Somerleyton, Suffolk

Historical Description

Somerleyton, a parish, with a village, in Suffolk, on the river Waveney and the Lowestoft and Yarmouth branch of the G.E.R., 5½ miles NW of Lowestoft, and 8 S from Yarmouth. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Lowestoft. Acreage, 1372; population of the civil parish, 569; of the ecclesiastical, 657. There is a parish council consisting of nine members. Somerleyton Hall, the seat of the Crossley family (the chief landowners), is a fine mansion in the Elizabethan style, richly furnished, and containing some valuable modern paintings. It is surrounded by beautiful pleasure gardens and a well-timbered deer park of 400 acres. There is a manufactory of bricks, tiles, and earthenware. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Norwich; net value, £251 with residence. The church, which was rebuilt in 1854, is a building of flint and stone, with a peal of six bells. The chancel has been restored in the modern Decorated style. There is a fine Perpendicular oak screen with paintings of sixteen saints on the panels and in good preservation. There are also Free Methodist and Methodist New Connexion chapels.

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.

Church Records

Marriages at Somerleyton, 1558 to 1837 are available online as part of the Suffolk Parish and Probate Records.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Somerleyton from the following:

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

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Somerleyton 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