Wetheringsett cum Brockford is a civil parish in Hartismere Hundred within the Mid-Suffolk District of Eastern England. It is located 16 miles from Ipswich to the south, 9 miles from Stowmarket to the southwest and 10 miles from Diss to the north.
Close by are local services at Debenham, Mendlesham and Eye. Perhaps the most familiar landmark locator for travellers on the A140 is the communications mast, which rises approximately 305 metres above the Mendlesham Industrial Estate and whose red lights punctuate the dark skies for miles around.
The parish consists of a central village, Wetheringsett, and several outlying hamlets spread over a large area. To the East are Pitman’s Corner, Blacksmith’s Corner, Pages Green, White Horse Corner and Broad Green; to the South-East, Wetherup Street; due South, Park Green; to the West, Knaves Green, Brockford Green and further to the West, Brockford Street.
The population, according to the 2021 census was 692 in 277 households. There are 53 listed buildings in the parish, most of them converted farmhouses and agricultural buildings, with the largest concentration of post-war and modern developments in the main part of Wetheringsett itself.
The parish’s most famous resident was Richard Hakluyt, Rector of Wetheringsett from 1590 until his death in 1616. Buried in Westminster Abbey, he is described by the Victoria History as “one of the greatest men of that age of great men”.
He is remembered to this day on the village sign, in the stained-glass panel on the telephone box, as a cycle route round the parish and in Hakluyt Close, a small modern development on Hockey Hill whose choice of name the local authority originally opposed on the grounds it was too difficult to pronounce but gave in to parish pressure.
Also commemorated on the village sign is its more infamous cleric, George Ellis, who falsified documents to become rector of Wetheringsett from 1883 – 1888. Despite not being ordained, he baptised, buried, and married villagers. Subsequently these marriages had to be legitimised under The Marriages Validation Act 1888 by an order of the Queen. Ellis was imprisoned for his crime!
