 East of England Sense of Place Suffolk
Guided tours of Suffolk's past
Introduction to Suffolk Changing Times
Wattisham and Honington are still used by the RAF, and Mildenhall and Lakenheath are rented out to the US air force.
There were many more airfields at the time of the Second World War.
Several are now the sites of industrial estates.
Suffolk, like all places, has changed physically, economically and socially over the course of time. Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the part of East Suffolk shown in the model of Sizewell. In Leiston, one can visit the Long Shop Steam Museum, housed in the building that contained the first ever production-line in the country. It was in a workshop set up by Richard Garrett, an agricultural engineer, whose daughter, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, went on to become Britain's first woman to qualify as a doctor, and also our first woman mayor.
Make sure you have a look at Made in Suffolk for more information about Garretts of Leiston, and other Suffolk innovators. See www.slamnet.org.uk/history for case studies used in schools, including several that deal with the 19 th century changes. Recent censuses reveal that over 20,000 people are moving into Suffolk each year - some from abroad, more though from other parts of the UK. This is out of a total county population of about 700,000. It is still a less cosmopolitan county than many, but there are significant ethnic communities in Ipswich. What makes Suffolk and its history attractive to so many people will hopefully become clear to anyone browsing through this website. There are other guided tours round this site that you might like to take: |
