Chillesford is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

in the East Suffolk district, in the English county of

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

. It is located on the

B1084 road B roads are numbered routes in Great Britain of lesser importance than A roads. See the article Great Britain road numbering scheme The Great Britain road numbering scheme is a numbering scheme used to classify and identify all roads in G ...

which runs east to west. Chillesford is 3 miles northwest of the small town of Orford. It is 5 miles southwest of

Aldeburgh Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town in the English county, county of Suffolk, England. Located to the north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the composer Benjamin Britten and remains the centre of the int ...

and 6 miles south of

Saxmundham Saxmundham ( ) is a market town in Suffolk, England, set in the valley of the River Fromus about north-east of Ipswich and west of the coast at Sizewell. The town is bypassed by the main A12 road between London and Lowestoft. The town is ser ...

. Population of around 120 and 60 houses. At the 2011 Census the population is included in the civil parish of Butley The village was recorded in Domesday as ''Cesefortda''. In 1258, Thomas Weyland bought the Manor of Chillesford. Amy Bantoff used to run the village shop, which is now closed. Mr. Pratt ran the local farm. Chillesford has a pub, The Froize Inn (east end of B1084), which used to be two cottages. A church (west end of B1084 – OS grid TM3852) has a tower and various other local buildings are made from local red crag bricks. The old brickyard was where a 20m skeleton of a whale was also once found. Pedlars Lane (heads north from the centre of the village) to Tunstall Chapel. Mill Lane (heads south and then south-west) which leads to Butley.

Chillesford Lodge

Chillesford Lodge (OS grid TM3950) lies over a mile southeast from the village close to Sudbourne Park. In 2015 the 1,200 acre estate is the last remnant of the 7,650 acre Sudbourne Hall estate purchased in 1918 by the Leeds soap manufacturer

Joseph Watson, 1st Baron Manton Joseph Watson, 1st Baron Manton (10 February 1873 – 13 March 1922) was an English industrialist from Leeds, Yorkshire. He was chairman of Joseph Watson & Sons Ltd, soap manufacturers of Leeds, and a director of the London and North-Western ...

(d.1922) still owned by his descendants today. His third son Alastair Joseph Watson (1901–1955) inherited that part of his father's estates, which totalled some 20,000 acres in England. Chillesford Lodge estate was the Sudbourne Hall estate's Victorian "model farm", the buildings of which were erected in 1875 by

Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet Sir Richard Wallace, 1st Baronet (21 June 1818 – 20 July 1890), of Sudbourne Hall in Suffolk, Hertford House in London, and of the Château de Bagatelle in Paris, was a British art collector and Francophile. Origins and youth Richard i ...

of Sudbourne Hall, the noted art collector and illegitimate son of the 4th

Marquess of Hertford The titles of Earl of Hertford and Marquess of Hertford have been created several times in the peerages of England and Great Britain. The third Earldom of Hertford was created in 1559 for Edward Seymour, who was simultaneously created Baron Be ...

. At Chillesford Lodge Farm the

Red Poll The Red Poll is a dual-purpose breed of cattle developed in England in the latter half of the 19th century. The Red Poll is a cross of the Norfolk Red beef cattle and Suffolk Dun dairy cattle breeds. Description and uses The cattle are red, p ...

breed of cattle had been developed in the 19th century. The famous "Sudbourne" prefixed herds of Red Poll cattle and the famous "Sudbourne" stud of

Suffolk Punch The Suffolk Horse, also historically known as the Suffolk Punch or Suffolk Sorrel,Dohner, ''Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered Livestock and Poultry Breeds'' pp. 349–352 is an English breed of draught horse. The first part of the nam ...

heavy horses, were retained briefly by the Watson family and won several prizes.

Chillesford Polo Ground

In 1936 Alastair Watson of Chillesford Lodge built the Chillesford Polo Ground, a private club open to family and friends where teams played by invitation only. Fred Warner of Lion St, Ipswich, did the work. It represented "country polo at its best" and used an advanced system of irrigation sprinklers, then unique in England, imported by Watson from the US, where he had seen them in use at the Santa Barbara Polo Club in California. The equipment was shipped in from Kentucky, US, on the maiden eastbound voyage of the RMS ''Queen Mary''.The irrigation system was powered by a 1917 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost engine, serial number L14 or L17, purchased by Watson from a scrapyard in 1936 for £25. Following the January 1976hurricane this engine was passed back to the Rolls-Royce preservation society.Spectators were encouraged and were admitted free of charge, with printed programmes with colour covers provided, a further innovation for a small polo club at the time. The club closed during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and was ploughed-up for wartime food-production, but re-opened in 1948. In 1955 Watson was trampled by ponies during a polo match, which led to his death some months later. After this the polo ground was finally ploughed up.There have been many claims that Prince Philip played here, but Royalty never came.id=Fmc8t8VfdLgC&pg=PA70&lpg=PA70&dq=Chillesford+Polo&source=bl&ots=0sdRVawpH8&sig=xsJ0iN_uZV2YiqDTlbv5AdPhaw8&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Chillesford%20Polo&f=false Mitchell, Laurence, ''Suffolk Coast and Heaths Walks'', p.70
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References

External links

ChurchChillesfordSuffolk CAMRASuffolk CC parish estimates
{{authority control Villages in Suffolk Civil parishes in Suffolk Polo clubs in the United Kingdom