Woodbridge, Suffolk
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Template:GBmap-named Woodbridge is a town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England. It is in the south east of England and not far from the coast. It lies along the River Deben, with a population of about 7,480 although this seems larger due to the number of surrounding villages. The town is served by Woodbridge railway station on the Ipswich-Lowestoft East Suffolk Line.
It is a centre for boat-building, rope-making and sail-making and has been since the Middle Ages. Edward III and Sir Francis Drake had fighting ships built in Woodbridge.
Around the town there are various buildings from the Tudor, Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras. The town has a restored tidemill, one of only 4 in the UK, and one of the earliest—a mill was first recorded on this site in 1170, operated by the Augustinian Canons. In 1536, it passed to King Henry VIII. In 1564, Queen Elizabeth I granted the mill to Thomas Seckford. In 1577 he founded Woodbridge School, still known today.
Sutton Hoo, a group of low grassy mounds famous for turning up Anglo-Saxon treasure of one of the earliest English kings, Redwald, overlooks Woodbridge from the Eastern Bank of the Deben.
The Rendlesham Incident made the area famous. There were claims that a UFO landed in the Rendlesham Forest near Woodbridge, this has been strongly denied by the US military and has been compared to the Roswell UFO incident.
External links
- history (http://www.visit-woodbridge.co.uk/)
- town history (http://www.woodbridgesuffolk.info/aboutwb/history.htm)
- Tidemill website (http://www.tidemill.org.uk/)
- Woodbridge School website (http://www.woodbridge.suffolk.sch.uk/woodbridge_school.html)
- the Woodbridge school experience (http://www.geocities.com/refm/)