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History of Long Melford


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Samian pottery and a Spartan Sword unearthed in a villager's garden. In June 2013, some archaeological evidence of a Saxon and Bronze Age settlement in the northern area of the village was discovered by Carenza Lewis and her team from Cambridge University, during a student dig.

Middle Ages

The Manor of Melford was given to the Abbey of St.Edmundsbury by Earl Aflric c. 1050. The village is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, which lists the manor of Long Melford as an estate of 600 hectares. The neighbouring Manor of Kentwell is also recorded. During the Middle Ages the village grew and gained a weekly market and an annual fair in 1235.

Long Melford survived the Black Death in 1348-9, and was a brief stop-off in the peasants' revolt in 1381. By the early 1400s, the manor of Kentwell belonged to the Clopton family. John Clopton was arrested in 1461 and charged with treason. Clopton was spared execution and he was released and returned to Kentwell. There he organised and largely helped to pay for the rebuilding of the parish church, a notable example of a wool church. During this time the wealth of the parish was increasing, with most of the inhabitants being free men, renting their homes and lands. Guilds were founded, and weaving cloth became a key part of the village's economy. In the official inspector's returns for the year 1446, there were as many as 30 named weavers in Long Melford, who between them produced 264 finished "cloths".

Following the dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII granted the manor to Sir William Cordell.

Modern era

In 1604, an epidemic of the plague arrived in Melford and 119 people died between the months of May and September. During the

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