Gislingham 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 authorit ...

in the

Mid Suffolk Mid Suffolk is a local government district in Suffolk, England. Its council was based in Needham Market until late 2017, and is currently sharing offices with the Suffolk County Council in Ipswich. The largest town of Mid Suffolk is Stowmarket ...

district 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 ...

in eastern England.

History

Gislingham is situated around the area of Stowmarket, Eye and Diss and dates from at least the 9th century. It is in the northern part of Suffolk that was once part of Norfolk. The village was well established by the time of 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 manus ...

. From about 1150 to 1312, the

Knights Templar The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon ( la, Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici), also known as the Order of Solomon's Temple, the Knights Templar, or simply the Templars, was a Catholic military order, o ...

were prominent in the village. The earliest parts of St. Mary's Church date from the 1420s. The village and the surrounding area, like much of

East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in w ...

, was not immune to the

Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. ...

sentiment that ran its course through the 17th century. As such it had connections to conformists and non-conformists alike who departed for the

Massachusetts Bay Colony The Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630–1691), more formally the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, was an English settlement on the east coast of North America around the Massachusetts Bay, the northernmost of the several colonies later reorganized as the ...

as part of the wave of emigration that occurred during the Great Migration. One notable emigrant who had family ties to the village was Governor

Simon Bradstreet Simon Bradstreet (baptized March 18, 1603/4In the Julian calendar, then in use in England, the year began on March 25. To avoid confusion with dates in the Gregorian calendar, then in use in other parts of Europe, dates between January and Ma ...

. The Puritan supporters of Oliver Cromwell destroyed the highly decorative stained glass windows of St. Mary's in the 1640s.

Gislingham today

The village has its own Outstanding primary school, shop, village hall and park. The population of the village was in steady decline from about 1844 to 1960 (669 to 300 citizens) but has rebounded since.

Notable people

Professional footballer Stuart O'Keefe is from Gislingham

References

External links

Gislingham village website

Gislingham Silver Band web site
Villages in Suffolk Mid Suffolk District Civil parishes in Suffolk {{Suffolk-geo-stub