Other current and historical names
Location and coordinates are for the approximate centre of Southwold within this administrative area. Geographic features and populated places may cross administrative borders.
Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887). John Bartholomew
Southwold, mun. bor., seaport and market town, and par., Suffolk, at mouth of river Blythe, 8 miles E. of Halesworth by rail and 14 miles S. of Lowestoft, 566 ac., pop. 2107; P.O., T.O., 2 Banks. Market-day, Thursday. Southwold is situated on an eminence overlooking the sea, and is a place of great antiquity, known in Saxon times as Sudwald, and belonging at Domesday to Bury Abbey. It rose into notice upon the decline of Dunwich, and received its first charter from Henry VII. The chief architectural feature of Southwold is the handsome church of St Edmund, built in 1460. There are two piers and a breakwater. Southwold has become a favourite place of resort for sea-bathing, and has large fisheries of herring, cod, and sole. Coal is imported. At Southwold (or Sole) Bay, the boundaries of which have almost disappeared from successive encroachments of the sea, was fought, in 1672, the famous naval engagement between the Dutch under De Ruyter and the English under James Duke of York.
A village in Blything hundred, in the county of Suffolk.