Woodbridge, United Kingdom

The earliest record of Woodbridge as such dates from the mid-10th century, when it was acquired by St Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, as part of the endowment of a monastery he helped to refound at Ely, Cambridgeshire in 970. The Domesday Book of 1086 describes Woodbridge as part of Loes Hundred with 35 households, i.e. one of the largest 20 per cent of settlements recorded. Much of Woodbridge was granted to the powerful Bigod family, who built the castle at Framlingham.

The town has been a centre for boatbuilding, rope-making and sail-making since the Middle Ages. Edward III and Sir Francis Drake had fighting ships built in Woodbridge. The town suffered in the plague of 1349, but recovered enough, with encouragement from the Canons and growing general prosperity, to have a new church (St Mary's, behind the buildings on the south side of Market Hill) built of limestone from the Wash and decorated with Thetford flint. By the mid-15th century the Brews family had added a tower and porch.

On 12 October 1534, Prior Henry Bassingbourne confirmed Henry VIII's supremacy over the Church and rejected the incumbent "Roman Bishop". Nonetheless, Woodbridge Priory was dissolved three years later.

As religious unrest continued under the Roman Catholic Queen Mary, Alexander Gooch, a weaver of Woodbridge, and Alice Driver of Grundisburgh were burnt for heresy on Rushmere Heath. Alice had previously had her ears cut off for likening Queen Mary to Jezebel. Subsequent religious settlement under Elizabeth I helped Woodbridge industries such as weaving, sail-cloth manufacture, rope-making and salt making to prosper, along with the wool trade. The port was enlarged, and shipbuilding and the timber trade became lucrative, so that a customs house was established in 1589.

The town has various buildings of the Tudor, Georgian, Regency and Victorian periods, and a tide mill in working order, one of only two in the UK and among the earliest. The mill first recorded on the site in 1170 was run by Augustinian canons. In 1536 it passed to King Henry VIII. In 1564, Queen Elizabeth I granted the mill and the priory to Thomas Seckford, who in 1577 founded Woodbridge School and the Seckford Almshouses for the poor of Woodbridge. Two windmills survive, Buttrum's Mill, and Tricker's Mill, of which Buttrum's is open to the public.

In 1943, the Royal Air Force (RAF) built a military airfield east of Woodbridge. RAF Woodbridge was used during the Cold War by the United States Air Force as the base for two Tactical Fighter Squadrons until 1993.