A Brief Encounter With History – uncovering some interesting facts!
There is a mood afoot at present to design a village sign for Thwaite. This was just the excuse I
needed (if indeed I needed one at all) to carry out a little research and so learn something of our
village history. I became rather hooked on the idea as one discovery lead to another; the results
were somewhat surprising. Trawling through copies of old papers, directories and the like I found
many discrepancies, contradictions in terms of marriages, children and dates, so I cannot be one
hundred percent certain that the final results that now follow are indeed correct. If you are able to
identify any errors, do please let me know so that I may put the record straight, so to speak.
As I see it, village signs have traditionally depicted some person, feature, event or building that has
contributed to the history of the parish. It is usual for several of these elements to form a
composite picture and so ‘tell a story’ about the history of the village. With this in mind, I set about
researching two prominent families who did indeed make a significant contribution to our past
history and how the village has developed since; but just before embarking on discovering family
trees, let us go right back to the beginning:
The word ‘thweit’, from which our village name is derived, appears to be of Norwegian origin as
opposed to Danish and leads us to deduce that this was an early settlement of Vikings, in fact, one
of the earliest in Suffolk. It may be dated at roughly AD 890. The earliest recorded Norse attack
on East Anglia occurred in AD 839, so we were right up there in the forefront of the Norman
conquest which started in earnest about AD 870 and continued through to AD 1066 with William I.
Thweit, (spelled variously Theyt, Thweyt, Thwaite but always with a silent ‘h’) means a forest
clearing, a low meadow or fenced field, so it is reasonable to assume that originally the area
around us was forested. From all this we are able to claim our recorded history goes back more
than eleven hundred years. (East Anglian Miscellany – 1954)
Research now moves us forward some 600 years to the early 16th century, around 1524, Henry
VIII days, when a certain Edward Wright (alias Reve), the first Reve recorded in Thwaite, married
Margaret Singleton, daughter of Edward Singleton of Mendlesham. There is reference to an
Edmund Wright of Sutton Hall in Bradfield Combust (1537-1570) who married Frances Spring,
daughter of Sir John Spring of Lavenham but no details are recorded of any issue so it is difficult to
place this generation in the family tree. It is believed that Edward and Margaret lived in and may
have built, Thwaite Hall. They had three daughters and a son, John who married Elizabeth
Rokewode the daughter of John Rokewode of Coldham Hall near Bury St. Edmunds (now owned
by Claudia Schiffer!). They in turn produced three sons, Edward, Thomas and Bartholomew,
together with two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth. Thomas is said to have declared the family
pedigree in 1612. Edward married Elizabeth Crane and they had a son, Robert who married a
Mary Digby, sister of Sir Everard Digby the conspirator connected with the 1605 Gunpowder Plot.
They also had three other children, John, Bridgett and Frances but we know little of them.
Robert and Mary produced two children; Anne who subsequently married Charles Yaxley from the
village of the same name and George who married Philippa Bacon (daughter of Robert Bacon and
a sister of Sir Edward Bacon of Redgrave). She died in 1657. In 1660, George was knighted by
Charles II and in 1662/3 created a Baronet. Ironically, George’s sister, Anne, died early and her
widower, Charles Yaxley remarried this time to Anne Bacon, the sister of Philippa so now George
Reeve and Charles Yaxley were brothers-in-law! Have you kept up so far? There is more.
Charles and Anne Yaxley produced a son, Edmund. Now read on.