Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for WOODBRIDGE

WOODBRIDGE, a town, a parish, and a district, in Suffolk. The town stands on the river Deben, and on the East Suffolk railway, 8 miles ENE of Ipswich; was known, at Domesday, as Udebryge; had an Augustinian friary, founded in the 12th century by the Rouses, and given, at the dissolution, to the Wingfields; was ravaged by the plague in 1666; is a seat of sessions and county courts, a polling place, and a head port; occupies a hillslope, with a fine view of the river to its mouth, 9 miles distant; consists of four streets, regularly built; carries on boat-building, iron-founding, whiting-manufacture, brick-making, rope-making, the export of corn, malt, and very fine white bricks, and the import of coal, timber, seeds, oil-cake, wine, spirits, and other goods; is accessible by vessels of 120 tons burden; and has a head post-office,‡ a r. station with telegraph, three banking-offices, two chief inns, a police station, a public hall of 1851, reading rooms and library, a custom-house, a fine later English church, a handsome modern church, four dissenting chapels, a public cemetery of 1856, with two mortuary chapels in the Norman style, an endowed grammar-school, alms houses, a dispensary, and a fine library, with jointly more than £3,000 a year, national and British schools, a mechanics' institution, commodious wharves and quays, a weekly market on Thursday, and fairs on the first Tuesday of April and Michaelmas day. The vessels belonging to the port, at the beginning of 1868, were 33 small sailing-vessels, of aggregately 1,078 tons, and 31 large sailing-vessels, of aggregately 2,270 tons. The vessels which entered in 1867 were 5 British sailing-vessels, of aggregately 665 tons, from foreign countries; 5 foreign vessels, of aggregately 364 tons, from foreign countries; and 302 sailing-vessels, of aggregately 17,424 tons, coastwise. The amount of customs, in 1862, was £433.

The parish and the town are regarded as mutually. conterminate. Acres, 1,059. Real property, £17,619; of which £300 are in gasworks Pop. in 1851, 5,161; in 1861, 4,513. Houses, 1,115. The decrease of pop. arose partly from depression in the shipping trade, and partly from discontinuance of tan and ship-building yards. The head living is a rectory, and that of St. John's is a vicarage, in the diocese of Norwich. Value of the former, £420; of the latter, £203. Patron of the former, Major Rouse; of the latter, the Church Patronage Society.—The district contains 46 parishes and 3 extra-parochial tracts; and is divided into the sub-districts of Woodbridge and Wilford, Woodbridge-Out, Colneis, and Carlford. Acres, 82,195. Poor rates in 1863, £11,014. Pop. in 1851, 23,776; in 1861, 22,754. Houses, 5,066. Marriages in 1866, 138; births, 652,-of which 44 were illegitimate; deaths, 474,-of which 124 were at ages under 5 years, and 18 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 1,525; births, 7,093; deaths, 4,753. The places of worship, in 1851, were 46 of the Church of England , with 10,833 sittings; 7 of Independents, with 2,326 s.; 10 of Baptists, with 3,175 s.; 1 of Quakers, with 300 s.; 5 of Wesleyans, with 732 s.; 1. of Primitive Methodists, with 70 s.; 1 of the Wesleyan Association, with 45 s.; and 1 undefined, with 40 s. The schools were 27 public day-schools, with 1,955 scholars; 55 private day-schools, with 1,155 s.; 39 Sunday schools, with 2,563 s.; and 2 evening schools for adults, with 16. s. The workhouse is in Nacton.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a town, a parish, and a district"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Woodbridge AP/CP       Woodbridge RegD/PLU       Suffolk AncC
Place names: UDEBRYGE     |     WOODBRIDGE
Place: Woodbridge

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