Sources

There is a wide range of information available on-line that can be used to gain information about Brandon and the surrounding area. The following list, in no particular order, will give you a starting point.

St Edmundsbury Chronicle

A wonderful site with a great deal of information about Suffolk and beyond, the St Edmundsbury Chronicle home page

Suffolk Heritage Explorer

The online Historic Environment Record for Suffolk. Discover more about Suffolk’s rich archaeological heritage, with over 40,000 sites recorded across the county, from palaeolithic flint tools to medieval manors to Cold War military and much more.

Parish histories:

https://heritage.suffolk.gov.uk/parish-histories

National Library Of Scotland

A wonderful source, with historic Ordnance Survey maps in every available scale.

The home page is at https://maps.nls.uk

Side by side map which should take you to Brandon

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=15.2&lat=52.45143&lon=0.62518&layers=6&right=ESRIWorld

similar with LiDAR imagery (there are many more combinations)

https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/side-by-side/#zoom=15.2&lat=52.45143&lon=0.62518&layers=6&right=LIDAR_DTM_1m

There are may historic OS maps and sheets available eg. this 6” 1844 includes Brandon.

More maps

Aerial Archaeology Mapping Explorer

https://historicengland.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=d45dabecef5541f18255e12e5cd5f85a&mobileBreakPoint=300&_gl=1*1t8f9bw*_ga*MTY3MTg0NjUwMi4xNjc1NzYwMDY1*_ga_023M0W1F6Y*MTY3NTc2MDEzMS4xLjAuMTY3NTc2MDEzNi41NS4wLjA.&_ga=2.109820166.2099365583.1675760074-1671846502.1675760065

Aerial Photo Explorer

https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/aerial-photos

Building Stones Database for England map explorer

https://historicengland.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=3cfbcf7a243044868db25dad9555a50c

Magic Maps

https://magic.defra.gov.uk/MagicMap.html

West Suffolk Planning – Map Search

https://planning.westsuffolk.gov.uk/online-applications/spatialDisplay.do?action=display&searchType=Application

Vision of Britain maps

https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/maps

Old Maps Online

https://www.oldmapsonline.org/en/England#position=12.3641/52.4395/0.6019&year=1900

Britain from Above

https://britainfromabove.org.uk

Brandon Flint Buildings – Walls

https://www.westsuffolk.gov.uk/planning/Conservation/upload/BrandonFlintBuildingsWalls.pdf

Brandon conservation area boundary listed buildings

https://www.westsuffolk.gov.uk/planning/Conservation/upload/Brandonconservationareaboundarylistedbuildings.pdf

Turnpikes

http://www.turnpikes.org.uk/

https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Turnpikes_by_County

Suffolk Turnpikes

https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Suffolk_Turnpikes

Norfolk Turnpikes

https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Norfolk_Turnpikes

Foxearth – Miscellaneous old maps

http://www.foxearth.org.uk/Maps/


Other stuff

Gazetteer of British Place Names ~ The Association of British Counties

http://www.gazetteer.org.uk/

GaugeMap, Abbey Heath

https://www.gaugemap.co.uk/#!Detail/1674/1815

Monitoring Station Information for Abbey Heath | Flood Assist Insurance

https://floodassist.co.uk/river-data/gauges/norfolk/e23730-level-stage-i-15_min-m/abbey-heath

Suffolk Record office

https://www.suffolkarchives.co.uk

GeoSuffolk

https://geosuffolk.co.uk

Lakenheath Heritage Group

https://lakenheathparishcouncil.gov.uk/lakenheath-heritage

Definitive maps of public rights of way

Suffolk County Council

https://www.suffolk.gov.uk/roads-and-transport/public-rights-of-way-in-suffolk/view-definitive-maps-of-public-rights-of-way

also

https://osm.mathmos.net/prow/suffolk

Spanton Jarman Project

Spanton Jarman Project – Background to the Collection

This unique collection of over 4000 glass negatives is the work of four generations of commercial photographers working in Bury St Edmunds from the 1860s to the 1930s.

Staunch Meadow, Brandon, Suffolk: a high status Middle Saxon settlement on the fen edge

A Norse Camp at Brandon by Claude Morley

From Volume X (1928–29) The Saga-Book Archive

George West published a volume of poems about some local places:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.31175035220931;view=1up;seq=129

Suffolk and Brandon clockmakers

http://ipswichbhi.org.uk/album/demo/makers/makers.htm

see also

http://www.stedmundsburychronicle.co.uk/clocks/clocksc18.htm

An account of some skulls discovered at Brandon, Suffolk [Myers, Charles S]

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/u6yt9nrw

Bliss Mausoleum, Brandon Park

https://www.mmtrust.org.uk/view.php?name=151

Pubs and Inns in the UK

https://pubshistory.com

Here’s Brandon:

https://pubshistory.com/Suffolk/Brandon/brandon.shtml

Eagles trapped in ‘Brandon rabbit Warren’ in 1832

London Magazine of Natural History 6:448 (1833)

https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/19636#page/462/mode/1up

The Witch of Brandon – connection with Hereward

http://www.whrin.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Witches_and_Witchcraft_in_Ely.pdf

See also

https://occult-world.com/pickingill-old-george

Suffolk in the XVIIth century: the Breviary of Suffolk, by Robert Reyce, 1618

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnzqrn&view=1up&seq=20

The rising in East Anglia in 1381 : with an appendix containing the Suffolk poll tax lists for that year. by Powell, Edgar, 1853-Publication date 1896.

https://archive.org/details/risingineastangl00poweuoft

A GUIDE TO SECOND WORLD WAR ARCHAEOLOGY IN SUFFOLK

Guide 4: Stop Lines

https://heritage.suffolk.gov.uk/media/pdfs/ww2_guidebook4_stop_linesweb.pdf

The Churches of West Suffolk by T Hugh Bryant

https://archive.org/details/suffolkb01bryauoft

The manors of Suffolk; notes on their history and devolution, with some illustrations of the old manor housesby Copinger, Walter Arthur, 1847-1910

Seven volumes on this page somewhere

https://archive.org/search?query=creator%3A%22Copinger%2C+Walter+Arthur%2C+1847-1910%22

The history and antiquities of the county of Suffolk: with genealogical and architectural notices of its several towns and villages

Volume 1

https://archive.org/details/historyantiquiti01suckuoft

Volume 2

https://archive.org/details/historyantiquiti02suck

Pilgrimage in medieval East Anglia A regional survey of the shrines and pilgrimages of Norfolk and Suffolk

https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/63940/1/Pilgrimage_in_medieval_East_Anglia.pdf

National Archives Catalogue.

The online catalogue holds more than 37 million descriptions of records held by The National Archives and more than 3,500 archives across the country. Over 9 million records are available for download. Downloads are free if you register on the site.

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk

Genealogy

The major commercial genealogical sites are Ancestry and Find My Past. Full access subscriptions can be expensive, but both are available from the computers in the public library. If you’re super-organised you might be able to do your research during one of their “free access” periods or trials. Beware that you have to give payment details to use a free trial, and they will take money if you fail to cancel before the free period ends.

The indexes of Births and Deaths for England and Wales can be searched for free on the General Register Office website.

The largest free genealogical website is Family Search from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The site includes transcriptions and images of church registers, transcriptions of the decennial census returns, indexes to the GRO records of births marriages and deaths and much more. Beware that the family trees on the website are user contributed and can be changed by anyone, so should not be relied on.


Free UK Genealogy, a non-profit organisation founded in 1998, are the leading free genealogy website for UK family history. Their free websites are FreeBMD (covering civil birth, marriage and death records); FreeREG (parish registers) and FreeCEN (census records). Each site offers millions of searchable record transcriptions, indexed by volunteers and completely free.

English and Welsh wills can be searched for on the government Find a Will site. Searches are free, if you want to read the will copies can be bought for a small fee. NB older will can be found on the National Archives site for free.

GENUKI does not offer searchable records but it is still an invaluable free resource for anyone researching UK or Irish genealogy. Maintained by an army of volunteers, it is packed with information on what records are available and where to find them.