South Suffolk (UK Parliament constituency)

The Gospel Oak was a veteran tree in Polstead, Suffolk. The tree is associated with Saint Cedd, who reputedly planted it or preached beneath it. The oak tree is thought to have been named for its association with an annual church service, reputedly held beneath it for more than a millennium, and the tree is said to have been the oldest in the county when it collapsed in November 1953. A descendant grows nearby and has since been used as the site for the annual service.

Polstead is a village and civil parish in the Babergh district of Suffolk, England. The village lies 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast of Nayland, 5 miles (8 km) southwest of Hadleigh and 9 miles (14 km) north of Colchester. It is situated on a small tributary stream of the River Stour. In 2011 the parish had a population of 851.

St Mary's Church is a Grade I listed parish church in the Church of England in Stoke-by-Nayland.

Stoke-by-Nayland is a village and civil parish in the Babergh district, in the county of Suffolk, England, close to the border with Essex. The parish includes the village of Withermarsh Green and the hamlets of Thorington Street and Scotland Street. The village has many cottages and timber-framed houses and all surround a recreation field. Possibly once the site of a monastery, the population of the civil parish at the 2001 census was 703, falling to 682 at the Census 2011.

Withermarsh Green is a village in the civil parish of Stoke-by-Nayland, in the Babergh district, in the county of Suffolk, England. It is located near the villages of Stoke-by-Nayland and Shelley. Withermarsh Green has a church called St Edmund's RC Church.

Thorington Street is a large hamlet on the B1068 road, in the Babergh district, in the English county of Suffolk. The hamlet is part of the civil parish of Stoke-by-Nayland, and is located in between the villages of Stoke-by-Nayland and Higham.The hamlet has approximately 35 houses.

Boxted is a village and civil parish in the City of Colchester district of Essex, England. It is located approximately 5 miles (8 km) north of Colchester and 24 miles (39 km) northeast of the county city of Chelmsford. The village is in the parliamentary constituency of North Essex. There is a Parish council. The village was the site of a series of skirmishes between Parliamentary and Royalist troops in July 1648, known as the Battle of Boxted Heath. Two historic manors are located in the parish: Boxted Hall and Rivers Hall, which are both mentioned in the Domesday records. Boxted was split into two settlements, "Boxted" and "Boxted Cross", during the plague when non-infected villagers moved across the valley from 'Old Boxted' to escape infection. A timber-framed cottage called Songers is reputedly the oldest private dwelling in Essex dating back to 1280. In 1630 the village vicar, George Phillips, and many other Boxted residents emigrated to America as part of the Great Migration. Phillips subsequently founded a church at Watertown on the Charles River in Massachusetts. Other Boxted residents went to Ipswich, Massachusetts. Today Boxted can be easily reached from Colchester along Boxted Straight Road, which is often mistaken for a Roman road, but is in fact a relatively modern road based upon an old heathland track; many other local roads are much older. Parts of the Boxted parish - such as Old Boxted - are within the Dedham Vale conservation area where development of buildings etc. is tightly controlled. Old Boxted is not developing as fast as Boxted Cross, which contains a broad mix of modern housing developments and has now extended considerably along Straight Road. Recently the school has moved from Old Boxted to Boxted Cross. At Boxted Cross is a village hall overlooking the George V playing fields where Boxted Lodgers football team and Boxted Cricket club play. In 2017 the Boxted Runners was founded by Vanessa Dolling, a local running group catering for all abilities. By 2018 they had grown to a membership of over 100. They held the first Boxted 10k event in 2018 raising over £6,000 for the local Primary School. Boxted Heath to the southern end of the parish is mostly divided into nearly 70 small holdings which were originally built by the Salvation Army in the early 20th century under an initiative to create a land settlement or colony. These small holdings replaced the Priory farm that was here in the 19th century, although the old farm house and some outbuildings still remain. No public houses are trading in the village since the Wig & Fidget closed in about 2005. The Cross Inn ceased trading in the mid-1980s and was converted into residential usage. The Queen's Head (Queen's Hd Rd/Ellis Rd corner) closed in 1972 and was demolished after several years as a retirement home. Most of the other pubs - such as the Fox (near the church) and Thatchers (Mill Rd) - closed much earlier.

Giffords Hall (also called Gifford's Hall) is a Tudor manor house near Stoke-by-Nayland in Suffolk, England. It was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as “one of the loveliest houses of its date in England”. It is one of two houses in Suffolk formerly owned by the Gifford family in the 13th century, the other being Gifford's Hall, Wickhambrook.

Boxted House is a Grade II listed house in Boxted, Essex. It was built in about 1830.It was home to the advertising executive Bobby Bevan (1901-1974), the son of the painters Robert Polhill Bevan and Stanislawa de Karlowska, and his wife, Natalie Bevan (née Ackenhausen, 1909–2007), the artist and collector.

Nayland is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Nayland-with-Wissington, in the Babergh district, in the county of Suffolk, England. It is in the Stour Valley on the Suffolk side of the border between Suffolk and Essex. In 2011 the built-up area had a population of 938.

Boxford is a village and civil parish in the Babergh district of Suffolk, England. Located around six miles east of Sudbury straddling the River Box and skirted by the Holbrook. The parish includes the hamlets of Calais Street, Hagmore Green and Stone Street. In 2021 the built-up area had a population of 833. In 2021 the parish had a population of 1403. The parish borders Assington, Edwardstone, Groton, Kersey, Newton and Polstead. There are 87 listed buildings in Boxford. Boxford became a conservation area in 1973.

Shelley is a small village and civil parish in Suffolk, England. Located on the west bank of the River Brett around three miles south of Hadleigh, it is part of Babergh district. The population of the village was only minimal at the 2011 Census and is included in the civil parish of Higham. Most of the parish is within the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Other points of interest are Shelley Hall, a listed building with a protected moat, once owned by the Partridge family, and Snakes Wood, which is classified as Ancient Woodland and serves as a nature reserve. The village is first recorded before the Norman conquest in the S1051 charter of 1000AD in the will of Ælfflæd. The Domesday Book of 1086 records the population of Shelley in 1086 to be 42 households along with 8 cattle, 32 pigs, 200 sheep, 3 other animals, 28 acres of meadow, 1,000 woodland pigs, two mills.Barker writes that there is an unusually long hedge in Shelley made up of coppiced lime trees. He writes that this follows the boundaries of remnants of nineteenth-century clearances of some of the ancient forest. Hedges of this sort are known as assart hedges.Elizabeth Gosnold Tilney, sister of Jamestown colonist and explorer Bartholomew Gosnold, is buried at All Saints' Church, Shelley. An attempt was made to use DNA from her supposed remains to confirm the identity of the body of her brother in Jamestown, but it was inconclusive as it could not be confirmed which body was hers.