Wordwell is a small village and civil parish

Civil parish

In England, a civil parish is a territorial designation and, where they are found, the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties...

 in 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...

, England

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...

, about five miles North of Bury St Edmunds. The village was hit by the Black Death

Black Death

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...

 in 1348 and never recovered in terms of population; in 2005 it was estimated to have only 20 residents. During the 19th and early 20th centuries it was part of the Culford

Culford

Culford is a small village about north of Bury St Edmunds in the English county of Suffolk. The villageis based around a straight road called "The Street" and there are also some smaller residential areas in Culford, like Benyon gardens, a complex of small lanes...

 Estate.

All Saints Church

All Saints Church, Wordwell

All Saints Church, Wordwell, is a redundant Anglican church in the village of Wordwell, Suffolk, England. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building, and is under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. It stands in a small community alongside the B1106 road...

 is largely Norman but with Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 alterations. Wordwell is also one of very few Thankful Villages

Thankful Villages

Thankful Villages are settlements in both England and Wales from which all their then members of the armed forces survived World War I. The term Thankful Village was popularised by the writer Arthur Mee in the 1930s...

, that is to say one which lost no men during either World Wars. The church has carvings on benches and in stone.

A mass grave, probably from the time of the Black Death, was found when electricity was provided to the church. Google Earth

Google Earth

Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...

shows the outlines of buildings that once stood on the other side of the road.

External links

• All Saint's Church SuffolkChurches