Botesdale, Suffolk Genealogy

England   Suffolk     Parishes   Botesdale

History
Botesdale St Botolph is a parish church nowadays within the Diocese of Norwich and the county of Suffolk. However it began as a chapel of ease to Redgrave, Suffolk St Mary and over centuries was a chapelry. The mother church of St Mary at Redgrave was declared redundant in 2003, and so today this little chapel is the principal place of worship in the parish.

St Botolph arrived from Germany, and established a monastery at Icanho, in the Alde marshes at Iken. Botolph set out across the Kingdom establishing minsters where the sacraments of Holy Mother Church could be administered. Botolph's triumph was to bolster the formation of a settled clergy, and thus the formal structure of the Catholic Church. Even after the formation of a united England, East Anglia would continue to be known across Europe as Our Lady's Dowry.

The land locally was owned by the monastery at Bury and the monastery decided to establish a fair in the 13th century. A new settlement grew up, a mile or so away from the village called Redgrave, but still in the Redgrave parish. Bury Abbey founded the fair to be held in the week of St Botolph's Day. The inhabitants of this new village applied for, and received, permission to build a chapel of ease to the parish church of St Mary, which was way across the fields beyond Redgrave village. Inevitably, the chapel was dedicated to St Botolph, and the new settlement became known as Botesdale - literally, St Botolph's Dale. It grew, and joined onto the the neighbouring village of Rickinghall, in a neighbouring parish, to form a larger settlement. Today, Botesdale forms its own civil parish; but even now, a thousand years on, it remains in the Saxon-founded ecclesiastical parish of St Mary, Redgrave.

Church Records
See Redgrave