Needham Market is a town in Suffolk, England. The town of Needham, Massachusetts, was named after Needham Market.

History

Needham Market, old Town Hall - geograph

It initially grew around the wool

combing Combing is a method for preparing carded fibre for spinning. Combing is divided into linear and circular combing. The Noble comb is an example of circular combing. The French comb is an example of linear combing. The process of combing is acco ...

industry, until the onset of the plague, which swept the town from 1663 to 1665. To prevent the spread of the disease, the town was chained at either end, which succeeded in its task but at the cost of two-thirds of the populace. The town did not recover for nearly two hundred years, with the canalisation of the River Gipping in the late 18th Century and the introduction of the railway. Modern Needham Market contains two road names that are linked to the plague. Chainhouse Road, named after the chains that ran across the East end of the town. The Causeway, is a modern variation of 'the corpseway' so called because of the route that plague victims were transported out of town, to neighbouring Barking church for interment.

Notable buildings

Notable buildings in the town include: * The 15th-century Church of St. John the Baptist, originally a chapel of ease for the parish of

Barking Barking may refer to: Places * Barking, London, a town in East London, England ** London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, a local government district covering the town of Barking ** Municipal Borough of Barking, a historical local government dist ...

(with a unique double- hammerbeam roof). *The

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

Limes Hotel which dates back to around 1500. *The Old Town Hall which was designed by the English architect, Frederick Barnes and completed in 1866.

Sport and leisure

Needham Market has a Non-League football club Needham Market F.C. who play at Bloomfields, they have been very successful over recent years after reaching the semi-finals of the FA Vase. The town is on the route of the

Dunwich Dynamo The Dunwich Dynamo (sometimes abbreviated to "Dun Run" or "DD") is an annual semi-organised, through-the-night bicycle ride from London Fields park in Hackney, London, England to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. The distance is approximately . ...

annual cycle ride. Needham Lake (a former gravel pit) provides leisure facilities and a wildlife habitat.

Transport

The East Anglia Main Line railway runs through the town, with Needham Market railway station providing trains to

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 ...

and

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

. Needham Market railway station is a very small unstaffed station and is managed by Greater Anglia. The A14 (although then the A45) once ran directly through Needham Market, but a bypass was built in the 1970s. This has left the town with good road links to the surrounding area, but with less traffic than before.

Notable people

Notable people from Needham include: * Dykes Alexander (1763–1849), Quaker businessman and minister. *

June Brown June Muriel Brown (16 February 1927 – 3 April 2022) was an English actress and author. She was best known for her role as Dot Cotton on the BBC soap opera ''EastEnders'' (1985–1993; 1997–2020). In 2005, she won Best Actress at the '' ...

(1927–2022), actress who played

Dot Cotton Dorothy "Dot" Branning (also Cotton) is a fictional character from the BBC soap opera, ''EastEnders'', played by June Brown. In a special episode entitled ''EastEnders: Dot's Story'' (2003) a young Dot was played by Tallulah Pitt-Brown in fl ...

in '' EastEnders'' * Ros Scott (born 1957),

Liberal Democrat Several political parties from around the world have been called the Liberal Democratic Party or Liberal Democrats. These parties usually follow a liberal democratic ideology. Active parties Former parties See also *Liberal democracy *Lib ...

peer, a former district and county councillor for the town, chose it for her title.

References

External links

Needham Market Town Council
Towns in Suffolk Market towns in Suffolk Civil parishes in Suffolk Mid Suffolk District {{Suffolk-geo-stub