Chilton is a

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 ...

on the eastern outskirts of Sudbury in

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 ...

, England. Once a normal village, Chilton today consists of scattered clusters of housing and an isolated Church of St Mary, and is a prime example of a

deserted medieval village In the United Kingdom, a deserted medieval village (DMV) is a former settlement which was abandoned during the Middle Ages, typically leaving no trace apart from earthworks or cropmarks. If there are fewer than three inhabited houses the convent ...

History

Chilton's history dates back to the

British Iron Age The British Iron Age is a conventional name used in the archaeology of Great Britain, referring to the prehistoric and protohistoric phases of the Iron Age culture of the main island and the smaller islands, typically excluding prehistoric Ire ...

, when it was founded as a

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...

agricultural settlement. The name Chilton is

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

for "Child's Town". When the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

was produced in 1086,

Robert Malet Robert Malet (c. 1050 – by 1130) was a Norman-English baron and a close advisor of Henry I. Early life Malet was the son of William Malet, and inherited his father's great honour of Eye in 1071. This made him one of the dozen or so great ...

(a member of

William the Conqueror William I; ang, WillelmI (Bates ''William the Conqueror'' p. 33– 9 September 1087), usually known as William the Conqueror and sometimes William the Bastard, was the first House of Normandy, Norman List of English monarchs#House of Norman ...

's court) was the village's

tenant-in-chief In medieval and early modern Europe, the term ''tenant-in-chief'' (or ''vassal-in-chief'') denoted a person who held his lands under various forms of feudal land tenure directly from the king or territorial prince to whom he did homage, as op ...

. It is unclear why the village was abandoned, though it is speculated that it may have been caused by the

Black Death The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...

, the

enclosure Enclosure or Inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or " common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their rights of access and privilege. Agreements to enclose land ...

of Chilton Hall's deer park, or agricultural depression.A Brief History of Chilton
Chilton Parish Council Until the 1960s a single house remained standing adjacent to the church. Although the church is redundant, services are still held three times a year. 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 ...

an airfield was built largely within the parish. Initially called Airfield 174, it was later renamed

RAF Sudbury Royal Air Force station Sudbury or more simply RAF Sudbury is a former Royal Air Force station located north-east of Sudbury, Suffolk, England. History USAAF use RAF Sudbury was opened in 1944 and was built to the standard Class A heavy bom ...

. It was completed in 1943 and handed over to the

USAAF The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

on 23 March 1944. With three runways, the airfield was home to the USAAF 486th Bomber Group (now evolved into the

486th Air Expeditionary Wing The 486th Air Expeditionary Wing is a provisional United States Air Force unit assigned to the Air Combat Command. As a provisional unit, it may be activated or inactivated at any time. The unit was last known to be active during Operation Iraq ...

). The

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

s are now used largely for grain storage. The hall, previously home to the grandmother of

Robert Walpole Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, (26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745; known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole) was a British statesman and Whig politician who, as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Leader ...

(the first

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...

of Great Britain), is today home to Lord Hart of Chilton.

References

External links

Parish Council website

External links

{{authority control Villages in Suffolk Babergh District Former populated places in Suffolk Sudbury, Suffolk Civil parishes in Suffolk Deserted medieval villages in England