Qualla: The Food Museum https://qualla.com/the-food-museum en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:40:44 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/2/8/the-food-museum-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: The Food Museum https://qualla.com/the-food-museum The Food Museum: Introduction https://qualla.com/the-food-museum/ Photo credit Michael Trolove, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Alton Watermill was going to be drowned. When the Alton Water Reservoir was built, the 18th-century mill that had ground corn in the area for generations would have disappeared beneath the water. Instead, it was taken apart, transported piece by piece, and reassembled on the grounds of what is now The Food Museum in Stowmarket. This is what the museum does: it rescues the physical fabric of East Anglian rural life and puts it back together somewhere it can be seen.

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Image: Michael Trolove | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/2/8/the-food-museum-wp/u128-the-food-museum-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full The Food Museum: From Medieval Manor to Open-Air Museum https://qualla.com/the-food-museum/ Photo credit Martinevans123, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 84-acre site was originally the Abbot's Hall estate, an outlying manor for St Osyth's Priory in Essex that dates from medieval times. It passed through numerous owners until the Longe family acquired it in 1903. Farmer Jack Carter and the Suffolk Local History Council had spe...

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Image: Martinevans123 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/2/8/the-food-museum-wp/u128-the-food-museum-from-medieval-manor-to-open-air-museum.mp3 0:06 2 full The Food Museum: Seventeen Buildings, One Estate https://qualla.com/the-food-museum/ Photo credit Andrew Hill, CC BY-SA 2.0. Edgar's Farmhouse is the kind of building that only survives through determined intervention. A 14th-century aisled farmhouse from the village of Combs, it had been absorbed into a Victorian-era building over the centuries. Saved from demolition in 1970, it was the first historic...

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Image: Andrew Hill | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/2/8/the-food-museum-wp/u128-the-food-museum-seventeen-buildings-one-estate.mp3 0:06 3 full The Food Museum: The Rebranding as The Food Museum https://qualla.com/the-food-museum/ Photo credit Ashley Dace, CC BY-SA 2.0. In April 2022, the Museum of East Anglian Life changed its name to The Food Museum, reflecting a sharpened focus on farming and food production. The change came with substance: restoration of the Alton Watermill and Eastbridge Windpump to working order, a new Farm Barn for the co...

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Image: Ashley Dace | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/2/8/the-food-museum-wp/u128-the-food-museum-the-rebranding-as-the-food-museum.mp3 0:06 4 full The Food Museum: The Life of George Ewart Evans https://qualla.com/the-food-museum/ Photo credit Ashley Dace, CC BY-SA 2.0. Among the permanent exhibitions in Abbot's Hall is one dedicated to George Ewart Evans, the Welsh folklorist who spent decades recording the oral history of East Anglian working people — the horsemen, the harness-makers, the craftspeople whose knowledge was disappearing as mechan...

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Image: Ashley Dace | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/1/2/8/the-food-museum-wp/u128-the-food-museum-the-life-of-george-ewart-evans.mp3 0:06 5 full