Leiston ( ) is an English town in the

East Suffolk East Suffolk may refer to the following places in Suffolk, England: * East Suffolk (county), a county until 1974 * East Suffolk District, a local government district established in 2019 * East Suffolk (UK Parliament constituency), an electoral dist ...

non-metropolitan district Non-metropolitan districts, or colloquially "shire districts", are a type of local government district in England. As created, they are sub-divisions of non-metropolitan counties (colloquially ''shire counties'') in a two-tier arrangement. Non ...

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 L ...

, near

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 serve ...

and

Aldeburgh Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town in the 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 international Aldeb ...

, about from the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

coast, north-east of

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line r ...

and north-east of London. The town had a population of 5,508 at the 2011 Census.

History

The 14th-century remains of

Leiston Abbey Leiston Abbey outside the town of Leiston, Suffolk, England, was a religious house of Canons Regular following the Premonstratensian rule (White canons), dedicated to St Mary. Founded in c. 1183 by Ranulf de Glanville (c. 1112-1190), Chief Justici ...

lie north-west of the town.Leiston Abbey
English Heritage. Retrieved 30 March 2011. Leiston thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a manufacturing town, dominated by

Richard Garrett & Sons Richard Garrett & Sons was a manufacturer of agricultural machinery, steam engines and trolleybuses. Their factory was Leiston Works, in Leiston, Suffolk, England. The company was founded by Richard Garrett in 1778. The company was active u ...

, owners of Leiston Works, which boasted the world's first flow assembly line, for the manufacture of portable steam engines. The firm also made steam

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most comm ...

s and a huge variety of cast and machined metal products, including

munitions Ammunition (informally ammo) is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. Ammunition is both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines) and the component parts of other weapo ...

during both

world war A world war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World War I, Worl ...

s. The works closed in 1981 and the site was reused as a mixture of housing, flats and industrial sites. The

Long Shop Museum The Long Shop Museum is an industrial museum in the town of Leiston in the English county of Suffolk.

, showing the history, vehicles and products of the works, remains as a heritage tourist attraction. In 1927,

A. S. Neill Alexander Sutherland Neill (17 October 1883 – 23 September 1973) was a Scottish educator and author known for his school, Summerhill, and its philosophy of freedom from adult coercion and community self-governance. Raised in Scotland, Neill t ...

relocated

Summerhill School Summerhill School is an independent (i.e. fee-paying) boarding school in Leiston, Suffolk, England. It was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other w ...

from

Lyme Regis Lyme Regis is a town in west Dorset, England, west of Dorchester and east of Exeter. Sometimes dubbed the "Pearl of Dorset", it lies by the English Channel at the Dorset–Devon border. It has noted fossils in cliffs and beaches on the Heri ...

to Leiston. This was the first major "free school" – referring to freedom in education. Children are not required to attend classes and discipline is meted by pupil self-government meetings. Summerhill has inspired a large "free school" movement and more recently,

democratic schools This is a list of some of the current and former democratic schools around the world. This list also includes sub-branches of democratic schools such as Sudbury schools inspired by the Sudbury Valley School and certain anarchistic free school ...

in several countries. The school occupies the former mansion of Richard Garrett, owner of Leiston Works. In the

Second World War 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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

RAF Leiston Royal Air Force Leiston or more simply RAF Leiston is a former Royal Air Force station located northwest of Leiston and south of Theberton, Suffolk, England. History USAAF use Originally intended as a fighter station for RAF Fighter Com ...

, north-west of the town in the neighbouring village of

Theberton Theberton is a village in Suffolk, England. It is located north-east of Saxmundham, and miles north of Leiston, its post town. History During the First World War, a German Zeppelin airship, L48, was shot down near Theberton at 02:00 on the m ...

, sent fighter squadrons of the American 357th Fighter Group to fight the

Luftwaffe The ''Luftwaffe'' () was the aerial-warfare branch of the German '' Wehrmacht'' before and during World War II. Germany's military air arms during World War I, the '' Luftstreitkräfte'' of the Imperial Army and the '' Marine-Fliegerabt ...

. Famous American test pilot and fighter ace General

Chuck Yeager Brigadier General Charles Elwood Yeager ( , February 13, 1923December 7, 2020) was a United States Air Force officer, flying ace, and record-setting test pilot who in October 1947 became the first pilot in history confirmed to have exceeded the ...

(later, first to break the sound barrier) flew out of RAF Leiston. The Friends of Leiston Airfield hold a

memorial service A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect t ...

and flying display at the end of May each year, with veterans and their families attending.

Notable people

In birth order: *

Ranulf de Glanvill Ranulf de Glanvill (''alias'' Glanvil, Glanville, Granville, etc., died 1190) was Chief Justiciar of England during the reign of King Henry II (1154–89) and was the probable author of '' Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie'' ...

(died 1190),

Chief Justiciar Justiciar is the English form of the medieval Latin term ''justiciarius'' or ''justitiarius'' ("man of justice", i.e. judge). During the Middle Ages in England, the Chief Justiciar (later known simply as the Justiciar) was roughly equivale ...

of England, founded

for White Canons in 1183. *

Richard Garrett (1755–1839) Richard Garrett (12 October 1755 – 20 October 1839)R. A. Whitehead. ''Garretts of Leiston'' (London: Percival Marshall, 1965) founded Richard Garrett & Sons, the agricultural machinery manufacturing plant in Leiston in the English county of Suf ...

founded the engineering company Richard Garrett and Sons in Leiston. *

Edward Buckton Lamb Edward Buckton Lamb (1806–1869) was a British architect who exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1824. Lamb was labelled a 'Rogue Gothic Revivalist', and his designs were roundly criticised for breaking with convention, especially by '' The E ...

(1806–1869), architect, designed St Margaret's Church in Leiston. *

Newson Garrett Newson Garrett (31 July 1812 – 4 May 1893) was a maltster, instrumental in the revival of the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, of which he became mayor at the end of his life. Two of his daughters, Millicent and Elizabeth, became famous as women' ...

(1812–1893), born in Leiston, built up the malting business whose premises were converted into the

Snape Maltings Snape Maltings is an arts complex on the banks of the River Alde at Snape, Suffolk, England. It is best known for its concert hall, which is one of the main sites of the annual Aldeburgh Festival. The original purpose of the Maltings was the ...

concert hall. *

(1883–1973), Scottish educationalist, founded the progressive

in 1924 and moved it to Leiston in 1927. * M. E. Aldrich Rope (1891–1988), born and died in Leiston, was a stained-glass artist in the

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

tradition. *

Paxton Chadwick Albert Paxton Chadwick (4 September 1903 - 6 September 1961) was an English artist, art teacher and politician. Paxton was born at Fallowfield, Manchester, the son of George Harry Chadwick, and Helen Wrigley née Renton. Paxton attended Mancheste ...

(1903–1961), artist and illustrator, taught at Summerhill and was Communist chair of Leiston Town Council.

Governance

There is an electoral ward named Leiston, with a population at the 2011 census of 6,360.

Economy and community

Since the closure of Garrett's, the town's economy has been dominated by two nuclear power stations on the coast at

Sizewell Sizewell is an English fishing hamlet in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England. It belongs to the civil parish of Leiston and lies on the North Sea coast just north of the larger holiday village of Thorpeness, between the coastal town ...

: the now decommissioned

Magnox Magnox is a type of nuclear power/production reactor that was designed to run on natural uranium with graphite as the moderator and carbon dioxide gas as the heat exchange coolant. It belongs to the wider class of gas-cooled reactors. The na ...

reactors of Sizewell A and the more modern

Pressurised Water Reactor A pressurized water reactor (PWR) is a type of light-water nuclear reactor. PWRs constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants (with notable exceptions being the UK, Japan and Canada). In a PWR, the primary coolant (water) is ...

of Sizewell B. A number of smaller companies operate from industrial areas within the town. Leiston's High Street serves as the business and market hub of the surrounding agricultural district. The town's facilities include a post office, library, banks, pubs and a range of shops and other services. Leiston Film Theatre, a half-timbered building with street front shops, is the oldest purpose-built cinema in Suffolk. The cinema is owned and run by Leiston-cum-Sizewell Town Council and backed by Leiston Film Theatre Support Club, which has raised money for stage refurbishment and enabled the cinema to install a digital 3D projection system. The town has a traditional Anglican church, St Margaret's, with an ancient tower and an unusual 19th-century