WICKHAM MARKET GENEALOGY
Wickham Market is a pretty village situated on the bank of the river Deben, not far from Woodbridge. It was formerly a market town by grant of Henry VI. The Plomesgate union workhouse was built here in 1837. In 1851 the population of Wickham Market was 1,698. Now it is over 2,200.
My Grandmother always used to tell us that she was related to nearly everyone in Wickham Market, and the more research I have done, I think she was probably right. There were three Walker Families in Wickham Market. I haven't found the origins of any of them yet, although they all moved to Wickham Market from Pettistree, whereas the Scotts moved from Wickham Market to Pettistree, and the Aldens from Marlesford to Wickham Market.
The Wickham Market section of this web site is just a beginning (28.9.05). Hopefully it will grow into something useful for Wickham Market genealogical researchers.
Contents
Some Interesting/Notable Wickham Market People/Events
| In the three years 1762, 1763 and 1764, John Kirby of Wickham Market travelled throughout Suffolk in order to complete and publish a survey of the whole County - The Suffolk Traveller, the earliest single-county roadbook. |
| The Tide Mill at Woodbridge was built by the Wickham Market millwright, John Whitmore. He built similar tower mills at nearby Hasketon and others at Debenham, Burgh and Kelsale. The firm of Whitmore and Binyon established a reputation for engineering excellence in an area which included Ransomes of Ipswich and Garretts of Leiston. |
| Anne Walker born about 1864 in Wickham Market is featured in the Oxford Dictionary of national Biography as a "computer" and observer at the Cambridge Observatory working with Andrew Graham, astronomer. In 1899 hers were the first, and until April 1903 the only, observations for the new Catalogue of Zodiacal Stars. |
| William Reynolds Salmon, born in Wickham Market in 1790 became at the time of his death the oldest known individual of indisputably authenticated age, the oldest physician, the oldest member of the Royal College of Surgeons, England, and the oldest Freemason in the world. http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/tech/medicine/AnomaliesandCuriositiesofMedicine/chap8.html |
| Thomas Baker, a thatcher of Wickham Market, published. A Poem for the Winter Season (Ipswich, 1759). |
| In 1938 Miss Cloe Vulliamy, a Republican sympathiser living in Woodbridge, organised for a party of Basque children, refugees from the Spanish Civil War, to come and live in the old Workhouse buildings in Wickham Market for about a year, until things settled down in their own country. There were about 40 boys and girls with one teacher: http://www.spanishrefugees-basquechildren.org/C6-8-Wickham_Market.html |
| At Wickham Market there were snow drifts 12ft deep, while at Bawdsey the ferry service was stopped by 40ft ice-floes.... http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/Content/columns/kindred/htm/030204snow.asp |
| Wallabies on the Loose in in Wickham Market http://www.scottishbigcats.co.uk/crypto1.htm |
| Take a virtual walk around Wickham Market http://www.onerailway.com/services/community/walks/wickham-market/ |
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