Republished here on full-searchable CD-Rom is Kelly's Directory of Suffolk, which was published in 1933. Containing some 688 printed pages, Kelly's Directory, as the then editor correctly noted, was primarily a directory, but also served as the gazetteer for every county for which Kelly's Directory was published, and this Suffolk edition is no exception. This directory, published with a revised large fold-out map, includes every parish and many of the postal villages in the county and provides a thorough topographical description of every town, parish, village and township, describing the principal buildings and geographical objects of interest in each. Great care is also taken in Kelly's treatment of the ecclesiastical divisions of the county with descriptions of all the churches, cathedrals the value of the livings, parochial incumbents and patrons. The same level of detail is provided for the civil and local administration of the county with full information on county courts, districts fairs, markets, county hunts as well as communications such as rail and post throughout the county. Beginning with Acton and ending with Yoxford, for those who might be unfamiliar with a directory such as Kelly's the degree of information contained on each village can be gleaned from the description of just one of the places entered in the Towns and Villages section of the directory. Brockley, a parish and scattered village, situated six miles from Bury St. Edmunds, the nearest railway station; situated in the Sudbury Division of the County, Thingoe Hundred and Rural Division, Thingoe and Thedwastre Petty Sessional Division, Bury St. Edmunds County Court District, Rural Deanery of Horringer, Archdeaconry of Sudbury and Diocese of St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich. The Church, dedicated to St. Andrew is in the Old English Style; an ancient stone building consisting of a chancel, nave, south porch and bell tower with three bells. The Church was renovated and restored in 1899 and bears a marble and alabaster tablet dedicated to the men of the parish who fell in the Great War. The Church has 150 sittings and the parochial records date from 1560. The living is a rectory with a value of £726 per annum, including glebe and a residence, the alternate gift of the Marquis of Downshire and Mrs. Nettleship. The parish also contains a Baptist Chapel, erected in 1841. The Manorial rights are held by the trustees of the late Francis Ronald Francis. The soil and subsoil are chiefly clay and the principal crops are wheat, barley, beans, peas and roots. The parish covers 1,538 acres and in 1921 the population returned was 207. The entry for Brockley is concluded by a list of the principal private residents and business in the parish. While Brockley was a small village and parish within the county of Suffolk as a whole, the level of detail recorded here is typical throughout the directory and details for the the residents of the principal towns and cities of the county, such as Bury St. Edmunds, Ipswich, and Lowestoft are much more extensive. This edition of Kelly's Directory of Suffolk is prefaced by a topographical and geological description of the county and is concluded with an extensive alphabetical list of the county's chief residents and commercial interests, which could be found across the length and breadth of the county in 1933. In addition to these expected but key features of any useful directory this edition also includes some many pages of full and half-page advertisements, many containing useful sketches and photographs from the period. For anyone with even the slightest interest in the residents, topography of descriptions of the county of Suffolk this fully-searchable 1933 edition of Kelly's Directory of Suffolk is not to be missed.
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