Welcome.

We are the Waldringfield History Group.

You might wonder why ‘a small, insignificant village’ (Waldringfield and District by Walter Tye) should interest anybody sufficiently to warrant the formation of a history group, but history involves investigation, investigation leads to discovery, and discovery reveals the truth.

The truth is that Waldringfield has never been insignificant.

On this website we try to bring together all we have learnt about the village and its people in the past.

Nature, Outdoors, Sky

There are several reasons why the majority of the content has to be available only to members of the Group, but membership is inexpensive, and easy to achieve by emailing waldringfieldhg@gmail.com

Waldringfield is the subject of an entry in the Domesday Book, and, at Suffolk Record Office, there are Manorial Court Rolls for the mediaeval Manors of Rivershall and Hilton, from which one of our number has translated extracts. The village was derived from these Manors. The History Group (WHG) maintains a collection of maps and archaeological surveys, as well as an oral and video history collection and an impressive assemblage of photographs.

The WHG was formed in 2007 following the presentation to villagers of an illustrated talk by Joe Clark and Stan Baston entitled ‘A Walk around Waldringfield 100 Years Ago’, using photographs derived digitally from glass plate slides. Members of the Group have presented various aspects of their material on an almost annual basis since that time. For information about these talks visit this page.

The collection of material has depended on the interest and generosity of fellow residents and many others, further afield. The majority of that material is now on this site. Please feel free to send in any information, documents or photos that you may feel might be relevant. We are committed to the need for sensitivity when dealing with information; we ask users of the website to acquaint themselves with the detail of that commitment which is given in the section entitled ‘Data’.

In 2020 the History Group published a book – Waldringfield: A Suffolk Village beside the River Deben – telling the story of the village through family recollections and using material gathered over the previous decade together with hundreds of photographs ranging from the above-mentioned glass plates to the latest in drone technology.