Leiston, Suffolk

Description
Leiston, a small town and a parish in Suffolk. The town stands on a branch of the G.E.R. from Saxmundham to Aid- ( borough, on which it has a station, 2 miles from the coast, 4 ESE from Saxmundham, 4 NNW from Aldborough, and 93 from London. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office (R.S.O.) Acreage of parish, 4987; population, 2616. There are extensive agricultural implement and steam boiler-works, founded in 1788, and employing a large number of hands. Leiston Old Abbey, the seat of the Rose family, is a mansion surrounded by a well-timbered park 1600 acres. The Cupola and Sizewell Houses are also chief residences. Sizewell is a hamlet of the parish, close to the sea-shore. Sizewell Gap has a few marine villa residences, and coastguard and lifeboat stations. A Premonstratensian canonry was founded on the coast section in 1182 by Ralph de Glan-ville; was rebuilt on a site about a mile farther from the sea, and about half a mile from the town, in 1363, by Robert de Ufford, Earl of Suffolk; was destroyed by fire before 1389, and rebuilt in that year; had a church 168 feet long; was given at the dissolution to the Duke of Suffolk; and is now represented by massive ivy-clad walls, two lofty Pointed windows, and half-enclosed underground cells. A modern farmhouse stands among the ruins, and a flower garden occupies the inner area. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Norwich; gross yearly value, £335. Patrons, Christ's Hospital and the Haberdashers' Company alternately. The church, which stands about a quarter of a mile W of the town, was originally an ancient building in the Early English style. The present church, which stands on the old site, is a building of flint in the Gothic style, consisting of chancel, nave, transepts, north and south porches, and an embattled western tower. There is a mission chapel, with a schoolroom at Cold Fair Green, and there are in the town Congregational, Free Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels, and a Friends' meetinghouse. There is a charity worth about £37 a year, derived from a farm left in 1721 for the use of poor widows and children belonging to this parish