Glemsford: an Introduction
Glemsford is in Suffolk. It sits on a small hill above the River Stour and the River Glem,
from which it takes its name.
Thus it also looks down on, and out and over, Essex.
Although the village is signposted on the A1092 between Cavendish and Long Melford, almost the entire village lies away from the main road, which is a blessing for the village.
There is so much to the village that deserves closer examination.
Easter Weekend 2002
A significant date in Glemsford's social history.
Commercial pressure led to the closure, that weekend, of the excellent village butcher's shop, Glemsford's last retail
meat outlet, until then housed in the Broadway Stores.At one time the village boasted 5 butchers' shops. Now there is none.
Thanks for the excellent service, Mick and Andy.
Thanks too, Andy, for your valiant effort to keep meat "alive" in the village. A huge pity that some of your customers couldn't pay their bills on time.
Good luck for the future.
Thanks too, Andy, for your valiant effort to keep meat "alive" in the village. A huge pity that some of your customers couldn't pay their bills on time.
Good luck for the future.
Glemsford is an ancient village, dating back to Domesday, and before. Although it may have acquired its nickname only last century (although other explanations take that back much further), it is possible to trace the history of the village across the centuries through its huge variety of buildings and fieldnames.
One of the great things about the village is that it lives. It is not a stuffed, preserved-in-aspic village, unlike its near neighbours, whose residents still tend to look down their superior noses at us. In Glemsford, mercifully, there is not an antique shop to be found. There are real shops, and real pubs and real people.
The Morris Men of Little Egypt used to practise
weekly at Park Farm: it is thus called because its land was once the deer park for the Abbot of Ely,
in whose gift the village was.
Park Farm itself stands close to the village church which is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin.
The church is a fine structure and, although not on the scale of Long Melford or Lavenham, is a good example of one of those
churches which benefited from the successful East Anglian wool trade of the late middle ages.
Elsewhere in the village are to be found many examples of English domestic architecture across the ages.
There are several fine hall houses, such as the black and white beauty of Peverells
as well as a wide range of more
modest weavers cottages which bear witness to several stages of the village's development.
Monks Hall is worth a particular look.
On Bells Lane there is the structure of the horsehair weaving factory which prospered in the 19th Century. On Chequers Lane, a silk weaving operation still continues, having first arrived in Glemsford in the 1820's, from Spitalfields.