Southwold

Southwold Primary School, adjacent to St. Edmund's Church, currently caters for children aged 2 to 11 years. As a member of the Yoxford Valley Partnership of Schools, it works in partnership with Yoxford and Peasenhall Primary School in Yoxford and Middleton Primary School, near Dunwich.[15]

The nearest secondary school for Southwold children was Reydon High School until it closed in 1990. Thereafter, most pupils were bussed to the Sir John Leman High School in Beccles or to Bungay High School. These schools have been joined by SET Beccles School, opened in 2012 and catering for pupils aged 11–16.

In line with a 2019 decision by Suffolk County Council on changes to free school transport, the default 11–16 secondary school for Southwold and Reydon students is Pakefield High School at Lowestoft.

Private education for pupils aged 2–18 is offered at Saint Felix School, a private school in nearby Reydon.

The lighthouse

The narrow-gauge Southwold Railway connecting the town to Halesworth ran from 24 September 1879 to 11 April 1929.[16]

In 2007 the Southwold Railway Society submitted plans to build a new line between the parish of Easton Bavents and Henham Park, to link the town to the nearest mainline service at Halesworth.[17] However, these plans were criticised for having no relation to the original route of the railway and for environmental and other reasons. In July 2007 the plans were rejected by Waveney and by Suffolk Coastal District Councils.[18] In December 2008 the Society introduced a new proposal for a Railway Park, including railway track and a museum, on a site at present occupied by a car-breaker's yard, next to the local sewage works.[19] That proposal was superseded by another, in which a short section of railway, together with other attractions and facilities, would be constructed in the village of Wenhaston, a few miles inland from Southwold and once a stop on the Southwold Railway. The plan did not meet with universal approval.[20] In February 2016, the original Railway Park proposal for Blyth Road, Southwold, on the site of the town's former gasholders, was revived, and a new planning application was submitted and approved. Construction of the Railway Park began in 2017.

Southwold lighthouse was commissioned in 1890 and automated and electrified in 1938.[21] It stands as a prominent landmark in the centre of the town and is a Grade II listed building.[22] It is 31 metres (102 ft) metres tall, standing 37 metres (121 ft) metres above sea level. It is built of brick and painted white and has 113 steps around a spiral staircase.[23]

The lighthouse replaced three local lighthouses that were under serious threat from coastal erosion. It suffered a fire in its original oil fired lamp just six days after commissioning but survived and today operates a rotating 150-watt lamp with a range of 24 nautical miles (44 km; 28 mi).[21][24][25][26] From 2023, Trinity House has arranged that tours of the lighthouse are offered by the Adnams brewery, which stands close by, and may be booked with that company.[27]

Adnams brewery was established in the town by George and Ernest Adnams in 1872 with the purchase of the Sole Bay Brewery, which had been founded in 1818.[28][29][30] In 1890 the brewery was re-built on its current site in the centre of the town. The brewery is the town's largest employer[29] and has been modernised and expanded in recent years, with development of an energy efficient brewery, a distribution centre in the nearby village of Reydon, and a distillery.[28][29][30] In 2011 it received the Good Pub Guide Brewery of the Year Award.[31]

Southwold Pier in the summer sunshine

Southwold Pier was built in 1900. At 247 metres (810 ft) it was long enough to accommodate the Belle steamers that carried trippers along the coast at that time. In World War II, it was weakened by two breaches, and in 1955 a large section was destroyed by a gale. The pier was entirely rebuilt and restored in 2001 and is now about 190 metres (620 ft) long. While many English seaside piers are in decline, Southwold Pier is enjoying renewed popularity, helped by a collection of modern coin-operated novelty machines made by Tim Hunkin and the occasional berth of paddle steamers such as PS Waverley and the MV Balmoral.

A model boat pond adjacent to the pier is used for the Southwold Model Yacht regattas that have been held since the late Victorian period.[32] Some of the boats entered are up to 80 years old and include replicas of beach yawls. Regattas are usually held in the spring and summer with the largest, the annual regatta, held at the end of the summer season.[33]

The Old Water Tower, in the middle of Southwold Common, was built in 1890. The tank held 40,000 gallons of water and was powered by huge sails. On St Valentine's Day 1899, George Neller, a respected local man, died when his coat got caught in its machinery. In 1937 a new 150,000 gallon capacity Art Deco water tower was built next door. The then Southwold Borough Council bought the Old Water Tower before it came into the hands of successive water companies. It was returned to the Town Council for a nominal fee of £100 in 1987. The Old Water Tower has since been used as the Lifeboat Museum and was later used by Adnams for a number of years.[34]

The Electric Picture Palace cinema was opened in 2002, as a pastiche of the original 1912 cinema that stood nearby in York Road.[35]

Southwold Museum holds a number of exhibits focused on the local and natural history of the town. The museum is owned and managed by the Southwold Museum & Historical Society. It is part of the Maritime Heritage East programme which unites more than 30 maritime museums on the East Coast.[36]

Southwold Sailors' Reading Room Interior

The Southwold Sailors' Reading Room is a Grade II listed building on the seafront at Southwold. It was built in 1864 as a place for fishermen and mariners to read, as an alternative to drinking in pubs, and also to encourage the pursuit of Christian ideals. The room has a number of historic displays of model boats and other maritime objects in glass cabinets.[37]

Southwold Golf Club was founded on 4 January 1884 as a Golf and Quoit Club. At the time there were only three other golf clubs in East Anglia – Cambridge University, Yarmouth and Felixstowe. The first game on the nine-hole course was played on 28 August 1884. Originally membership was not accepted from shopkeepers or manual workers, but in 1925 Mr J. B. Denny successfully persuaded the committee to form an Artisans' Section, which was originally restricted to 30 members.

The fictional Southwold Estate, seat of the equally fictional Earls of Southwold, is the country estate of the family of Lady Marjorie Bellamy in the ITV British drama Upstairs, Downstairs.

The town and its vicinity has been used as the setting for numerous films and television programmes, including Iris about the life of Iris Murdoch starring Judi Dench, Drowning by Numbers by Peter Greenaway, Kavanagh QC starring John Thaw, East of Ipswich by Michael Palin, Little Britain with Matt Lucas and David Walliams, and a 1969 version of David Copperfield.[41]

The BBC children's series Grandpa in My Pocket was filmed in Southwold, Walberswick and Aldeburgh.[42] Only exteriors of buildings were filmed, e.g. the Lighthouse – no acting was done there. An ITV1 drama, A Mother's Son, first broadcast in September 2012, was filmed on location in Southwold.

Julie Myerson set her 2003 murder novel Something Might Happen in an unnamed Southwold – "a sleepy, slightly self-satisfied seaside town". She said that setting a murder in the car park made her feel as if she were "soiling something really good". She holidayed in the town as a child and remarked in an interview that everything else in her life had changed, but her mother and Southwold had stayed the same. She still owns a second home there.[43]

Other books set in Southwold include Esther Freud's novel Sea House (2004), with Southwold as Steerborough.[44] Southwold native Neil Bell in Bredon and Sons (1933) about boat-building people). Forgive us our Trespasses (1947), based on a true story of twin boys lost at sea, renames the town Senwich. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald (1978) drew on her experiences working in a Southwold bookshop in the 1950s.[45]

An earlier book thought to be set in Southwold is Beside the Guns (1902) by the Christian author Mary Elizabeth Shipley. The German writer W. G. Sebald describes Southwold in The Rings of Saturn, an account of a walk through East Anglia. Two recent additions are A Southwold Mystery (2015) and Shot in Southwold (2017) by the Herefordshire author Suzette A. Hill, both murder mysteries set in the 1950s.

Orwell's home in Southwold

Southwold from the end of the pier

The writer George Orwell (real name Eric Blair) spent periods as a teenager and in his thirties in Southwold, living at his parents' home. A plaque can be seen next door to what is now a fish and chip shop at the far end of the High Street.

After his departure from Eton College in December 1921, Orwell travelled to join his retired father, mother and younger sister Avril, who that month had moved to 40 Stradbroke Road, Southwold, the first of four homes in the town.[46] In January–June 1922 he attended an educational crammer in Southwold to prepare for Indian Police Service exams and his career in Burma. In 1929, after 18 months in Paris, he returned to the family in Southwold and was based there for most of the next five years. He tutored a disabled child and a family of three boys and wrote reviews and developed Burmese Days. He also spent nearly 18 months teaching in West London, until struck by a bout of pneumonia. His mother then insisted he stay at home instead of teaching. He spent the time writing A Clergyman's Daughter, which is partly set in a fictionalised East Anglian town called "Knype Hill". His final visit to Southwold was in 1939.[46]

The town has long hosted summer repertory theatre by various companies. For several years, Suffolk Summer Theatres have offered a varied programme of plays from July to September, staged in Southwold Arts Centre (formerly St Edmund's Hall). Every November the "Ways with Words" literature festival is held, with notable speakers appearing at various venues.

In 2014 came the inaugural Southwold Arts Festival, which was repeated in future years. It offers a mix of literature, music, film and art exhibitions, with the main events over an eight-day period in the summer, bringing entertainers of diverse backgrounds together.[47]

In 2005, Southwold launched Suffolk's "answer to the Turner prize", the "Flying Egg" competition. This event also ran in 2006 and 2007, but not repeated in 2008.[48]