation of nova V603 Aquilae - the brightest nova of the twentieth century, briefly outshining every star in the sky except Sirius - was made from Stowmarket by A. Grace Cook, a rema...

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Image: LakeKnowledge | CC BY-SA 4.0

Stowmarket: The Solitary Bomber

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oxyman, CC BY 2.5. Just before midday on Friday 31 January 1941, a solitary German bomber appeared over Stowmarket and strafed a large area of the town before dropping bombs onto the High Street. Eyewitness accounts disagreed on the model of aircraft. The bombs destroyed the Stowmarket Congregation...

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Image: Oxyman | CC BY 2.5

Stowmarket: Milton, Milton's Tree, John Peel

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martinevans123, CC BY-SA 4.0. The fourteenth-century Church of St Peter and St Mary stands in the Decorated Gothic style at the centre of the town, with the sixteenth-century former vicarage and Milton's Tree beside it. Haughley Park, a large red-brick country house built around 1620 for the Sulyard family, s...

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Image: Martinevans123 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Stowmarket: Royal Visits and Saturday Mornings

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geof Sheppard, CC BY-SA 4.0. Queen Elizabeth II visited Stowmarket twice: first in July 1961, and again on 17 July 2002 during the Golden Jubilee celebrations, when she and Prince Philip visited the market, met stall holders, and unveiled a new town sign. The town runs an annual carnival that has been going ...

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Image: Geof Sheppard | CC BY-SA 4.0