Kessingland
Encyclopedia
Kessingland is a large village
in the Waveney
District of the English
county
of Suffolk
. It is located around 4 miles (6 km) south of Lowestoft
. It is of interest to archaeologists as Palaeolithic and Neolithic
implements have been found here; the remains of an ancient forest
lie buried on the seabed.
There has been a settlement here since Palaeolithic times. Between the Hundred River and Latmer Dam was once a large estuary which was used by the Viking
s and Romans
. The sea provided the village with its main livelihood, and at one time the village paid a rent of 22,000 herring
s to their Lords, which then made it more important than nearby Lowestoft.
The Domesday Book entry reads 'Kessingalanda / gelanda: King's land, kept by Roger Bigot; Earl Hugh and Hugh FitzNorman from him; Hugh de Montfort
Mill (100 herrings). 43 pigs.' Roger Bigod
or Bigot was a Norman
Knight who came to England in the Norman Conquest.
The village comprised two separate communities: the "beach" and the "street" and it was not until the 1960s
that more housing united the village into a single community. The population is little over 4,000 - though this can double due to the holiday-makers in the many chalets and holiday villages in the area.
The Suffolk
Coast and Heath
s area was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
in 1970 and the Suffolk Coasts and Heath Project runs many conservation
projects.
St Edmund's church is one of the finest in the region. With an imposing tower 300 feet (91.4 m) it was built circa 1436 for the Franscicans of London. The tower, built like many coastal Churches to act as a beacon by ships out at sea, constitutes the majority of the medieval structure, the rest having been rebuilt in the ensuing centuries. Renovations continue to the contemporary era with a new window by Nicola Kantorowicz being added in 2007.
, an African themed wildlife park.
, novelist, was born in Bradenham
, and later in his life spent his summers at Kessingland in a cliff-top house called the Grange (now demolished, however a local road is named after Haggard). He was visited here by his friend Rudyard Kipling
. In a letter to Haggard dated 20 July 1912, his daughter Lillias documented a sighting of a Sea Serpent
off the coast of Kessingland: "we are convinced we saw a sea serpent!I happened to look up when I was sitting on the lawn, and saw what looked like a thin, dark line with a blob at one end, shooting through the water at such a terrific speed it hardly seemed likely that anything alive could go at such a pace...I suppose it was about 60 feet long." The letter was printed in the Eastern Daily Press
shortly after. To counter the force of the North Sea
and the winds off it, H. Rider Haggard
sloped the cliff on the edge of his property and experimented with growing Marram Grass upon it. The experiment proved a success, and the slope increased in height rather than decreased. He spent the rest of the year at Ditchingham
some 16 miles (25.7 km) to the west. In 1928 Kessingland Grange was sold to a Mr Catchpole who established a holiday camp
in the grounds, and subsequently demolished the Grange. The current Kessingland Cottages development was begun in 1979.
John MacDonald the international travel writer also lives in the village.
German writer (and sometime lecturer at the University of East Anglia) W. G. Sebald
in his second book The Rings of Saturn
details a coastal walk along the Suffolk coast. In his book he describes Kessingland beach fishermen with their oilskins and thermoses as resembling "the last stragglers of some nomadic people...at the outermost limit of the earth, in expectation of the miracle longed for since time immemorial, the miracle which would justify all their erstwhile privations and wanderings." He also mentions nearby Benacre, Lowestoft
and Covehithe
.
BBC Radio 4's Jan Zalasiewicz recorded a program about geology on Kessingland's stony beach.
Amber Butchart, of the London based DJ duo The Broken Hearts, is from Kessingland.
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...
in the Waveney
Waveney
Waveney is a local government district in Suffolk, England, named after the River Waveney that forms its north-west border. The district council is based in Lowestoft, the major settlement in Waveney, which is the only unparished area in the district...
District of the English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
county
County
A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain modern nations. Historically in mainland Europe, the original French term, comté, and its equivalents in other languages denoted a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain...
of Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
. It is located around 4 miles (6 km) south of Lowestoft
Lowestoft
Lowestoft is a town in the English county of Suffolk. The town is on the North Sea coast and is the most easterly point of the United Kingdom. It is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and south-east of Norwich...
. It is of interest to archaeologists as Palaeolithic and Neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
implements have been found here; the remains of an ancient forest
Forest
A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...
lie buried on the seabed.
There has been a settlement here since Palaeolithic times. Between the Hundred River and Latmer Dam was once a large estuary which was used by the Viking
Viking
The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...
s and Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. The sea provided the village with its main livelihood, and at one time the village paid a rent of 22,000 herring
Herring
Herring is an oily fish of the genus Clupea, found in the shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and the North Atlantic oceans, including the Baltic Sea. Three species of Clupea are recognized. The main taxa, the Atlantic herring and the Pacific herring may each be divided into subspecies...
s to their Lords, which then made it more important than nearby Lowestoft.
The Domesday Book entry reads 'Kessingalanda / gelanda: King's land, kept by Roger Bigot; Earl Hugh and Hugh FitzNorman from him; Hugh de Montfort
Mill (100 herrings). 43 pigs.' Roger Bigod
Roger Bigod, 1st Earl of Norfolk
Roger Bigod was a Norman knight who came to England in the Norman Conquest. He held great power in East Anglia, and five of his descendants were Earl of Norfolk. He was also known as Roger Bigot, appearing as such as a witness to the Charter of Liberties of Henry I of England.-Biography:Roger came...
or Bigot was a Norman
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
Knight who came to England in the Norman Conquest.
The village comprised two separate communities: the "beach" and the "street" and it was not until the 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
that more housing united the village into a single community. The population is little over 4,000 - though this can double due to the holiday-makers in the many chalets and holiday villages in the area.
The Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
Coast and Heath
Heath (habitat)
A heath or heathland is a dwarf-shrub habitat found on mainly low quality acidic soils, characterised by open, low growing woody vegetation, often dominated by plants of the Ericaceae. There are some clear differences between heath and moorland...
s area was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is an area of countryside considered to have significant landscape value in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, that has been specially designated by the Countryside Agency on behalf of the United Kingdom government; the Countryside Council for Wales on...
in 1970 and the Suffolk Coasts and Heath Project runs many conservation
Conservation ethic
Conservation is an ethic of resource use, allocation, and protection. Its primary focus is upon maintaining the health of the natural world: its, fisheries, habitats, and biological diversity. Secondary focus is on materials conservation and energy conservation, which are seen as important to...
projects.
Local attractions
In addition to the numerous holiday villages and the beach, Kessingland is home to Africa AliveAfrica Alive
Africa Alive!, formerly known as Suffolk Wildlife Park, is a zoo located in Kessingland, Suffolk, UK. It is situated off the A12 at Kessingland two miles south of Lowestoft....
, an African themed wildlife park.
Connections to the Arts
Sir H. Rider HaggardH. Rider Haggard
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...
, novelist, was born in Bradenham
Bradenham, Norfolk
Bradenham is a village and civil parish, a conglomeration of East & West Bradenham, in the English county of Norfolk. It is situated some south-west of the town of East Dereham and west of the city of Norwich....
, and later in his life spent his summers at Kessingland in a cliff-top house called the Grange (now demolished, however a local road is named after Haggard). He was visited here by his friend Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
. In a letter to Haggard dated 20 July 1912, his daughter Lillias documented a sighting of a Sea Serpent
Sea serpent
A sea serpent or sea dragon is a type of sea monster either wholly or partly serpentine.Sightings of sea serpents have been reported for hundreds of years, and continue to be claimed today. Cryptozoologist Bruce Champagne identified more than 1,200 purported sea serpent sightings...
off the coast of Kessingland: "we are convinced we saw a sea serpent!I happened to look up when I was sitting on the lawn, and saw what looked like a thin, dark line with a blob at one end, shooting through the water at such a terrific speed it hardly seemed likely that anything alive could go at such a pace...I suppose it was about 60 feet long." The letter was printed in the Eastern Daily Press
Eastern Daily Press
The Eastern Daily Press, commonly referred to as the EDP, is a regional newspaper covering Norfolk, and northern parts of Suffolk and eastern Cambridgeshire, and is published daily in Norwich, UK....
shortly after. To counter the force of the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
and the winds off it, H. Rider Haggard
H. Rider Haggard
Sir Henry Rider Haggard, KBE was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a founder of the Lost World literary genre. He was also involved in agricultural reform around the British Empire...
sloped the cliff on the edge of his property and experimented with growing Marram Grass upon it. The experiment proved a success, and the slope increased in height rather than decreased. He spent the rest of the year at Ditchingham
Ditchingham
Ditchingham is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. It is located across the River Waveney from Bungay, Suffolk near to The Broads National Park.- Overview :...
some 16 miles (25.7 km) to the west. In 1928 Kessingland Grange was sold to a Mr Catchpole who established a holiday camp
Holiday camp
Holiday camp, in Britain, generally refers to a resort with a boundary that includes accommodation, entertainment and other facilities.As distinct from camping, accommodation typically consisted of chalets – small buildings arranged either individually or in blocks. Some had three or four storeys,...
in the grounds, and subsequently demolished the Grange. The current Kessingland Cottages development was begun in 1979.
John MacDonald the international travel writer also lives in the village.
German writer (and sometime lecturer at the University of East Anglia) W. G. Sebald
W. G. Sebald
W. G. Maximilian Sebald was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was being cited by many literary critics as one of the greatest living authors and had been tipped as a possible future winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature...
in his second book The Rings of Saturn
The rings of saturn
The Rings of Saturn is a novel by W. G. Sebald and was published in English in 1998.The second novel of W. G. Sebald to be translated into English, The Rings of Saturn is the account of the narrator, also named W. G. Sebald, on a walking tour of Suffolk...
details a coastal walk along the Suffolk coast. In his book he describes Kessingland beach fishermen with their oilskins and thermoses as resembling "the last stragglers of some nomadic people...at the outermost limit of the earth, in expectation of the miracle longed for since time immemorial, the miracle which would justify all their erstwhile privations and wanderings." He also mentions nearby Benacre, Lowestoft
Lowestoft
Lowestoft is a town in the English county of Suffolk. The town is on the North Sea coast and is the most easterly point of the United Kingdom. It is north-east of London, north-east of Ipswich and south-east of Norwich...
and Covehithe
Covehithe
Covehithe, formerly North Hales, is a hamlet in a parish in Blything district, Suffolk, England. Lying on the coast around North-east of Southwold,also 8 miles South from the town of Lowestoft...
.
BBC Radio 4's Jan Zalasiewicz recorded a program about geology on Kessingland's stony beach.
Amber Butchart, of the London based DJ duo The Broken Hearts, is from Kessingland.