Red Lodge, Suffolk
Encyclopedia
Red Lodge is a village situated in rural 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...

 between Mildenhall
Mildenhall, Suffolk
Mildenhall is a small market town and civil parish in Suffolk, England. It is run by Forest Heath District Council and has a population of 9,906 people. The town is near the A11 and is located north-west of county town, Ipswich. The large Royal Air Force base, RAF Mildenhall as well as RAF...

 and Newmarket, and very close to the A11 and A14.

The town

Much development has taken place here over the last couple of years and it is still ongoing. This development consists of new homes from a variety of building companies and an industrial estate. It is acknowledged that this is predominantly due to Red Lodge's convenient central location within East Anglia
East Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...

 allowing easy access to Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

 and London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 to name but a few. Forest Heath
Forest Heath
Forest Heath is a local government district in Suffolk, England. Its council is based in Mildenhall. Other towns in the district include Newmarket....

 District Council devised a master plan in 1998 for Red Lodge which shows the proposed vision for the village. The council's master plan is viewable on the internet

Red Lodge History

Part of the area being developed has been named King's Warren. This name relates to when Henry III
Henry III of England
Henry III was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for 56 years from 1216 until his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready...

 allowed the Bishop of Rochester
Bishop of Rochester
The Bishop of Rochester is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Rochester in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers the west of the county of Kent and is centred in the city of Rochester where the bishop's seat is located at the Cathedral Church of Christ and the Blessed Virgin...

 the right of Free Warren on the land in the 13th century, 1248 to be precise, thus allowing the Bishop to hunt game birds and rabbits.
In 1794 the Warren
Warren
- Definition :Warren refers to a network of underground interconnecting rabbit burrows, a place where rabbits breed and live, or an overcrowded place or building.- Geographical names :* Warrens, Saint Michael, Barbados* Warren, Manitoba, Canada...

 covered about 450 acres (1.8 km²) and by 1918 only 150 acre (0.607029 km²) remained. A large amount of this remaining land was then sold in 1926 which resulted in the development of the original Red Lodge Village. This development spanned over about 10 years.
Further building took place in the 1980s and then in the year 2000, a number of Planning Applications were submitted for the most recent developments that are still ongoing.
It is possible, although not confirmed, that the Red Lodge Inn Public House
Public house
A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

 is the oldest building in Red Lodge and this dates back to the 13th century.

Red Lodge Nature

The Red Lodge Heath has an assemblage of invertebrates on it consisting of bees, ants, wasps and beetles. The species of invertebrates are a number mainly associated with dry grassland and wet woodland with ponds.
Red Lodge Heath is an area of dry acid grassland, chalk grassland, lichen heath and wet woodland with ponds. Disturbed, bare soil within open habitats provides the conditions for early-successional plants as well as a wide range of invertebrates. The dry grassland invertebrates at Red Lodge Heath, like those of other heaths, depend very much on patches of bare ground within the grasslands.
The assemblage includes a very special population of the nationally rare five-banded tailed digger wasp
Digger wasp
Wasps of the genus Sphex are cosmopolitan predators of the family Sphecidae that sting and paralyze prey insects. There are over 130 known digger wasp species. In preparation for egg laying, they construct a protected "nest" and then stock it with captured insects...

, Cerceris quinquefasciata. This is a medium-sized yellow and black solitary digger wasp that catches weevils and stores them in burrows to feed its young. It can be found at Red Lodge Heath nesting in bare sand along a path in the north of the site, and on sparsely vegetated slopes in the west of the heath. Adults are found flying throughout the dry grasslands. It requires open sandy soils for nesting, and abundant weevil prey in flower-rich sandy grasslands, as each nest needs up to 500 weevils. This requires a large area of flower-rich grassland per wasp, so that there is sufficient area to supply the required number of weevils to feed the young when they emerge.

Transport

The nearest train station to Red Lodge is in , 2 miles (3 km) away.
Buses also serve the village and stops are conveniently located in Warren Road, Red Lodge. The regular bus service goes to Mildenhall
Mildenhall, Suffolk
Mildenhall is a small market town and civil parish in Suffolk, England. It is run by Forest Heath District Council and has a population of 9,906 people. The town is near the A11 and is located north-west of county town, Ipswich. The large Royal Air Force base, RAF Mildenhall as well as RAF...

, Newmarket, Bury St Edmunds and outlying towns and villages.
Stansted Airport is 41 miles (66 km) away and Luton Airport is 55 miles (89 km).

Local economy

Red Lodge is well known locally by lorry drivers for the truckers' cafe and there is also Red Lodge Karting, a karting track which hosts many events that is popular with the leisure enthusiast.

There are plans for a new village centre, which should include a supermarket, a doctors' surgery, a Post Office and other recreational facilities including a football ground, a cricket pitch, a sports pavilion and a well equipped children's play area.

Education

There are provisions for a primary school to be opened and an area has been catered for this purpose within the newly developed area. The plans show that the primary school currently located in Tuddenham
Tuddenham
Tuddenham is a village and civil parish in the Forest Heath district of Suffolk in eastern England. In 2005 it had a population of 450.Between 1943 and 1963, RAF Tuddenham was a Royal Air Force airfield close to the village...

, a nearby village, will be relocated to the new school in Red Lodge once this is built.
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