The Revd. Taylor was a sixteenth century Hadleigh priest martyred for speaking out against the establishment of his day. This is a regular column that channels one resident's inner Rowland, but which seeks to avoid the martyrdom bit.

And not just visitors, since many of the town's residents have also taken up the opportunity to find out more about the history of the place they call 'home'.

This initiative is another Hadleigh success story: the brainchild of Jane – who has a distinguished career in the sector – and others who've committed time and effort – to more generally hanging round the Magdalen Road bus stops and assisting the curious and the lost.

Understandably, the focus of most of the services offered by Jane and her crack squad of guides is upon Hadleigh's very many buildings of architectural interest or whose associations make them objects of passing and sometimes lurid fascination. East House and the Krays anyone?

Our churches and assorted examples of styles from over seven centuries along the High Street and the roads off naturally feature large on the bill of fare. And don't forget Benton Street.

(Note to self: NEVER forget Benton Street. With its longstanding and proud sense of separate identity to the rest of the town, it is very much Hadleigh's Scotland: similar but not quite the same, on the whole. Its heroic Bravehearts to this day still keep the memory of battles against juggernauts of previous generations alive in the hearts and minds of their young).

One of the key lessons from these tours is that Hadleigh was an industrial 'village and now town' (let's not go there today).

Metaphorically, not literally – that would be vandalism - scrape away the Suffolk Pink and all the pargetting so beloved of Pevsner-wannabes and what we are looking at are places of hard graft.

Places once inhabited by weavers and other craftspeople whose skills, in turn, created the wealth of a few merchants who splurged their gains on building their very own grand town houses and contributed to various church and civic extensions and new builds over the ages.

What the busy visitor and the sometimes self-blinkered resident might miss is the fact that Hadleigh is still an industrial town.

Indeed, scrape away – again not with actual, er, scrapers, at the patina of respectability presented by the town centre – and what you have is very much a working class society.

This is something of which Hadleigh should be unambiguously proud.

Whether it is the marketeer beavering away at logos from their home office or the financial adviser Zooming in and out of client consultations, this solitary industry has echoes from earlier centuries.

But the real glory of Hadleigh is to be found between Lady Lane and Malyon Road: the industrial estate.

This is a place of commerce, international ambitions, problem-solving, creative thinking and sheer bloody hard work. It employs hundreds of fine men and women, not just from the town but further afield as well.

It is a Hadleigh success story that seems to endure for these very reasons, regardless of the economic cycle, different Governments and disruptive viruses.

Sure, there are a few unoccupied units. The loss of Faithfull Floor Coverings, because Babergh District Council seemed tone-deaf to the needs of an expanding business, was a bitter blow. But occupancy rates seem to be no worse than those on our bijou High Street, whose health or otherwise is endlessly worried over by the town's thousands of retail experts.

I would also suggest that architecturally this is a place of real interest. Of course, some of the units are rather hangdog and plain. But the same goes for the town as a whole.

The best companies on the estate seem to be willing to spend a little more on the design and materials they use in order to make a clear statement: 'we're good, actually we're very good'.

The Challs International buildings is an elegant post-modern statement of its international reach, combining coloured glass and whitened circular stairwells that nod to the great Le Corbusier.

The Jim Lawrence 'twins' are a pleasing and proportioned combination. The showroom and office block's pastel tones are the 'Castor' to the deep red and dead serious exterior of its neighbouring 'Pollux' (I'm being very careful to spellcheck the last).

Erbens is housed in a neat little clean jewel box, although I do miss the company's earlier, gloriously confident strapline: Cape Town. San Francisco. Hadleigh.

I even have a regard for the huge Celotex imprint, very steampunk with its pipes and compressors and what-not.

Surely then, it is time, it is imperative indeed, that the redoubtable Ms Snowden adds a leg of her tours to take in Hadleigh's industrial estate?

For truly, it is on these various hectares that the best of the town is to be found.

Rowland Taylor's ghost.

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