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Easton Bavents is a hamlet and former civil parish in the East Suffolk district of the county of Suffolk, England. It now belongs to the civil parish of Reydon.[1] Once an important village with a market, it has been much eroded by the North Sea. A map of Suffolk dating from about 1610 shows it to have been the most easterly ecclesiastical parish in England.[2] It is now confined to a stretch of the Suffolk coast to the east of Reydon. As a parish it was abolished in 1987.[1]

Easton Bavents
Cliff fall at Easton Bavents
Easton Bavents Location within Suffolk
OS grid reference	TM512775
Civil parish	Reydon
District	East Suffolk
Shire county	Suffolk
Region	East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	SOUTHWOLD
Postcode district	IP18
Dialling code	01502
Police	Suffolk
Fire	Suffolk
Ambulance	East of England
UK Parliament	Suffolk Coastal
List of places UK England Suffolk 52.338°N 1.686°E / 52.338; 1.686

History

The place-name Easton Bavents is first attested in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it appears as Estuna. It takes the form Eston Bavent in the Charter Rolls of 1330. The first part of the name means "eastern settlement". The Feudal Aids of 1316 show that the village was then held by Thomas de Bavent, Bavent being a place near Caen in Normandy.[3]

Medieval Easton Bavents was a parish of some importance, granted a weekly market in the 14th century, with a three-day fair on the feast day of St Nicholas of Myra (6 December). Records show the parish church, dedicated to St Nicholas, was still in use in 1639, and a rector appointed as late as 1666. However, the cliff on which the village was built collapsed.[2] The church itself seems to have sunk under the sea in the latter part of the 17th century. A chapel dedicated to St Margaret the Virgin also disappeared.

The Battle of Solebay in the Third Anglo-Dutch War took place in 1672 off the coast of Easton Bavents, which survived as a fishing village until the 19th century. The continuing erosion of the cliffs makes the area a popular, albeit hazardous area for fossil hunters, who approach it along the beach from Southwold.

The pace of erosion has averaged some 3 metres a year since 1945, although storms and high tides increase the rate. The last three terraced houses on the cliff edge were demolished in January 2020.[4] Author Juliet Blaxland wrote a memoir about living in one of them. Called The Easternmost House, it was published in 2019 and nominated for the Wainwright Prize.[5][6][7]

Residual population

Year	Population
1801	17[8]
1901	16[8]
1971	19[citation needed]
2020	14[citation needed]

References

External links

• Details of the church
• Census information
• Easton Broad and Wood – Stacey Peak Media

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