The name Badwell Ash means Bada’s stream near the field with ash trees. Badwell Ash was also sometimes known as Little Ashfield, and is one of several villages and hamlets in the area with an association with ash trees.

People have lived and worked the land in the area for hundreds if not thousands of years. Fragments of Roman pottery and coins, and some Anglo Saxon artefacts have been found.

Badwell Ash was under the Lordship of William Crekelote during the reign of Edward 1 ^st but circa 1354 passed, along with Great Ashfield, to the Prior and Monks of Ixworth. In 1538, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII gave the Ixworth Priory's estates to Richard Codington in exchange for lands in Surrey on which Henry subsequently built Nonsuch Palace.

There were two manors in Badwell Ash parish; Badwell and Shackerland. Both manor houses have been largely rebuilt over the centuries, but Badwell Hall retains its impressive Tudor chimney stacks and you can still see parts of Shackerland Hall's 15th Century moat.

The Parish Pack produced by the Suffolk Record Office has the following information about population growth in the Parish:

1327     29 taxpayers paid £2.6.2,
1603     126 adults,
1662     33 households paid £4.11.0,
1674     42 households, 
1675     105 adults,
1801     348 inhabitants,
1831     490 inhabitants,
1851     478 inhabitants,
1871     520 inhabitants
1901     356 inhabitants,
1931     330 inhabitants,
1951     382 inhabitants,
1971     492 inhabitants,
1981     574 inhabitants
2001     685 inhabitants

White’s Directory of 1844 states that the Parish contains 458 souls and 1,860 acres of land.

The Great Fire of Badwell Ash
An extract from the Suffolk Mercury July 15th 1723 explains perhaps why there more Georgian and Victorian buildings and fewer older houses in the centre of the village, a notable exception being the White Horse Inn:-
"On Sunday the seventh inst. a dreadful fire happened at a place called Badwell Ash, within eight miles of Bury in Suffolk, which consumed almost the whole town, leaving only ten houses standing, whereby 388 families are brought into a deplorable condition, being reduced to the utmost extremity. This unhappy accident was occasioned by two boys that were employed to scare the birds from fruit &c., and these boys it seems had made a key gun (ie the pipe of an old key of a door) with which they intended to fright the birds, but it so happened that one going to call the other on Sunday after dinner, they both strove who should have the gun, upon which one of them having a firebrand in his hand put it to the touch-hole of the gun, which immediately discharged itself, and ‘tis supposed the flash, together with the paper that was rammed into it first catch’d hold of the cobwebs, and then of the thatch of the house which kindled such a flame that it could not be extinguished till the whole town was almost laid in ashes. The damaged is computed at about 2,000L."

Extract taken from ‘I Read it in the Local Rag; Selections from Suffolk and Norfolk papers 1701–1900’ by Pip Wright

Baron Thurlow of Ashfield
The only person of real historical importance associated with the area was Edward Thurlow (1731-1806), who was created 1st Baron Thurlow of Ashfield in 1778. He was a member of the Privy Council and became Lord High Chancellor in successive parliaments during King George III's reign. A lawyer and a scholar, Thurlow was a friend of the poet William Cowper and of the essayist and lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson. As a friend of the King, he supported Britain's rights to her then American colonies and defended the British slave trade. He did not marry and the title descended to his nephew Edward (afterwards Hovell-Thurlow), eldest son of Thomas Thurlow, Bishop of Durham. The current (8th) Baron Thurlow is Francis Edward Hovell-Thurlow-Cumming-Bruce, KCMG (1912 -), a retired British diplomat.
The parish's hamlet of Long Thurlow bears Edward Thurlow's name. Read more about him here.  

Badwell Ash in the 20th Century
A 1928 supplement to the Suffolk Chronicle and Mercury, No 76 of the 'Pocket Histories of Suffolk Parishes' on the subject of Badwell Ash notes that: 'Situated in pleasant country some four miles North of Elmswell Station, and a typical example of the villages in this particular part of the county, Badwell Ash is a neat and somewhat attractive place, with many pleasing features. Unfortunately, however, from both an historical and archaeological point of view, there are few items of note, and, although the village has a certain quiet charm and that fresh aspect so inviting to the lover of the countryside, it contains very little of importance or interest except from a purely rustic point of view.'

This bucolic idyll was interrupted briefly in the latter half of the 20th Century. Gravel pits around Badwell which had been dug for centuries were exploited in earnest, with heavy lorries disturbing the peace of the village. But by the 21st Century the gravel works were all depleted and some of the empty pits were flooded and are now used as  fishing lakes .

In the 1970s local landowner and farmer Roy le Grice donated fields in the centre of the village to the community. A school and a Village Hall were built on the land, with the remainder becoming the village's Playing Fields and Recreation Grounds.

Long Thurlow is a delightful little hamlet built on the boundaries of Badwell Ash and Great Ashfield. There are now approximately 70 houses of which 10 are in Great Ashfield and the rest in Badwell Ash. It could almost claim village status in its own right. There is, however, a subtle difference. All the old Suffolk villages, with their Saxon names, date back to the Dark Ages, where they consisted of a cluster of cottages and the village Thane’s house surrounding their parish church. Long Thurlow "just happened". The old maps show that even as late as 1836 there were only three scattered farmhouses, a couple of semi-detached houses for farm workers, and a smithy. Another building which could have been an old manor house stood at the end of the village.

This is all that existed until the 1850s, when the emerging railways were able to bring cheap Welsh slate for roofing. Soon after this, a row of 10 slate roofed, redbrick cottages with a grocer's shop at the end were built, and the nucleus for a village street was started. One or two more buildings appeared over the next few years. Between the wars a few more modern houses were built, and the first semi-detached council house was added. Even so at the end of the Second World War only 28 houses existed in this area.

There was however a flourishing public house called the "Thurlow Arms". So by now Long Thurlow was supplied with its own groceries, hostelry and smithy. Small as it was, in the 1950s a water main was installed, and in the 1960s the far-sighted little District Council of Thedwastre added a sewage scheme to the area. Thanks to all these amenities development exploded, the large gaps between the houses were filled, and Long Thurlow became what it is today.

Unfortunately the pub, grocery-cum-post office and smithy have now disappeared. But we are left with a happy collection of families formed into a Neighbourhood Watch, always ready to help and support each other, and more than willing to socialise.

Roy le Grice

The Community Forum welcomes any contributions to this page from anyone with a knowledge of local history.