Redlingfield 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 ...

in eastern

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. Located around six miles south-east of Diss, in 2011 its population (including Athelington) was 144, according to the 2011 census. Redlingfield Priory was found here from 1120 until it was disbanded during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, in which "the priory was surrendered on 10 February 1536-7".

Population

From 1851 when it reached its peak population of 251, the parish maintained a relatively constant decline until 1961. Since then, the population has been slowly growing.

St Andrew's Church

The church "serves a small and scattered parish of farms and cottage in the heart of the north Suffolk countryside." The church is Anglo Saxon in origin and is mentioned in the Domesday Book. As is the case with most ancient churches the building has been altered and restored several times. The 'earliest visible craftmanship' dates from the 14th century, the church also served the Redlingfield Priory from 1120 onward, before being returned to the village following the Reformation. One noteworthy feature is that the "church is built almost entirely of red brick, an uncommon and striking site for a church of the age, in this area."

Employment

In 1831, two thirds of the population were described as 'labourers or servants' (with 'Middling Sorts' and Employers & Professionals' combined making up 15 people and 'other' describing 3), 33of the labourers were 'Agricultural Labourers' with the remaining 3 in the category noted as servants. All of the employers were noted as being farmers. The Post Office Directory of 1865 stated 'The land is a rich loam, and is principally the property of Sir Robert Shnfto Adair, who is lord of the manor, but there are a few other landed proprietors, namely, George Barber, Charles Clarke, Thomas Kerry...'

Landscape

The area lies on a

Boulder Clay Boulder clay is an unsorted agglomeration of clastic sediment that is unstratified and structureless and contains gravel of various sizes, shapes, and compositions distributed at random in a fine-grained matrix. The fine-grained matrix consists o ...

Plateau, rising up to 56m above sea level. The area is relatively flat and is dominated by arable farming although it features one of suffolk's few collections of

ancient woodland In the United Kingdom, an ancient woodland is a woodland that has existed continuously since 1600 or before in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (or 1750 in Scotland). Planting of woodland was uncommon before those dates, so a wood present in 16 ...

. The farmlands are divided by hedgerows heading for "stardom" due to their diverse array of species and 3 veteran Oaks believed to be boundary markers, indicating the great age of the hedgerow network.

Second World War

The arrival of the 3,000 U.S. serviceman of 95th Bomb Group's B-17s at station 119 in neighbouring RAF Horham on 15 June 1943 swamped the corner of

. The airbase sprawled across four parishes including Redlingfield, and is unfortunately most notable for a

B-17 Flying Fortress The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Theater ...

crashing upon take-off into Redlingfield, destroying a farmhouse and killing all ten crew. Population Time Graph

1831 occupational categories redlingfield

Notable residents

* Thomas Bedingfield (1592–1661), judge and politician who sat in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. T ...

twice as

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

for

Dunwich Dunwich is a village and civil parish in Suffolk, England. It is in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB around north-east of London, south of Southwold and north of Leiston, on the North Sea coast. In the Anglo-Saxon period, Dunwich was ...

between 1621 and 1626 then became Attorney-General of the Duchy of Lancaster.

References

External links

Village website
{{authority control Villages in Suffolk Civil parishes in Suffolk Mid Suffolk District