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- the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia
Cockfield is a village and civil parish located approximately 3 1⁄2 miles (5.6 km) from Lavenham in Suffolk, England. The village consists of a central point and several outlying hamlets: Buttons Green, Colchester Green, Cross Green, Great Green, Oldhall Green, Smithwood Green and Windsor Green. Surrounded mostly by fields used for farming, and with few roads, its population was reported as 868 in the UK census of 2011.
Cockfield became a centre of Puritanism during the 17th century. During the 19th century the parish was one of the largest and wealthiest in Suffolk and the seat of a number of prestigious rectors.
St Peter's Church
A landmark visible for a distance across the neighbouring countryside, the church of St Peter's is one of the finest of Suffolk's many village churches, with the present building mostly dating from the 14th and 15th centuries. The church's size is unusual for such a rural location, but this becomes less surprising when one considers its location between the three great medieval merchant towns of Bury St. Edmunds, Lavenham, and Sudbury.
The church fell under the patronage of the Abbot of St Edmundsbury until the Reformation when the Spring family, wealthy Lavenham clothiers and noblemen, took over, resulting in a close link with the region's strong wool trade. From 1708 the patronage fell to St John's College, Cambridge who appointed a number of distinguished Fellows of the college. Rectors of St Peter's have included John Knewstub (1544-1624), the Presbyterian, William Ludlam (1717-1788), the mathematician, and Churchill Babington (1821-1889), the archaeologist and botanist. In May 1582, an assembly of about 60 clergymen from Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire met in Cockfield Church to confer about the Prayer Book, clerical dress, and customs.
The church's sizeable square flint tower dates from the 14th century and is buttressed almost to the top. The tower was nearly destroyed by a storm during the winter of 1774-5 and on August 2, 1775, after repairs were nearly completed, an apparent lightning strike resulted in a fire that damaged it once again. The mathematician William Ludlam, rector from 1767, installed an astronomical observatory on the tower whose filled-in windows can still be seen.
Research Tips
- A map of Suffolk from 1900 provided online by A Vision of Britain Through Time (University of Portsmouth Department of Geography) can be enlarged to view individual parishes. Careful inspection will usually lead to the discovery of smaller hamlets founded before 1900. The rural districts (marked with their names printed in blue) are those in existence in 1900, not those introduced in 1934. The more ancient hundreds are marked in red. Most (but not all) parish names are underlined in red.
Suffolk Information
- Suffolk Family History Society A community of people who are interested in the local and family history pertaining to Suffolk.
- Suffolk Archives (Record Office) ( e-mail archives@suffolk.gov.uk) - The Suffolk Archive has branches in Ipswich (at The Hold, 131 Fore Street, Ipswich, IP4 1LR), Bury St. Edmunds (at 77 Raingate Street, Bury St Edmunds, IP33 2AR) and Lowestoft (at Lowestoft Library, Clapham Road South, Lowestoft, NR32 1DR). Includes: a good-looking website, research services and publications.
- Suffolk Churches This is an excellent guide to most of the Suffolk Churches with lots of pictures and descriptions of the architecture and history. It includes many chapels. If you have trouble visiting Suffolk to see where your ancestor were baptised, married and buried, or even those who want to just add to their knowledge, this is the site for you.
For those whose families may have wandered over the county borders:
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British Government Information
- The National Archives or "TNA" - More than 850,000 Probate Wills from 1610-1858 (PCC wills dating back to 1670 have been completed). Free access to indexes but copy of a will costs £10.00. (Ancestry has an index to wills published after 1858.) Access also available to the Domesday Book, World War One Diaries and various other information. Their catalogue called Discovery holds more than 32 million descriptions of records held by The National Archives and more than 2,500 archives across the country including County Record Offices. Over 9 million records are available for download.
- The British Library - This vast collection contains millions of bibliographic records, British newspapers, many now digitised and searchable on-line and much more.
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission - The database lists the 1.7 million men and women of the Commonwealth forces who died during the two world wars and the 23,000 cemeteries, memorials and other locations world-wide where they are commemorated. The register can also be searched for details of the 67,000 Commonwealth civilians who died as a result of enemy action in the Second World War.
- General Register Office - provides official copies of birth marriage & death certificates for England & Wales.
- FreeBMD - provides Civil Registration index information for England and Wales. The transcribing of the records, by volunteers, is ongoing and contains well over 279 million records at August 2020. Records are complete from 1837 to 1983. Later records are not complete.
- FreeCEN - provides a "free-to-view" online searchable database of the UK census returns from 1841 to 1891. The transcribing of the records, by volunteers, is ongoing and contains well over 39 million records at August 2020. At that time Suffolk records appeared to be only for the 1891 census and a few for the 1871 census.
- FreeREG - provides baptism, marriage, and burial records, which have been transcribed, by volunteers, from parish and non-conformist church registers in the UK. There are over 49 million entries with just under 300,000 records for Suffolk at August 2020.
- Ministry of Defence (url not found)- provides information for obtaining details about service records post 1920
- Royal Air Force Museum (url not found) - for information on the archive and library research material available.
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