Alderton, Suffolk

Alderton is a village and civil parish in the Suffolk Coastal district of Suffolk, England, about six miles north of Felixstowe, 10 miles south-east of Woodbridge and 2 miles south of Hollesley, on the North Sea coast and in the heart of Heaths of Outstanding Natural Beauty. In 2007 its population was estimated to be 430.

History

Alderton was recorded in the Domesday Book as "Alretuna". Local military defences include 3 Napoleonic Martello towers and various C20th buildings. Mill Lane marks the site of a mill which stood here from 1796 until its demolition in 1956. An ancient settlement site 600m east of Cedar Court has been identified from aerial photographs, though nothing can be seen on the ground.

The area around Alderton was once a stronghold of Catholicism and within the grounds of Alderton Hall stands an ecclesiastical building, possibly a chapel or refectory dating back to the 12th century and believed to be part of a group of buildings built by the Augustine monks who controlled much of the land on the Bawdsey Peninsula at that period. Alderton Hall boasts both a priest’s hole (a hiding place created for dissident catholic priests during the purge which followed the Reformation and a secret passage leading to the neighbouring church of St. Andrew’s. The passage was known to be haunted and so fearful were the local inhabitants that the Bishop was called in to exorcise the ghost. Whether the passageway was used by the...
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