Related Directory Categories
- Long Melford (27)
- Business and Economy (23)
- Property (3)
- Travel and Tourism (2)
- Long Melford (1)
- Restaurants and Bars (1)
- Education (1)
- Accommodation (1)
Sources
Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a site - Become an editor
Wikipedia. Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Are you an expert in this subject? Join the discussion and share your knowledge at Wikipedia.org.
Long Melford
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Long Melford (or Melford, as it is known colloquially) is a large, ancient village in the county of Suffolk, England, on the border with Essex, which is marked by the River Stour, approximately 16 miles from Colchester and 14 miles from Bury St. Edmunds.
Its name is derived from the nature of the village's layout (originally concentrated along a 3 mile stretch of a single road) and the Mill ford crossing the Chad Brook (a tributary of the River Stour).
Contents |
The area now occupied by Long Melford has been occupied since at least 100 B.C.. The village's layout was defined in Roman times, with the empire building two roads thorough Melford, the main one running from Chelmsford through to Pakenham.
The village is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 lists the manor Long Melford belonged to as an estate of 600 hectares, belonging to the Abbey of St.Edmundsbury. The, then, neighbouring Manor of Kentwell is also recorded.
Long Melford is fairly unusual for a village in that it has a parish church of dimensions more suited to a cathedral. Holy Trinity Church, towards the northern end of the village, boasts a celebrated example of a three hares motif in stained glass.
The village contains two stately homes (Kentwell Hall and Melford Hall), both in excellent states of repair, all built from the proceeds of the wool trade in the Middle Ages.
Long Melford once had a railway station on the Stour Valley Line, but this closed in March 1967 when the line was cut back to Sudbury. It is connected to several large towns by bus, notably Sudbury, Colchester, Bury St Edmunds, Haverhill and Ipswich.