Beccles

Introduction

Please tell us if you know of any pubs here ready to reopen when outdoors service is permitted.

Beccles is built on a river cliff, overlooking the Waveney valley. This attractive market town dates from the time of the Angles and unusually, is still known by the same name by which it was recorded in Domesday. At the time of Domesday, a fishing port thrived at the river mouth. Today the town is better known for printing and tourism. Admiral Horatio Nelson's father, Edmund, was once the curate at St Michael's church and was married here to Catherine Sucking (a local woman) in 1754. Unusually St Michael's has a detached tower (92 feet high) which contains 10 bells and was built in 1515. The tower has clock-faces on only three sides, because the builders "didn't want to give the time to Norfolk".

Beccles Brew Co was founded in a domestic garage in the town in 2019; in 2020 the brewery moved to new, larger premises in Brampton.

Perhaps the most significant former pupil of the John Leman Grammar School was Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin, who was awarded the prize for Chemistry in 1964 for her work on the structure of vitamin B₁₂. She also decyphered the structure of insulin and confirmed the structure of penicillin.…

Gallery

Acknowledgements

Some details from "Suffolk Airfields in WW2" by Graham Smith.