Mildenhall, Suffolk

Historical Description

Mildenhall, a small market and union town, and a parish in Suffolk. The town stands on the river Lark, 3 miles E of the boundary with Cambridge, 4½ NW of Icknield Street, 9 N by E of Newmarket, and 9¼ SW by S of Brandon, and has a terminal station on the G.E.R. It contains some good shops and inns; enjoys a good supply of excellent water; is a seat of petty sessions and county courts, and a polling-place; and has a post, money order, and telegraph office (S.O.), two banks, a police station, an ultra-mural cemetery, a literary institute, a public hall erected in 1886, a cottage hospital, a workhouse, almshouses, and charities worth about £150 a year. The parish church is a large and interesting building of stone, chiefly in the Early English and Perpendicular styles. The roofs of the nave and aisles are richly and elaborately carved angels with outspread wings forming the hammer beams; and the church contains some ancient tombs and monuments. There are two small and modern churches at Beck Row and West Row, an iron church at Kenny Hill, two Baptist and one Wesleyan chapel in Mildenhall, Baptist and Wesleyan chapels at West Row, and a Wesleyan chapel at Beck Row. The cemetery is on the E side of the town, is about 2 acres in extent, and contains a neat small chapel. The workhouse is for the Mildenhall union, and is a building of brick with accommodation for 113 inmates. A weekly market is held on Friday, and there was formerly a fair for the sale of wood on 11 Oct. The market-cross is a good Perpendicular structure, built entirely of timber, hexagonal in form, and roofed with lead. There are extensive flour mills, and fruit and vegetables are largely grown for the London market. The parish contains also the hamlets of Beck Row, Holywell Row, West Row, Kenny Hill, Burnt Fen, Lindley Common, Weston Ditch, and Wilde Street. Acreage, 16,767; population of the civil parish, 3732; of the ecclesiastical, with Mildenhall Fen, 3573. The manor was given in part by Edward the Confessor to the monks of Bury St Edmunds to afford them wheaten bread, and with the manor house belongs now to the Bunbury family. The manor house was built in the time of Charles I. by Sir Henry North, Bart.; is a picturesque Tudor mansion with many quaint gables surmounted by balls, and stands amid pleasant grounds. A large tract in the W and the N bears the name of Mildenhall Fen. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Ely; gross value, £702.

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 Mildenhall from the following:

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

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Mildenhall 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