Explore sudbury town centre
Set in the heart of the beautiful Stour Valley, the famous landscape that inspired painters Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable. Sudbury is a thriving market town and has been since Saxon times.
Before the Roman Conquest an Iron Age settlement occupied the defensible spur of high ground, roughly between the Croft and Stour Street. The development of the present town began in the Middle Saxon period and the semi-circular street pattern to the west of Market Hill represents successive expansions of the town in late Saxon and Norman times.
The written history of the town began when Sudbury was mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle of 797AD; the town’s entry in Domesday Book in 1086 records a church, a mill, market and the meadows which remain such an attractive feature of the town today.
The medieval woollen cloth industry, the coming of the River Navigation and then the Railway, the 19th century silk industry, all helped to generate prosperity and contributed to the diverse buildings heritage and unique townscape which is Sudbury’s pride. Read more on Sudbury's history here.