Kessingland, Suffolk

Historical Description

Kessingland, a village and a parish in Suffolk. The village stands on the coast 5 miles S from Lowestoft station on the G.E.K. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Lowestoft. Acreage of parish, 1679; population, 1275. The village, once a market-town and a place of considerable importance, still has a fair on 1 Dec. A thickly-populated spot on the coast, called Sea Eow, was swept away about the year 1835 by the sea, and other parts of the coast .are still subject to sea-eroi-ion. A coastguard station is on the beach. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Norwich; net value, £310 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Norwich. The church, which is an ancient building of flint and stone in the Perpendicular style, was built by the nuns of St Clare in London, was partly rebuilt in 1694, comprises nave and S porch, with handsome lofty tower; has statues of St Edmund and angels with thuribles on the tower door, and contains an octagonal font with canopied effigies round the bowl. Some ancient ruins, seemingly ecclesiastical, are near the parsonage. There are a Wesleyan chapel and a few small charities.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

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 Kessingland from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Kessingland (St. Edmund))

Land and Property

The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Suffolk is available to browse.

Maps

Online maps of Kessingland 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:

• The Ipswich Journal
• East Suffolk Mercury and Lowestoft Weekly News
• Bury and Norwich Post
• Bury Free Press