American tourists descend on Sudbury

Staff at Holmes & Hills Solicitors in Sudbury were surprised and pleased to discover the remarkable history of their office building in Sudbury.

According to old Town records, the building in North Street once belonged to Mark Catesby – a British naturalist.

Born in 1683, the self-taught artist Mark Catesby was the first naturalist to record the flora and fauna of the New World and is well known throughout Europe and America. His original artworks were bought by George II after the artist’s death, are kept in the Royal Collection at Windsor, and  have been shown in an exhibition of early wild life art at the Queen‘s Gallery in Buckingham Palace.

Catesby was a man of exceptional courage and determination. He first crossed the Atlantic to America at the age of 29. After two long expeditions he returned to England with paintings of plants and animals he had studied and devoted most of the rest of his life to writing and publishing the first natural history of North America. His monumental ‘The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands’ was published after 20 years of writing and etching.

Earlier this year, the American-based Catesby Commemorative Trust published ‘The Curious Mister Catesby’, a biography and appraisal of the historical and scientific significance of his work. In May 2015, Mr David Elliot, co-editor of the book and chief executive of the Trust, visited Sudbury for the UK book launch at Gainsborough’s House.

On his itinerary was a visit to a building in North Street described on a 1714 map as ‘Mr  Catesby’s House’ and which is believed to be part of the property Mark Catesby sold to fund his first expedition to the New World. The building is now split into two and is occupied by an Iceland store and Holmes & Hills Solicitors. Mr Elliot was accompanied on his visit to the building by Jane Waring, president of the Catesby Commemorative Trust, who wrote the foreword to the book and Val Herbert, local historian and trustee of the Sudbury Heritage Centre. She commented that ‘Holmes and Hills have certainly been very sensitive in the re-design of the room which is now the reception. This is most gratifying’.