Visit Nayland Places

Welcome to Visit Nayland Places
The Walkfo guide to things to do & explore in Nayland

  

Nayland Places Overview: History, Culture & Facts about Nayland

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Nayland history

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From an article by Rosemary Knox, Wissington Nayland village and the adjoining rural hamlet of Wissington (these days usually called ‘Wiston’), were originally two separate parishes; in 1883 they were united into one civil parish, Nayland-with-Wissington, although the two ecclesiastical parishes remain separate. Nayland and Wiston lie on the northern bank of the River Stour, which divides Essex and Suffolk. Originally they were two different parishes with different histories. The name Nayland means an island, and the village developed on the higher ground amidst the lower river flood plain. It provided a good place for both a safe crossing of the river and an early manorial centre, probably a wooden castle. These advantages brought a market by 1227 and, by the late Middle Ages, it was a successful small town. The owners of the manor moved away and the little town was ruled by its cloth merchants, many of whom were very well off by the standards of the day. They were surpassed in wealth only by the merchants of Lavenham and Long Melford. They built fine Tudor houses and a fine church and the prosperity continued into the beginning of the seventeenth century. From then on the cloth trade began to move away, and although other trades like leather and soap manufacture developed, Nayland came to rely mainly on being a centre of commerce for the surrounding countryside. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the village drifted gently on, a relative backwater. The navigation on the river opened up but it did not bring a large increase in trade and the Navigation Company struggled to survive. The good result of this period of partial stagnation was that relative poverty prevented the beautiful old houses being knocked down to provide smart new homes and thus Nayland still possesses its Tudor and Stuart streets. Nayland did have a small agricultural area but most of it lay out in the middle of the parish of Wiston and is nowadays considered to be part of Wiston. Although the official name for Wiston is Wissington, early documents suggest that Wiston is the original name, and it is certainly the one the local people always use. It had been a part of the manor of Nayland in 1066 but by 1087 had been given to a separate Norman family who lived across the river in Essex at Little Horkesley. From then on the history of the two places diverged. Wiston was administered from over the river and its links were with Little Horkesley rather than Nayland. The Lords of the Manor built the little Norman church, which still survives as a separate parish church, and they ran their estates in Wiston in conjunction with their land in Essex. The early wills and the taxation lists which still exist show only farmers in Wiston, and it remained purely an agricultural parish until the end of the nineteenth century. The manor was sold to more distant owners and the old manorial tenements became copyholds and then freehold farms. The village and the surrounding area, like much of East Anglia, was a hotbed of Puritan sentiment during much of the 17th century. At least as early as 1629, parishioners such as Gregory Stone were censured for not kneeling at communion. By the mid-1630s, the Stone family and others had departed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony as part of the wave of emigration that occurred during the Great Migration. In 1883 the new West Suffolk county council decided that the two strangely divided civil parishes should be joined together as Nayland with Wissington, a process which Wiston resented but could not prevent. The needs of the two parts of parish, part semi urban, part agricultural, still make a slightly uneasy union. The Nayland with Wissington Parish Council was created in 1894 as a result of the Local Government Act of that year. But Wiston had not disappeared. In 1896 Dr Jane Walker bought two farms (both technically in Nayland) and founded the East Anglian Sanatorium. This opened in 1901 for private patients and soon a lower block for free patients was added. A children’s block was also built. The writer George Gissing found himself as a patient here for a couple of months in 1901 and the Canadian artist Emily Carr was a patient for over a year in 1903–1904. The Sanatorium continued to treat TB until that disease was conquered in the 1950s, when it closed. The lower block was sold off for housing and the upper block became a hospital for the mentally handicapped. While they functioned, the Sanatorium and the hospital were the centre of Wiston, as they provided most of the local employment. In 1991 the hospital itself closed under ‘Care in the Community’. The original ‘arts and crafts’ Sanatorium, designed by Smith and Brewer, became a listed building and was converted into eight houses, while the rest was knocked down and replaced by another eight houses. Wiston still has seven working farms, six being old Wiston farms and one an old Nayland holding, while the other small farms and smallholdings have been absorbed into the bigger ones, leaving it is still predominantly agricultural. The mechanisation of farming has, however, cut the need for workers dramatically, so that most of the residents of Wiston now work either at home or elsewhere.

You can visit Nayland places with Walkfo Nayland to hear history at Nayland’s places whilst walking around using the free digital tour app. Walkfo Nayland has 11 places to visit in our interactive Nayland map, with amazing history, culture & travel facts you can explore the same way you would at a museum or art gallery with information audio headset. With Walkfo, you can travel by foot, bike or bus throughout Nayland, being in the moment, without digital distraction or limits to a specific walking route. Our historic audio walks, National Trust interactive audio experiences, digital tour guides for English Heritage locations are available at Nayland places, with a AI tour guide to help you get the best from a visit to Nayland & the surrounding areas.

“Curated content for millions of locations across the UK, with 11 audio facts unique to Nayland places in an interactive Nayland map you can explore.”

Walkfo: Visit Nayland Places Map
11 tourist, history, culture & geography spots

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Nayland historic spots	Nayland tourist destinations	Nayland plaques	Nayland geographic features
Walkfo Nayland tourism map key: places to see & visit like National Trust sites, Blue Plaques, English Heritage locations & top tourist destinations in Nayland

  

Best Nayland places to visit

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Nayland has places to explore by foot, bike or bus. Below are a selection of the varied Nayland’s destinations you can visit with additional content available at the Walkfo Nayland’s information audio spots:

St Mary’s Church, Stoke-by-Nayland St Mary’s Church is a Grade I listed parish church in Stoke-by-Nayland. It was built in the 1930s and is now a Grade II listed parish.

Visit Nayland plaques