Wattisham is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

near to the town of

Stowmarket Stowmarket ( ) is a market town and civil parish in the Mid Suffolk district of Suffolk, England,OS Explorer map 211: Bury St.Edmunds and Stowmarket Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton A2 edition. Publishing Date:2008. o ...

Suffolk Suffolk ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East of England and East Anglia. It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county ...

, England. From the 2011 Census the population of the parish was 110, according to the

Office for National Statistics The Office for National Statistics (ONS; ) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, UK Parliament. Overview The ONS is responsible fo ...

, included in the civil parish of Hitcham.

Wattisham Airfield

The village houses an airfield. Formerly known as RAF Wattisham, it was one of the front-line airfields in the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

. The RAF moved out in March 1993 and it is now the largest Army Air Corps airfield in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. The airbase is now named Wattisham Airfield.

Landmarks

The

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the Church (building), church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in com ...

of St Nicholas was declared redundant by the Diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich in the 1970s but was taken over by a charitable trust, who use it for concerts and exhibitions, with profits reinvested into caring for the building. Diocesan architect Henry Munro Cautley (1875-1959), in his 1937 ''Suffolk Churches and their Treasures'', found little to interest him except an armorial shield. North of the village is Wattisham Castle, dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Wattisham Strict Baptist Chapel is located in the village.

References

External links

Villages in Suffolk Babergh District Civil parishes in Suffolk Cosford Hundred {{Suffolk-geo-stub