Place:Stonham Aspall, Suffolk, England

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia with statistics from A Vision of Britain through Time

Stonham Aspall is a village and civil parish in the Mid Suffolk District of Suffolk in eastern England. Located around 5 miles east of the nearest town of Stowmarket, in the UK census of 2011 its population was 601. Surrounding parishes include Mickfield, Little Stonham and Pettaugh. The village of Stonham Aspall is in a rural location surrounded by farmland but has the popular tourist route of the A1120 running through the middle of the village.

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Stonham-Aspall from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"STONHAM-ASPALL, a parish, with a village, in Bosmere [registration] district, Suffolk; 4½ miles NE of Needham-Market [railway] station. It has a post-office under Ipswich. Acres: 2,399. Real property: £4,957. Population in 1851: 814; in 1861: 694. Houses: 156. The property is subdivided. Broughton Hall is an ancient mansion, once the seat of the Wingfields. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Norwich. Value: £666. Patron: Miss Broke. The church is decorated English, with ornate steeple. There are a free school, a national school, and charities £150."

The name Stonham Aspall is directly translated as 'Stone homestead' from 13th century English dialect. Many of the houses in the village are 14th and 15th century.

A Vision of Britain through Time reports no boundary changes for the parish itself, but since 1937 it has changed registration districts a number of times as follows:

• Bosmere Registration District 1837-1935
• Gipping Registration District 1937-1983
• Gipping and Hartismere Registration District 1983-2010
• Suffolk Registration District 2010 onward.

The earliest census data was 1801 when the total recorded was 578. The highest figure to be recorded was in 1851 with a total population of 814 and the lowest recorded being in 1961 with a total population of 418. In 2011 it stood at 601.

In the nineteenth century the main industry in the parish was agriculture, with around 39% working on farms. By 2011 census this figure had dropped to 6%. The highest percentage is now in industry with around 14% in manufacturing jobs.

Research Tips

• Stonham Aspal Village website, History page.
• A Vision of Britain through Time comparative statistics on population and industry
• Tables of Suffolk Registration Districts 1837 to the present
• 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:

• Cambridgeshire & Huntingdon Family History Society - One of the three counties adjoining Suffolk. The Isle of Ely is included in their area.
• Essex Family History Society - Another of the three counties adjoining Suffolk, stretching south to the outskirts of London.
• Norfolk Family History Society - The third of the counties adjoining Suffolk. There was a realignment of the border in 1974.
• Romany & Traveller Family History Society - British family history society for people with Romany Gypsy, Traveller and Fairground roots.

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.