Town in Suffolk, England
Southwold
A lighthouse sits among the houses, six cannon face a battlefield that is now sea, and George Orwell's name may have started on this coast.
Key information
- County
- Suffolk
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- Adnams beer, a lighthouse in the town centre, a pier with homemade amusements, colourful beach huts
- Famous people
- George Orwell, George Adnams, Edward Montagu (Earl of Sandwich), Tim Hunkin
About Southwold
The lighthouse that lives among the houses
Most lighthouses stand on lonely headlands. Southwold's is on a residential street, a white tower of 1890 about 31 metres tall, with ordinary houses and a pub at its feet. It was built to guide shipping along a stretch of coast with shifting sandbanks. It was automated in 1938, and it still looks down on the rooftops like a very tall neighbour. The town around it is oddly shaped. The River Blyth, Buss Creek and the North Sea almost make it an island, and that has kept it compact and walkable.
Why Southwold has so many greens
In 1659 a great fire tore through the town and destroyed a large part of it. The rebuilding left open spaces where buildings had been, and these became the town's greens. They give Southwold an airy, unplanned layout that most seaside towns lack. The town's oldest big landmark is St Edmund's Church, a grand 15th-century building. Inside lives Southwold Jack, a small armoured figure with an axe. He is a medieval automaton, and a rope makes him strike a bell to mark the start of services. He has been doing the job for centuries, and he has become the town's unofficial mascot.
A sea battle you could have watched from the cliff
On 28 May 1672 the Battle of Sole Bay was fought just off the coast, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. A Dutch fleet under Michiel de Ruyter fell on an English and French fleet that had been anchored in the bay. The Earl of Sandwich, Edward Montagu, died when his flagship Royal James burned. Towns people could have seen smoke over the water. Today the story is told in the Southwold Museum, and six old cannon on Gun Hill still point out to sea.
The brewery at the heart of town
Adnams has brewed in Southwold since 1872, when brothers George and Ernest Adnams took on the Sole Bay Brewery. The brewery is right in the town centre, and the smell of brewing drifts down the streets on the right days. Beer is only part of it. Adnams opened a distillery in 2010 and now makes gin, vodka and whisky in Southwold too. For a town of this size, that is an unusually big drinks industry. For food, the usual seaside favourites apply: fish and chips eaten by the harbour, or fresh and smoked fish from the sheds along the River Blyth.
Orwell, a pier and a rowing boat
George Orwell's link with the town is real. Eric Blair's parents settled in Southwold in 1921, and he spent time there between jobs, writing and teaching. When he published Down and Out in Paris and London in 1933, he used a pen name for the first time. Many believe that the name Orwell was taken from the Suffolk river a short way south. Southwold Pier opened in 1900. After storms and decay it was rebuilt in the early 2000s, and it now houses Tim Hunkin's Under the Pier Show, a collection of eccentric, handmade coin-operated machines. The pier also has a Water Clock, an electrically powered creation by Hunkin and Will Jackson. Across the harbour, a rowing boat still ferries walkers over the Blyth to Walberswick. The town also had its own railway: a narrow-gauge line to Halesworth that ran from 1879 until it closed in 1929. Then there are the beach huts. A row of brightly painted huts runs along the front, and they are among the most sought-after in Britain.