Baylham
Baylham is a village and civil parish, 1,349 acres size, in the Mid Suffolk district of Suffolk, England, about northwest of Ipswich and southeast of Stowmarket.
The buildings making up the village begin either side of the B113 road, with the majority following Upper Street and northwards along Church Lane, close to the church, to Glebe Close. It is bordered by the parishes of Barking and Darmsden to its West and North, Nettlestead in the South-West, Coddenham to the East and Great Blakenham to the South.
History
Prehistory
The earliest evidence of habitation in and around Baylham dates back to the Neolithic Age, with a 2007-8 excavation in the parish finding a prehistoric pit from between 9,000 and 4,000BC featuring flint fragments and ditches, suggesting the presence of a barrow cemetery and possible field system.Combretovium
The remains of two separate Roman fortifications and a possible small settlement, thought to have existed from the late Iron Age and Claudian eras to the mid 4th century, have been discovered at the end of Mill Lane, east of the Gipping river crossing. Known collectively as Combretovium, the earlier, smaller fort, which covered 5.3 acres, lies within a larger military installation covering 14.5 acres, with other finds occurring across a wider 148-acre area.While no visible foundations remain, there have been numerous finds throughout the area including a deliberately broken statuette of Nero and a saddle-cloth weight, indicating a sizeable military presence. Combretovium's role as a crossing point at the River Gipping along the Pye Road from London to Caistor St Edmund made it a useful military staging ground, particularly during the Roman defeat of the Iceni. Hut circles, rubbish pits and ditches, along with pottery, kilns and an enclosure dith were found in the south-western quadrant, and 1st century hut circles sealed by 2nd-3rd century debris suggest a settled presence.
Middle Ages
While records of the post-Roman period are scarce, it's thought incoming Anglo-Saxons settled along the length of the Gipping in the wake of the Roman withdrawal from England, with evidence of cemeteries being found near Coddenham and Hadleigh in the Gipping valley spanning the 5th-8th centuries. In Baylham itself, Anglo-Saxon jewellery dating to the 7th or 8th centuries has been discovered. The river was also certainly navigable and in use as of 800AD, when the Danes traversed it to establish Ratles-Dane, sailing up from the Orwell. The region would have been incorporated into the system of hundreds at this time.The earliest recorded settlement in the post-Roman era has existed at Baylham since at least 1085 and it is listed in the Domesday Book as Beleham, in the Hundred of Bosmere, formerly under the control of three overlords prior to the 1066 Norman Conquest. These comprised Thegn Ælfric of Blakenham on behalf of Queen Eadgyth, representatives of the Abbey of Ely, and Brun the Reeve. The book records the village as consisting of 37 households and a half church, placing it in the largest 20% of settlements at the time, and 20 of these original households consisted of freemen, hosting a mixed pasturage of 130 sheep, 40 pigs and 13 cattle.
Its primary recorded holder following the Conquest was Roger Bigot, a knight loyal to William The Conqueror who was given control of hundreds of locations across Suffolk and Norfolk after the war., as tenant-in-chief over three lords including William de Bourneville, whose holdings were primarily in the hundreds of Bosmere and Cosford, Wulfmer who had held land in Bosmere pre-Conquest, and Warengar of Hedingham who held land throughout the Bosmere hundred.
Control of the parish was passed down through the Earldom of Norfolk until Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk died childless and his lands were escheated to the crown in 1306, eventually passing to King Edward I's fifth son Thomas. Prominent families from this period include the de Weylands, who were recorded as being "of Baylham" as early as 1200, and the de Bournevilles, with a William de Burnaville holding the manor in the 13th century. A little later the de Cleydons became influential, with John de Cleydon holding rents in the area.
During the black death Baylham is thought to have fared poorly and, despite being part of a broadly prosperous and growing region following the Conquest, just 20 taxpayers were registered in the 1327, a number that would hold steady until the late 16th century. Also during the 14th-15th centuries, the main body of the church was expanded and established.
Towards the end of the 14th century, Alice Weyland met James Andrew and they married in 1399. The Andrew family, primarily of burgess stock, went on to establish themselves as lower gentry with interests especially in Ipswich, Bramford and Sproughton, with James becoming well known as an executor and trustee, eventually working directly for the Earl of Suffolk in the 1400s and in Henry V's first Parliament in 1413. In 1434 however a dispute over land in Baylham led to James' undoing. He had since 1414 been in a dispute with Richard Sterysacre, a favourite of the Duke of Norfolk, and after being threatened had taken the decision to seek security of the peace from Sterysacre and his supporters. The day before the court case was due to begin however he was attacked and killed, forcing his wife and child to seek protection directly from Earl Suffolk. The killing and its aftermath saw intense tensions arise between the Earl and the Duke of Norfolk, with the threat of large-scale violence being so concerning that the King's Council was forced to directly intervene.
James' son, John, also became a firm supporter of the Earl and would sit for Ipswich in Parliament in 1442 and 1449, as well as Bletchingley in 1449. John's own daughter, Elizabeth, would go on to marry first Robert Litton, and then Thomas Windsor.
Early Modern
Many of Baylham's existing listed buildings first went up through the 15th and 16th centuries, including its Millhouse, Baylham House Farm and White Wheat Farm. The manorial holding was assigned to Thomas Windsor as of 1479 and upon his death in 1485, would have passed to his eldest son Andrew Windsor, 1st Baron Windsor, who died in 1543.The Windsors would continue to hold the manor until the 17th century, when John Acton bought the manor holding from them. Though Acton built Baylham Hall, the village suffered a great deal in the aftermath of the English Civil War, as Acton was thought to have been a royalist sympathiser despite Suffolk broadly being a puritan stronghold and pro-Parliamentary county at the time. Several families in the village were deeply impoverished by fines, and the long-term damage this did was noted as late as 1924 by visitors from the Suffolk Institute. Acton's son, married the daughter of a disbarred royalist MP, John Buxton of Norfolk and the Actons would remain influential in the area from the 17th-19th centuries, with their principal seat being at – noted for having 22 hearths in its 1674 heyday.
Not all of Baylham, however, was implicated during the war. Baylham House Farm hosted a significant figure in Suffolk's broader puritan fervour in the form of "Smasher" William Dowsing, who was resident in the building throughout the war from at least 1642 to 1661 – though the religious enforcer had closer ties with nearby Coddenham, possibly due to his dislike of then-minister John Bird. Bird was in charge of Baylham Church from 1625-1645 before being ejected for having a second holding in Bedfordshire.Baylham saw something of a boon for its agricultural industry in the late 18th century when the canalisation of the Gipping from Stowmarket to Ipswich, led by famed engineer John Rennie, took place in the 1790s, allowing for easier transport to and from its millhouse, as well as the later construction of a water mill. Remaining elements of these works are among the oldest examples of Rennie's designs.
Modern
Baylham remained a strongly agriculture-centred village into the 20th century, with the principal holding from 1891-1912 belonging to James Saumarez, a wealthy lord with lands throughout Suffolk. In the 1831 census 55 residents were listed as working the land, with six in retail and one blacksmith, overseen by six farmers out of a population of 238. This number fluctuated only a little through the 19th and 20th centuries, reaching a zenith of 310 inhabitants in 1851. before declining again to 215 in 1981.In 2002 Baylham Mill briefly became famous as the home and place of discovery of a lost artwork by Nicolas Poussin, The Destruction And Sack Of The Temple Of Jerusalem. Ernest Onians, a pigswill salesman who had lived at the mill for many years and was an avid art collector, had acquired the piece while visiting house sales in the 1940s and '50s. Unaware of its provenance, he kept it at the mill along with around 1,000 other works, and never had it appraised. When he died in 1995 the painting was included in a general sale of goods by auction house Sotheby's, and mistakenly sold at a guide price of £15,000 under the name of Poussain's pupil, Pietro Testa. Bidding soared to £155,000 and it was eventually acquired by London gallery Hazlitt, Gooden and Fox – which went on to resell the piece for £4.5 million to the Rothschild foundation. The Destruction And Sack Of The Temple Of Jerusalem was later donated to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Sotheby's was sued by Mr Onians' family and eventually paid out a six figure sum over the error.
Baylham's position on the Gipping saw it included in a number of works in the 2010s aimed at re-opening the canalised river to walking and navigation, organised through the . Restoration of Baylham's sluice gates and lock took place in 2013 and 2016.
A considerable expansion of the number of properties took place after the turn of the millennium, which had increased population density by around 16% as of the 2021 census.