Towns & Villages

Lavenham is a well placed venue to stay when exploring the heart of Suffolk. Nearby there are many interesting villages, such as Bildeston, Chelsworth, Cavendish, Clare and Kersey, as well as the towns and villages listed below.

Bury St Edmunds
This website will help you plan a visit to this picturesque and award winning market town – a town that offers the unique combination of great shopping, weekly markets, a breathtaking cathedral, fascinating Abbey ruins, interesting monuments, galleries and museums, plus a huge range of places to eat and entertainment to enjoy.

Sudbury
Sudbury is an ancient market town dating back to Saxon times. Sudbury has been used for television locations, most significantly for BBC's Lovejoy. It is surrounded by the attractive countryside so often painted by Constable and Gainsborough and by quintessentially English villages.

Hadleigh
A charming market town, Hadleigh has a lot to offer: a lovely choice of individual shops, including the famous Partridges, a harware shop that has an endlessly extensive range of goods for the home and garden; restaurants, pubs and cafes; a pretty riverside walk and railway walk as well as the really beautiful church/guildhall/deanery tower complex.

Long Melford
Long Melford is a village with a lot to offer to the visitor, whether you are interested in historic buildings, antiques, life-style shopping, good food or the latest fashions. It was a busy village in Tudor times, and still is, attracting visitors and holidaymakers from all over the UK and the world.

Woolpit
Woolpit is a very pretty village, the centre of which is a conservation area with many brick-faced, timber-framed buildings. The first documented evidence of Woolpit as a settlement is in 1005. Here you will find traditional village shops, pubs and the Woolpit & District Museum housed in a 17th century timber-framed building

Stowmarket
Originally an agricultural Market Town, industry developed upon the canalization, in 1793, of the River Gipping bringing new prosperity to Stowmarket. The medieval heart of Stowmarket lay around the parish church of St. Peter and St. Mary and in the area leading down to the riverbank.

The Dedham Vale
The Dedham Vale, also known as Constable Country, stretches through undulating fields and along the water meadows of the River Stour in countryside famous for its great wool churches and picturesque villages like Dedham, Polstead and Nayland.

Historic Attractions

Newmarket Race Course, Newmarket
Newmarket is the historic Home of Horseracing and the greatest horseracing centre in the world. It offers a treasure trove of sights and sounds for the racing enthusiast. Quite simply anyone with even just a passing interest in the “Sport of Kings” should visit Newmarket at least once in their lifetime.

Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds
Go back in time and discover the captivating world of Georgian theatre at the Theatre Royal Bury St. Edmunds.

Gainsborough's House, Sudbury
The birthplace of Thomas Gainsborough RA . Gainsborough's House is a historic buildinng dating back to the 16th century with an attractive walled garden with an outstanding collection, of Gainsborough´s paintings, drawings and prints, shown together with 18th century furniture and memorabilia.

Flatford Mill, East Bergholt
In the heart of the Dedham Vale, this is provides an opportunity to experience the countryside that John Constable knew and loved is to take the Constable Country Walk around the picturesque Stour Valley. Visitors are invited to attend exhibitions held in the Mill Cottage.

National Horseracing Museum
At the National Horseracing Museum, discover the stories of British racing from its early Royal origins at Newmarket to its modern-day heroes, featuring the horses, people, events and scandals that made it so colourful.

Kentwell Hall, Long Melford
Moated Tudor Mansion 'a little great house of magical beauty'. Exterior almost unaltered. The present owners have recovered and extended the once noted gardens.

Melford Hall, Long Melford
This romantic turreted brick Tudor mansion, home of the Hyde Parker family, features Regency, Georgian and Victorian interiors and collections of porcelain, naval artefacts and Beatrix Potter memorabilia.

Ickworth Ickworth House, Park and Gardens, Bury St Edmunds
An extraordinary oval house with flanking wings, begun in 1795. Fine paintings, a beautiful collection of Georgian silver, an Italian garden and stunning parkland.

Somerleyton Hall & Gardens, Lowestoft
Somerleyton Hall is an early Victorian mansion built Anglo-Italian style and features lavish carved stonework and wood carvings. The collection of paintings includes work by Stanfield and Landseer. Fine gardens with flower borders, specimen trees and a yew hedge maze planted in 1846 by William Nesfield.

West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village, Bury St Edmunds
West Stow Anglo-Saxon Village is the site of an Anglo-Saxon settlement occupied 420-650AD. Today there is a unique reconstructed Anglo-Saxon Village built on the original settlement site.

Mildenhall & District Museum, Mildenhall
Displays include RAF Mildenhall, Fenland and Breckland, local archaeology and local history. Replicas of the Mildenhall Treasure in a gallery telling the story of the discovery of this spectacular Roman silver hoard. Resource area for local history and family history research.

Greene King Visitor Centre, Bury St Edmunds
Visit the home of Abbot Ale, Greene King IPA, Old Speckled Hen and Ruddles County at the King Visitor Centre Museum which traces the history of brewing in and around Bury St Edmunds from the earliest times, and the story of the Greene and King families who came together in 1887 to form Greene King and Sons Ltd.

Moyse's Hall Museum, Bury St Edmunds
The museum provides an excellent setting in which to trace the unfolding story of West Suffolk, through displays which range from prehistoric times right through to the present. Moyse's Hall's own story is as rich and varied as the collections which it houses.

Beth Chatto Gardens, Elmstead Market
Covering 6 acres, the beautiful informal Beth Chatto Gardens have become world famous. Original problem areas have been transformed by the use of plants suited to the conditions into a gravel garden, water gardens and woodland gardens.

Bressingham Steam & Gardens, Diss
A paradise for gardeners with two beautiful six acre gardens, created by Alan and Adrian Bloom. who combined their passion for plants and gardens with heir love of steam, to create a truly unique experience. The gardens are rich in plants with an outstanding collection of species and varieties grouped in inspirational plant associations and combinations.

Helmingham Hall & Gardens, Stowmarket
Helmingham is a splendid Tudor hall surrounded by a wide moat and set in 400 acres of deer park. The garden has a nineteenth century parterre, borders, a moated kitchen garden, and a knot garden.

East Bergholt Place, East Bergholt
East Bergholt Place, set in 20 acres, is a wonderful garden and arboretum described as a `Cornish Garden in Suffolk´. It has a marvellous collection of unusual plants, rhododendrons, camellias, magnolias, shrubs and fine trees.

Otley Hall Garden, Ipswich
A fifteenth century moated house with a nineteenth/twentieth century garden. The garden was designed by Francis Inigo Thomas. There is a mount, a canal, a nuttery, a rose garden, a croquet lawn, a woodland garden, a moat walk and a knot garden.

Golf Clubs

Royal Worlington & Newmarket Golf Club, Bury St Edmunds
Royal Worlington has often been called the best nine hole course in the world and it does have some great holes. There are alternative tees that allow the course to be played as 18 holes.

Stoke by Nayland Golf Club, Leatheheath
Established in 1972, the two 18-hole championship golf courses were created in a designated "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty" and provide some of the finest golfing facilities in the East of England.

Hintlesham Hall Golf Club, near Ipswich
Hintlesham Golf Club is an entirely self-contained welcoming club which occupies a tranquil 150 acres of rolling Suffolk countryside. Blessed with a very attractive parkland 18 hole course currently regarded as being in the finest condition of any in the area. 18 holes 6638 yards. S.S.S. 72.

Brett Vale Golf Club, Raydon
an idyllic course situated at Raydon, Suffolk surrounded by stunning Constable Country. The 18 hole 5,864 yard course offers a challenge to players of all ages and handicaps and offers first class facilities. 18 holes 6000 yards. S.S.S. 69. 5 bay outdoor Golf Academy practice ground putting green.

Newton Green Golf Club, Sudbury
Situated on the A134 three miles east of the historic market town of Sudbury, the club’s 18-hole course offers a unique experience of heath and parkland golf. The members club was founded more than a century ago, with the original nine holes set out on the gorse-lined Newton village green, and the now well-established second nine added in 1991.

Fynn Valley Golf Club, Witnesham, Ipswich
Fynn Valley Golf Club is set in the rolling countryside of rural Suffolk in Witnesham, and is a friendly, family run Club where members and visitors enjoy the extensive golfing facilities. 18 holes 6373 yards. S.S.S. 71. 9 hole Par 3 course 23 bay floodlit golf range (10 undercover) practice bunker and putting green.

Rushmere Golf Club, Ipswich
The heath is a fine natural golf course situated just on the outskirts of Ipswich. The course is over 6200 yards and enjoys the space and hole by hole separation afforded by the expanse of the heath. 18 holes 6262 yards. S.S.S. 70. Practice facilities.