Mendlesham, Suffolk

Historical Description

Mendlesham, a village and a parish in Suffolk. The village stands on clay soil, 3½ miles SE of Finningham station on the Norwich and Ipswich section of the G.E.R., and5 NW by W of Debenham. It consists of two streets-one called The Street and the other Back Street-indifferently built; was once a market-town, and has a police station, and a post and money order office under Stonham; telegraph office, Finningham. The parish contains also the hamlet of Mendle-sham Green, distant about 1½ mile from the village. Acreage, 3960; population, 1138. The manor belongs to the trustees of the late Lieut.-Colonel Tyrell. A silver crown weighing 60 ounces, and supposed to have belonged to a king of East Anglia, was exhumed about the end of the 17th century, A runic gold ring also was found. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Norwich; net value, £461 with residence. The church was one of the twenty-one churches in Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk which in the year 1095 were given by William Rufus to Battle Abbey; is a fine building of stone in the Perpendicular style; includes some Norman arches; consists of nave, aisles, and chancel, with lofty, western, embattled tower; and was restored in 1864-65. There are Baptist and Congregational chapels, a Foresters' hall erected in 1889, an endowed school founded in 1491, and some useful charities believed to be only a small portion of those originally possessed by the parish, the others having been appropriated by private persons.

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.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Mendlesham from the following:

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

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Mendlesham 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