Great Bealings
Encyclopedia
Great Bealings is a small village in Suffolk
, England
. It has about 310 people living in it, in around 120 households. Its nearest towns are Ipswich
(6 miles (9.7 km) away) and Woodbridge
(2.6 miles (4.2 km)). Nearby villages include Little Bealings
, Playford
, Culpho
, Hasketon
and Grundisburgh
. The village does not have an obvious centre, and the population is split between two areas — one around Lower Street to the East of the village, and the other at Boot Street/Grundisburgh Road to the West of the village. St Mary's, the village church, is about in the middle of these two centres of population.
The village shares a playing field with Little Bealings, which is located behind the joint Village Hall, and includes a grassed plateau, a fenced and hard surfaced multi-sports court, children's play equipment, and a boules
piste. It is named after John Ganzoni, Lord Belstead, who lived in the village for many years, and whose Charitable Trust Fund supported the project.
The River Lark passes through the middle of the village, and is crossed by the main road with a hump back bridge which is sufficiently "humped" to be the cause of accidents to people trying to drive over it too fast.
occupation and they were known to navigate up to Clopton
, the village name is believed to be of Saxon origin, meaning the area where the Beda or Bele people lived. The village was known as Belinges Magna until 1674 when the current spelling appeared, although Magna remained until much more recently.
In the Domesday Book
there is mention of Saxon hall owned by Halden with Anund the priest in attendance. This was on the meadow by the church and was owned by several families such as the de Peche, Clench’s and Majors, who knocked it down in 1775 to use the material to aid the construction of Bealings House.
The Seckford family had been landowners in the time of Edward I, with local benefactor Thomas Seckford
rebuilding Seckford hall as the country residence in 1530. He was a close advisor to Elizabeth I. His parents are buried in Great Bealings Church.
The village has always had a strong agricultural
base with several small farm
s. In White’s gazetteer of Suffolk in 1855, the listed tradesmen are: brickmaker, 2 boot makers, builder, wheelwright
, blacksmith
, gardener, shopkeeper, and miller
as well as several farmers and gentlemen.
The hump back bridge was built in 1841 and the village has had at least two pubs, the Boot and the Live and let Live in Lower Street. It is thought that two windmill
s existed in the village during the 1800s.
Admiral Pelham Aldrich
, who was Admiral Superintendent of Portsmouth Docks
and also on several surveying expeditions around the world, was a resident and is buried in the churchyard.
Another famous resident was Major Edward Moor
. He served in India
, being wounded three times. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and an author on Indian mythology. He brought the stone obelisk
to Bealings House and wrote the mystery, Bealings Bells, published in 1841, about an apparently haunted system of bell-pulls.
Winifred Fortescue
, the author and wife of Sir John Fortescue, was born in Great Bealings rectory, the daughter of the rector, Howard Beech, in 1888.
Charles Frederick Oldham, a retired Brigade Surgeon of the Bengal Medical Service and a well known researcher into the history of Religions died at Great Bealingson March 25th, 1913.
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. It has about 310 people living in it, in around 120 households. Its nearest towns are Ipswich
Ipswich
Ipswich is a large town and a non-metropolitan district. It is the county town of Suffolk, England. Ipswich is located on the estuary of the River Orwell...
(6 miles (9.7 km) away) and Woodbridge
Woodbridge, Suffolk
Woodbridge is a town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. It is in the East of England, not far from the coast. It lies along the River Deben, with a population of about 7,480. The town is served by Woodbridge railway station on the Ipswich-Lowestoft East Suffolk Line. Woodbridge is twinned with...
(2.6 miles (4.2 km)). Nearby villages include Little Bealings
Little Bealings
Little Bealings is a village in Suffolk, England. It has a population of approximately 470 people living in around 185 households. Its nearest towns are Ipswich and Woodbridge...
, Playford
Playford, Suffolk
Playford is a small village in Suffolk, England, on the outskirts of Ipswich. It has about 220 residents in 90 households. The River Fynn runs through the village, and many footpaths from Playford lead into the Fynn Valley. Villages nearby include Rushmere, Little Bealings, Great Bealings, Culpho...
, Culpho
Culpho
Culpho is a hamlet of about 40 people standing just outside Grundisburgh, Suffolk, about four miles west of Woodbridge. Its nearest villages are Great Bealings and Playford...
, Hasketon
Hasketon
Hasketon is a small village in Suffolk, England.Its church, St. Andrews, is one of 38 existing round-tower churches in Suffolk. St. Andrews stands more or less at the centre of its scattered parish, and is set in a tree-shaded churchyard which, in 1845, had been planted with beech, fir and...
and Grundisburgh
Grundisburgh
Grundisburgh is a village of more than 1,530 residents situated in the English county of Suffolk. It is in the Suffolk Coastal district, six miles north-east from Ipswich and four miles north-west of Woodbridge located on the B1079. Flowing through the village are the rivers Lark and Gull...
. The village does not have an obvious centre, and the population is split between two areas — one around Lower Street to the East of the village, and the other at Boot Street/Grundisburgh Road to the West of the village. St Mary's, the village church, is about in the middle of these two centres of population.
The village shares a playing field with Little Bealings, which is located behind the joint Village Hall, and includes a grassed plateau, a fenced and hard surfaced multi-sports court, children's play equipment, and a boules
Boules
Boules is a collective name for games played with metal balls.Two of the most played boule games are pétanque and boule lyonnaise. The aim of the game is to get large, heavy balls as close to the 'jack' as you can. It is very popular especially in France, but also Italy, where it may often be seen...
piste. It is named after John Ganzoni, Lord Belstead, who lived in the village for many years, and whose Charitable Trust Fund supported the project.
The River Lark passes through the middle of the village, and is crossed by the main road with a hump back bridge which is sufficiently "humped" to be the cause of accidents to people trying to drive over it too fast.
History
Although there has been plenty of evidence of RomanRoman Britain
Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...
occupation and they were known to navigate up to Clopton
Clopton, Suffolk
Clopton is a village in Suffolk. It is located between Ipswich and Debenham two kilometres north of Grundisburgh on the River Lark. A road with houses on each side is the extent of the village, surrounded by farm land....
, the village name is believed to be of Saxon origin, meaning the area where the Beda or Bele people lived. The village was known as Belinges Magna until 1674 when the current spelling appeared, although Magna remained until much more recently.
In the Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...
there is mention of Saxon hall owned by Halden with Anund the priest in attendance. This was on the meadow by the church and was owned by several families such as the de Peche, Clench’s and Majors, who knocked it down in 1775 to use the material to aid the construction of Bealings House.
The Seckford family had been landowners in the time of Edward I, with local benefactor Thomas Seckford
Thomas Seckford
Thomas Seckford was an official at the court of Queen Queen Elizabeth I.Born near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, Seckford was educated at Cambridge, and in 1540 entered Gray's Inn, Thomas became one of Queen Elizabeth I’s two Masters in Ordinary of the Court of Requests which dealt with poor men’s...
rebuilding Seckford hall as the country residence in 1530. He was a close advisor to Elizabeth I. His parents are buried in Great Bealings Church.
The village has always had a strong agricultural
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
base with several small farm
Farm
A farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single...
s. In White’s gazetteer of Suffolk in 1855, the listed tradesmen are: brickmaker, 2 boot makers, builder, wheelwright
Wheelwright
A wheelwright is a person who builds or repairs wheels. The word is the combination of "wheel" and the archaic word "wright", which comes from the Old English word "wryhta", meaning a worker or maker...
, blacksmith
Blacksmith
A blacksmith is a person who creates objects from wrought iron or steel by forging the metal; that is, by using tools to hammer, bend, and cut...
, gardener, shopkeeper, and miller
Miller
A miller usually refers to a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a cereal crop to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents in other languages around the world...
as well as several farmers and gentlemen.
The hump back bridge was built in 1841 and the village has had at least two pubs, the Boot and the Live and let Live in Lower Street. It is thought that two windmill
Windmill
A windmill is a machine which converts the energy of wind into rotational energy by means of vanes called sails or blades. Originally windmills were developed for milling grain for food production. In the course of history the windmill was adapted to many other industrial uses. An important...
s existed in the village during the 1800s.
Admiral Pelham Aldrich
Pelham Aldrich
Pelham Aldrich CVO was a Royal Navy officer and explorer, who became Admiral Superintendent of Portsmouth Docks.-Biography:...
, who was Admiral Superintendent of Portsmouth Docks
HMNB Portsmouth
Her Majesty's Naval Base Portsmouth is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the British Royal Navy...
and also on several surveying expeditions around the world, was a resident and is buried in the churchyard.
Another famous resident was Major Edward Moor
Edward Moor
Edward Moor was a British soldier and Indologist, known for his book The Hindu Pantheon, an early treatment in English of Hinduism as a religion.He was a soldier for the East India Company, joining in 1782 as a cadet...
. He served in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, being wounded three times. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and an author on Indian mythology. He brought the stone obelisk
Obelisk
An obelisk is a tall, four-sided, narrow tapering monument which ends in a pyramid-like shape at the top, and is said to resemble a petrified ray of the sun-disk. A pair of obelisks usually stood in front of a pylon...
to Bealings House and wrote the mystery, Bealings Bells, published in 1841, about an apparently haunted system of bell-pulls.
Winifred Fortescue
Winifred Fortescue
Lady Winifred Fortescue was a writer and actress. She was also the wife of Sir John Fortescue, the Librarian and Archivist at Windsor Castle and British Army historian.-Biography:...
, the author and wife of Sir John Fortescue, was born in Great Bealings rectory, the daughter of the rector, Howard Beech, in 1888.
Charles Frederick Oldham, a retired Brigade Surgeon of the Bengal Medical Service and a well known researcher into the history of Religions died at Great Bealingson March 25th, 1913.
Rectors of the Parish
Plaques in the church list the following Rectors:| Anund the Priest | 1086 |
| Mathew de Stanton | 1306 |
| Geoffrey de Banhale | 1307 |
| Richard de Westhorpe | 1331 |
| Reginald Bustard | 1338 |
| Stephen de Duddeley | 1341 |
| Robert de Appleton | 1343 |
| Radulphus de Ipswich | 1349 |
| Nicholas de Lydgate | 1349 |
| John Joye | 1350 |
| William de Drayton | 1352 |
| Robert de Hethe | 1375 |
| John Tubbyng | 1395 |
| John Stratton | 1407 |
| William Jowle | 1448 |
| Robert Coppyng | 1464 |
| John Jacob | 1476 |
| Richard Williamson | 1517 |
| John Walker | 1517 |
| John Fayerthwat | 1536 |
| Robert Baxter | 1542 |
| Robert Gybsonne | 1560 |
| Richard Larwood | 1566 |
| Robert Hutchinson M.A. | 1607 |
| William Gibbins B.A. | 1629 |
| Edmund Smith B.A. | 1653 |
| Edmund Brome | 1672 |
| Richard Cavell | 1719 |
| Robert Hingeston M.A. | 1726 |
| Wm Dobbyns Humphrey | 1766 |
| Philip Meadows B.A. | 1804 |
| Wm Chafie Henniker M.A. | 1838 |
| Edward Jas. Moor B.A. | 1844 |
| Howard Beech M.A. | 1886 |
| Francis B Champion M.A. | 1917 |
| Frank Mitton | 1930 |
| George H Round-Turner | 1936 |
| David T Jarvis B.A. | 1945 |
| John McMillen O.C.S. | 1954 |
| Denis Spencer A.K.C. | 1956 |
| J G Steven A.L.C.D H.C.R | 1970 |
| Frank Hollingsworth | 1975 |
| Michael Skliros | 1991 |
| Christine Everett | 1996 |
| Pauline Stentiford | 2003 |