Alde Valley Academy

Leiston ( LAY-stən) is a town and civil parish in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England. It is close to Saxmundham and Aldeburgh, 21 miles (34 km) north-east of Ipswich and 90 miles (145 km) north-east of London. The town had a population of 5,508 at the 2011 Census.

Richard Garrett & Sons was a manufacturer of agricultural machinery, steam engines and trolleybuses. Their factory was Leiston Works, in Leiston, Suffolk, England. The company was founded by Richard Garrett in 1778. The company was active under its original ownership between 1778 and 1932. In the late 1840s, after cultivating a successful agricultural machine and implement business, the company began producing portable steam engines. The company grew to a major business employing about 2,500 people. Richard Garrett III, grandson of the company's founder, visited the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, where he saw some new American manufacturing ideas. Richard Garrett III introduced flow line production – a very early assembly line – and constructed a new workshop for the purpose in 1852, known as the "long shop" on account of its length. A machine would start at one end of the long shop and as it progressed through the building it would stop at various stages where new parts would be added. There was also an upper level where other parts were made; they would be lowered over a balcony and then fixed onto the machine on the ground level. When the machine reached the end of the shop, it would be complete. In 1914, following a major fire at the works, it was decided to build a new factory on land that had been owned as a demonstration farm next to the station. From then on the sites were always known as the "Old Works" and the "New Works". The company joined the Agricultural & General Engineers (AGE) combine in 1919, and the combine entered receivership in 1932. The company was purchased by Beyer, Peacock & Company in 1932 after the collapse of AGE. The business continued as Richard Garrett Engineering Works until the works finally closed in 1981. Today, part of the old works is preserved as the Long Shop Museum. Some of the offices are used as flats but the rest of that site has been demolished and the land used for housing. Some of the New Works is still used as industrial units while the offices have been converted to flats and more built on the site, known as Colonial House. About 120 of the company's steam engines survived into preservation.

The Long Shop Museum is an industrial heritage museum in the town of Leiston in the English county of Suffolk. The museum features the history of Richard Garrett & Sons who manufactured a wide range of industrial and agricultural machinery, steam engines, and electric vehicles. The museum also celebrates the social history of a rural community that grew to be central to the Industrial Revolution. The Museum is housed in some of the remaining buildings of Garrett's Leiston Town Works. The centre-piece "Long Shop" was constructed in 1852 as the first purpose-built flow-line assembly workshop for the manufacture of portable steam engines. It consists of an open central area, and fitters' galleries on the level of the first floor. The building is a Grade II* listed building.

Aldringham is a village in the Blything Hundred of Suffolk, England. The village is located 1 mile (1½ km) south of Leiston and 3 miles (4½ km) northwest of Aldeburgh close to the North Sea coast. The parish includes the coastal village of Thorpeness. The mid-2005 population estimate for Aldringham cum Thorpe parish was 730.

The Parrot and Punchbowl is a 16th-century English pub in the Suffolk village of Aldringham in the Aldringham-cum-thorpe parish. It is a Grade II listed building associated with a history of smuggling. Its current title is The Parrot.

Leiston railway station was a station in Leiston, Suffolk. It was opened in 1859 by the East Suffolk Railway and later became part of the Great Eastern Railway on its 8.5 miles (13.7 km) branch line from Saxmundham to Aldeburgh. It was closed in 1966 as part of the Beeching Axe as much of the British rural rail network was cut back. The station survives intact and the line is still used to service the nearby nuclear power station at Sizewell.

Leiston Football Club is a football club based in Leiston, Suffolk, England. They are currently members of the Southern League Premier Division Central and play at Victory Road.

Summerhill School is an independent (i.e. fee-charging) day and boarding school in Leiston, Suffolk, England. It was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around. It is run as a democratic community and is considered a Democratic School; the running of the school is conducted in the school meetings, which anyone, staff or pupil, may attend, and at which everyone has an equal vote. These meetings serve as both a legislative and judicial body. Members of the community are free to do as they please, so long as their actions do not cause any harm to others, according to Neill's principle "Freedom, not Licence." This extends to the freedom for pupils to choose which lessons, if any, they attend. It is an example of both democratic education and alternative education.

Leiston Abbey outside the town of Leiston, Suffolk, England, was a religious house of Canons Regular following the Premonstratensian rule (White canons), dedicated to St Mary. Founded in c. 1183 by Ranulf de Glanville (c. 1112-1190), Chief Justiciar to King Henry II (1180-1189), it was originally built on a marshland isle near the sea, and was called "St Mary de Insula". Around 1363 the abbey suffered so much from flooding that a new site was chosen and it was rebuilt further inland for its patron, Robert de Ufford, 1st Earl of Suffolk (1298-1369). However, there was a great fire in c. 1379 and further rebuilding was necessary. The house was suppressed in 1537. A Cartulary or monastic register survives. The Abbey's annual rolls of their court of wreck from 1378 to 1481 are a most important historical resource. A series of late visitations, and a list of abbots, are in Premonstratensian records. The impressive remains of the second abbey stand in the fields to the west of the road going north out of Leiston towards Theberton. After the Abbey was closed the estate was granted to Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk. The Abbey became a farm, the farmhouse being built into the abbey walls. A Georgian frontage was added to the house, which was extended in the 1920s. In 1928 the ruins and farm were bought by Ellen Wrightson for use as a religious retreat. At her death in 1946 she bequeathed the house, ruins, land and buildings to the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich. It was purchased in 1977 to become the home of the Pro Corda Trust, a centre for the specialized education and training of chamber musicians. The site is managed by them, and is in the guardianship of English Heritage.

Thorpeness railway station served the seaside resort of Thorpeness in Suffolk, England. It was opened in 1914 by the Great Eastern Railway on its 8.5-mile (13.7 km) branch line from Saxmundham. It was closed in 1966 as part of the Beeching Axe.As of 2023 the platform of the former station, now overgrown with vegetation, survives, just north of the B1353 road nearly a mile west of the coast. The trackbed is now a footpath.

Leiston - Aldeburgh is a 534.8-hectare (1,322-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest which stretches from Aldeburgh to Leiston in Suffolk. Part of it is The Haven, Aldeburgh Local Nature Reserve, and another area is the North Warren RSPB nature reserve. There is also a prehistoric bowl barrow on Aldringham Common, which is a Scheduled Monument. The site is in the Sandlings Special Protection Area under the European Union Directive on the Conservation of Wild Birds, and the Suffolk Coast and Heaths Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.This diverse site has open water, fen, acid grassland, scrub, woodland, heath and vegetated shingle. There are many breeding and overwintering birds, abundant dragonflies, and nationally scarce plants such as mossy stonecrop and clustered clover.

Hazlewood or Haslewood is a former civil parish now in the parishes of Aldeburgh and Friston, in the East Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England. In 1931 the parish had a population of 177. It once has a church called St Mary but it was in ruins by 1600. Aldeburgh Golf course was in the parish.