The name

Braiseworth is Old English: Briosa’s worth, “Briosa’s enclosure or homestead”, from a personal name that itself means “gadfly”. The spelling has varied — Breisworth in the 1870 Imperial Gazetteer, Braisworth on some twentieth-century maps and photographs.

Source: E. Ekwall, Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, cited in Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, Parish History Pack: Braiseworth (2014); J. M. Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870–72), via A Vision of Britain through Time

Before the Conquest

By the reign of Edward the Confessor the land was already divided between several holdings. One manor of 60 acres had a mill, four acres of meadow and half a church with 17 acres of land. The other half of the church, with 15 acres, belonged to a parcel of 140 acres held by fifteen free men, with a further acre of meadow. Smaller holdings were held by groups of four, three and eight free men, and one by a man named Alstan under the patronage of Wulfeva of Thorndon.

Source: Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, Old St Mary, Braiseworth; Open Domesday (Phillimore refs Suffolk 6,226 and 6,228)

Domesday Book, 1086

Braiseworth was surveyed in the hundred of Hartismere. After the Conquest every holding passed to Robert Malet, lord of the Honour of Eye and one of the greatest Norman landholders in Suffolk; several were held under him by his mother. The survey records about 36 people in total — one villager, one smallholder and some 32 free men — together with one mill, one church with 32 acres of land, five acres of meadow, four cattle and eight pigs. The parish as a whole falls within the largest 40 per cent of settlements recorded in Domesday.

The medieval parish

The main manor, later called Old Hall Manor, was held in the eleventh century by Sir Robert Sackville of the Honour of Eye, which linked it to many manors across the county, and in the twelfth century by Giles de Braiseworth. The church living was valued at £4 13s 4d in 1254, £5 in 1291 and £4 8s 1½d in 1535. In 1327 seven taxpayers paid £1 3s 4d between them; in 1524 six taxpayers paid 4s 8d.

There were also sub-manors. New Hall was held by William le Parker in 1268 and owned by William Pretyman in 1586 (linked to Bacton and Cotton); it was absorbed into the main manor about 1758. Bowell’s Hall or Bovilles was owned by Humphrey Wingfield in 1530; Alexander Newton died seised of it in 1569 — his small brass lay in the old church into the twentieth century. Barnies or Rooky’s was owned by George Cawsey in the sixteenth century, absorbed into Bowell’s about 1568 and into the main manor about 1643.

Source: Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, Parish History Pack: Braiseworth (2014)

Sixteenth to eighteenth centuries

The Playter family held Old Hall Manor from 1547. By 1643 it belonged to the Earl of Cornwallis, whose estate also took in Brome, Palgrave and Thrandeston. In 1603 the patron of the living was William Coleman, and 36 adults were recorded in the parish; in 1674 there were 15 households and 13 inhabited houses; in 1676, 41 people were recorded.

Braiseworth then lay in Suffolk’s wood-pasture region: mainly pasture and meadow, rearing and dairying, with pig-keeping, horse breeding and poultry; crops were mainly barley with some wheat, rye, oats, peas, vetches, hops and occasionally hemp. Recorded occupations were two yeomen (1550–99); one husbandman and three yeomen (1600–49); four yeomen, a carpenter, a tailor and a spinster (1650–99).

Source: Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, Parish History Pack: Braiseworth (2014) (citing Thirsk for farming regions)

The nineteenth century

In 1801 the parish had 105 inhabitants and 19 inhabited houses. By 1825 Matthew Kerrison owned the manor, with Brome, Eye and Yaxley; in 1827 it was annexed to Thelnetham. The patron of the living in 1831 was Sir Edward Kerrison, baronet and Member of Parliament, and lord of the manor. That year the living was worth £149 gross, the curate had a stipend of £54, the glebe house was unfit to live in, and the incumbent also held the rectory of Horringer. Of those in work, 29 were in agriculture, two in retail trade and seven in other occupations. In 1839 a rent-charge of £200 a year replaced the tithes.

In 1844 the land was sub-divided among eight farmers and the rental value was £872. A new rectory was about to be built in 1855, with 20 acres of glebe. The old church was largely taken down and a new one built in 1857 (see The churches). A National School was built in 1862 for 20 pupils and enlarged in 1874. The Mellis–Eye branch railway opened in 1867, with Eye station two miles away.

The 1868 National Gazetteer described Braiseworth as “a parish in the hundred of Hartismere … 2 miles to the S. of Eye, its post town”, with the Great Eastern Railway station at Mellis four miles to the south-east, the living a rectory in the diocese of Norwich worth £149 in the patronage of Sir E. Kerrison, and “the church of St. Mary … an old building, now disused, a handsome new church having been recently erected in another part of the parish”. Wilson’s Imperial Gazetteer of 1870–72 recorded 720 acres, real property of £1,317, a population of 164 in 30 houses, and named Braiseworth Hall as the chief residence.

By 1891 Lord Henniker was the principal landowner and the rateable value was £896.

Source: Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, Parish History Pack: Braiseworth (2014); National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868), via GENUKI; J. M. Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870–72), via A Vision of Britain through Time

Poor relief

The parish’s spending on the poor rose sharply in the years before the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act, after which Braiseworth joined the Hartismere Union.

Schools and charity

In 1818 one day school was held two days a week and on Sundays, with 26 attending. In 1833 a Sunday school had 25 pupils. The National School of 1862 had 20 pupils, was enlarged in 1874, and averaged 15 pupils in 1912. The Hart Charity, a bequest of £100 for investment recorded in 1912, produced £3 a year for distribution in coals.

Source: Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, Parish History Pack: Braiseworth (2014)

The twentieth century

The population fell from 113 in 1901 to 90 in 1931. In 1912 the area was 730 acres, the rateable value £717, Lady Bateman the principal landowner and the Dowager Lady Bateman patron of the living, which was then worth £109 net with 20 acres of glebe and a residence. Six farmers, a farm bailiff and a shopkeeper were listed, and the resident gentry was the Reverend H. Drake, BA. The new church was restored in 1908. The war memorial was unveiled on 10 April 1921.

The railway closed to passengers in 1931 and to goods in 1964. In 1937 the main crops were wheat, barley, beans and sugar beet, and there was a turkey farmer; by 1969 cereal growing and sugar beet were more intensive. A 1958 survey described “a very dispersed parish, small settlement around church, scattered farms”. The population was 97 in 1951, 55 in 1971 and 52 in 1981, with 25 inhabited houses in 1951 and 20 in 1981. The church was declared redundant in 1976. A public house opened in the parish in 1977.

Source: Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, Parish History Pack: Braiseworth (2014); Historic England, National Heritage List for England (war memorial, list entry 1459054)

Today

Braiseworth remains a civil parish in Mid Suffolk District, which replaced Hartismere Rural District in 1974. At the 2021 Census it had 63 residents — 31 female and 32 male — in 25 households.

Source: Office for National Statistics, Census 2021; Suffolk County Council Archaeological Service, Parish History Pack: Braiseworth (2014)

The manor and its records

The lordship of the parish was formally styled the Manor of Braiseworth, Old Hall, New Hall with Barnies, and its three parts held their courts together from at least the early sixteenth century. A long run of court rolls, rentals and minute books survives at Suffolk Archives, and the manor was still enfranchising copyhold land — turning customary tenancies into freeholds — as late as 1871.

There is a point of confusion worth clearing up. A separate “Manor of Braiseworth in Tannington” — a parish some eight miles to the south-east — also appears in the records, and it is with that manor that the Playter family is linked in a Chancery suit of the 1540s. The often-repeated “Playter, 1547” for Braiseworth’s Old Hall may rest on a Tannington source; the two should not be merged without a reading of the court rolls above.

Source: The National Archives, C 1/1212/69–73 (Drane v Jernygan, meadow in “the manor of Braisworth in Tannington”); Suffolk Archives, FC89/N1/1

Parish administration

By the mid-nineteenth century Braiseworth was one of the constituent parishes of the Hartismere Poor Law Union, whose workhouse was at Eye — confirmed by a printed tender of 1859 that lists it alongside Aspall, Botesdale, Brome, Burgate, Cotton, Eye, Finningham, Gislingham, Stoke Ash, Stuston, the Thornhams, Thrandeston and Thwaite. Its poor had earlier been supported directly by the parish: overseers’ accounts survive from 1746, and the sum spent on poor relief rose from about £43 in 1776 to nearly £196 in 1832, just before the New Poor Law.

Source: Ipswich Journal, 29 October 1859, via the British Newspaper Archive; Suffolk County Council parish history pack (2014); Suffolk Archives, FB 126/G