Sudbourne

The Coralline Crag Formation is a geological formation in England. It is a series of marine deposits found near the North Sea coast of Suffolk and characterised by bryozoan and mollusc debris. The deposit, whose onshore occurrence is mainly restricted to the area around Aldeburgh and Orford, is a series of bioclastic calcarenites and silty sands with shell debris, deposited during a short-lived warm period at the start of the Pliocene Epoch of the Neogene Period. Small areas of the rock formation are found in locations such as Boyton and Tattingstone to the south of Orford as well as offshore at Sizewell.Crag is a local word for a shelly sand. Coralline Crag has sometimes been used historically in the Suffolk coast area for building and a number of quarries exist. The tower of St Peter's Church in Chillesford is one of only two built using the rock.

Captain's Wood is a 62 hectare nature reserve in Sudbourne in Suffolk. It is owned and managed by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust.This site has woodland, rough grassland and scrub. A herd of fallow deer helps to keep the land open, and there are also barn owls, buzzards, mature oak trees and many bluebells.There is access from School Road.

Sudbourne Park Pit is a 1.1-hectare (2.7-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest between Orford and Chillesford in Suffolk. It is a Geological Conservation Review site, and it is in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.This is described by Natural England as an important site for the study of the fauna of the Coralline Crag Formation, dating to the early Pliocene, around five million years ago. The fossils are plentiful and diverse, especially bivalves and molluscs.There is access from a footpath between Chillesford and Orford.

Iken is a small village and civil parish in the sandlands of the English county of Suffolk, an area formerly of heathland and sheep pasture. It is near the estuary of the River Alde on the North Sea coast and is located south east of Snape and due north of Orford. To its west is Tunstall Forest, created since the 1920s by the Forestry Commission and now part of the Sandlings Forest. Iken was part of Sudbourne Hall Estate. It was composed largely of tenant farms and cottages for farm workers. The owners of the estate valued the area more for shooting than farming, and a decoy pond was built at Iken in the eighteenth century. Since the break up of the Estate Iken has remained a "close" village: only a handful of new houses have been built and no council houses have ever been built. In the pre-railway era Iken Cliff was a commercial area used for transporting coal and wheat, and there was a public house near the shore. Flat barges used to sit on the mud at low tide and goods were moved in wheelbarrows. The last heathland around Iken Cliff was ploughed up after the second world war. The population reached a peak of 380 in 1840, steadily declining to around 100. During World War II most of Iken and the neighbouring village of Sudbourne were used as a battle training area in advance of the D-Day landings in June 1944. The inhabitants were relocated returning sometime after the war finished.Benjamin Britten set his opera The Little Sweep in Iken Hall, then the home of Margery Spring Rice, who was one of the founders of the Aldeburgh Festival. Britten, who then lived at Snape, was involved in an unsuccessful campaign to keep open a footpath along the Alde to Iken Church.

Crag Farm Pit, Sudbourne is a 4.8-hectare (12-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Sudbourne in Suffolk. It is a Geological Conservation Review site, and within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.This site dates to the early Pliocene, around four million years ago. It is described by Natural England as an important geological site, which has the best exposure of sandwave facies of the Coralline Crag Formation. Fossils of many bryozoan species are present.The site has been filled in and is now a field. It is on private land with no public access.

Orford is a village in Suffolk, England, within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is 9 miles (14 km) east of Woodbridge.

Orford Castle is a castle in Orford in the English county of Suffolk, 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Ipswich, with views over Orford Ness. It was built between 1165 and 1173 by Henry II of England to consolidate royal power in the region. The well-preserved keep, described by historian R. Allen Brown as "one of the most remarkable keeps in England", is of a unique design and probably based on Byzantine architecture. The keep stands within the earth-bank remains of the castle's outer fortifications.

The Church of St Bartholomew is the parish church of the town of Orford, England. A medieval church, dating from the fourteenth century, with reconstructions in the nineteenth and twentieth century, it is a Grade I listed building. In addition to its listing, the church is notable as the location for the first performances of four of the works of the composer Benjamin Britten: Noye's Fludde, Curlew River, The Burning Fiery Furnace and The Prodigal Son.

Valley Farm Pit, Sudbourne is a 0.5-hectare (1.2-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of Orford in Suffolk. It is a Geological Conservation Review site, and in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.A shelly, fossilerous Pleistocene layer lies unconformably above a Pliocene Coralline Crag Formation layer. It is described by Natural England as important both for sedimentological studies and for understanding the local relationship between the Pliocene and the Pleistocene.The site is private land with no public access.

Alde–Ore Estuary is a 2,534 hectare biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest which stretches along the Suffolk coast between Aldeburgh and Bawdsey, and also includes parts of the Alde, Ore and Butley Rivers. It is in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and is a Grade I Nature Conservation Review site, a Special Area of Conservation, a Ramsar internationally important wetland site, and a Special Protection Area under the European Union Directive on the Conservation of Wild Birds. It includes two Geological Conservation Review sites, "Orfordness and Shingle Street" and "The Cliff, Gedgrave", and two nature reserves managed by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, Alde Mudflats and Simpson's Saltings. The coastal part of the site is Orfordness-Havergate, a National Nature Reserve, and Orford Ness is managed by the National Trust, while Havergate Island is managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.Natural England describes the scientific interests of the site as "outstanding and diverse". Habitats include grassland, fresh water, ditches, reedbeds, saltmarsh, mudflats, brackish lagoons, and the second largest and best preserved area of vegetated shingle in Britain. The birdlife is nationally important, and there are several rare spiders. Gedgrave Cliff has fossiliferous strata dating to the early Pliocene Coralline Crag Formation.

Richmond Farm Pit, Gedgrave is a 0.57-hectare (1.4-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest south-west of Orford in Suffolk. It is a Geological Conservation Review site, and is in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.This pit shows the Coralline Crag Formation of the Pliocene. It is described by Natural England as especially notable for its excellent exposure of the sandwave facies of the Coralline Crag, but it has very few fossils, which have been transported elsewhere.It is situated some 500 metres from the similar site Gedgrave Hall Pit. The site is on private land with no public access.

Alde Mudflats is a 22 hectare nature reserve west of Iken in Suffolk. It is owned by the Crown Estate and managed by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. It is in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and part of the Alde-Ore Estuary Site of Special Scientific Interest, Ramsar internationally important wetland site, Special Area of Conservation, Special Protection Area under the European Union Directive on the Conservation of Wild Birds, and Grade I Nature Conservation Review site,This three mile long stretch of inter-tidal mud and saltmarsh supports internationally important numbers of avocets, and other birds include black-tailed godwits, oystercatchers, marsh harriers, pintails, wigeons and grey plovers.There is no public access to the site.