Haverhill, Suffolk
Historical Description
Haverhill, an ancient market-town and parish, head of a county court district and polling-place, and a seat of petty sessions, in Suffolk and Essex. The town stands on a head-stream of the river Stour, 1¾ mile E from the boundary with Cambridgeshire, and 13½ miles NW from Halstead; consists chiefly of one street nearly a mile long, partly in Suffolk, partly in Essex, was once a more important place than now, and had a castle of the Greys of Codnor. It is governed by a local board of nine members, and has a station on the branch of the G.E.R., from Cambridge to Sndbnry and Bury St Edmunds, and also on the junction of the Colne Valley line to Marks Toy. It has a head post office, two banks, a weekly market which is held on Friday, a well-attended weekly stock sale, and a very large manufactory of textile fabrics which gives employment to upwards of 2500 persons. There are a corn exchange and court-room, erected in 1857, a town-hall which was presented to the town by Mr Daniel Gurteen in 1883, and a lecture-hall and reading-room, erected in 1891, by Mr W. B. Gurteen. The church is a large building of flint and rubble in the Late Perpendicular style, and there are Baptist, Congregational, and Primitive Methodist chapels. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ely; net yearly value, £130 with residence. Patron, Sir George R. Beaumont. The parish, comprises 2532 acres, of which 2528 are in Suffolk, and 4 in Essex. Population, 4587-4560 in Suffolk and 27 in Essex; population of the ecclesiastical parish, 4104 in Suffolk and 61 in Essex. Nathaniel Ward, a celebrated Puritan, who drew up the first code of laws for Massachusetts, was a native.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Suffolk | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Haverhill St. Mary | |
Hundred | Hinckford | |
Poor Law union | Risbridge |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Haverhill from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Haverhill (St. Mary))
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Suffolk is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of Haverhill are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Suffolk papers online: