Hargrave, Suffolk

Hargrave is a village in the St Edmundsbury district of Suffolk, England, about 7 miles (10 km) south west of Bury St Edmunds. It is the home of Emma Chapman, ALT in Aizubange%2C_Fukushima, Japan.

Around the turn of the first millennium, East Anglia was continuingly being ravaged by the invading Danes, and we may wonder whether the nineteen local residents recorded in the Domesday Survey (1086) were surviving East Angles or were of Scandinavian origin. Prior to the Norman Conquest, the manor lands of Haragraua (Hares Grove*) had been held by Aluiet, one of four Freewomen of West Suffolk, and it is recorded that she held 480 acres of land and the church. Some four fifths of the medieval churches of Suffolk were already in existence at the time of the Conquest and it is probable that Hargrave was one of them, although the oldest surviving fabric of the building dates from the Norman period of architecture. It is also probable that a medieval Hall existed in the vicinity of the present church and hall (although the existing Hargrave Hall dates from mid- sixteenth century), and that our nineteen early residents also lived in that area, undertaking their predominantly sheep and pig farming.

Following the Conquest the Manor became one of more than three hundred holdings of the Abbey, held at the time of Domesday by William De Waterville and subsequently, by the Monks; by Ralph the Falconer of Barrow; and by Robert Payne. At the time of the dissolution of the monasteries it passed to Sir Thomas Kitson, and in 1717 was sold to the Earl of Bristol to become part of the Ickworth Estate.

In 1912, the area of land under cultivation in Hargrave was 1,781 acres, a mere twenty percent increase in the eight hundred years that had elapsed since Domesday. The population of the village developed equally slowly, and for the first five hundred years following the Domesday record it was virtually static. It then grew to 324 during the next three hundred years, probably due to the change in agriculture towards corn farming, and reached its peak of 520 in 1861. From then, the great depression in agriculture caused an exodus from the villages to the towns and Hargrave was no exception. Its population decreased to 264 by 1931 and has remained at approximately that level to the present day.

There has been a marked change in the occupations of the residents of the village. Two hundred years ago, 86 people from 64 families were engaged in agriculture, and in 1931, 77% of the families were similarly employed. Today, less than one tenth of our residents are employed on the farms in the village, and more than double their number are employed outside the village in retail and services industries, and in public sector and local government occupations. Almost three-quarters of our working residents commute to their place of work