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The
modern parish of Washbrook was known as Great
Belstead in Saxon times, and was large enough to
support two separate parish churches, the lonely
surviving St Mary a few
fields off, and this one, equally remote and now
lost. John Blatchly records that a Vicar was
instituted to the church as late as th 14th
Century, and that John Kirby found ruins visible
on his journey through the county in 1764. Roy
Tricker tells me that the final remains were
dynamited by the landowner in 1954 to permit
deeper ploughing, but in fact you can still see
exactly where this church was - or, at least, its
graveyard. It forms a fallow area in the corner
of the field which rolls down towards Washbrook
village from the junction of Pigeon's Lane and
Swan Hll, the road which runs from behind the
Holiday Inn hotel in Ipswich towards Washbrook
and Copdock. A tree marks one corner of the
former graveyard, but unfortunately a public
right of way does not approach it. The Suffolk
Archaelogical Survey found burials at the site in
the 1970s. |
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Simon Knott, October 2009
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