Hawstead

Hawstead
All Saints' Church, Hawstead
Hawstead is located in Suffolk
Hawstead
Hawstead
Location within Suffolk
Population134 (2011 Census)[1]
District
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townBury St Edmunds
Postcode districtIP29
List of places
UK
England
Suffolk
52°11′53″N 0°43′08″E / 52.198°N 0.719°E / 52.198; 0.719

Hawstead is a small village and civil parish in the West Suffolk district of Suffolk in eastern England. It is located 5 kilometres (3 mi) south of Bury St. Edmunds between the B1066 and A134 roads, in a fork formed by the River Lark and a small tributary.

The place-name 'Hawstead' is first attested in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it appears as Haldsteada. The name is thought to mean 'a place of shelter for cattle'.[2]

Hawstead Place, previously the seat of the Drury family, is now a farmhouse. Sir William Drury was sheriff and knight of the shire for Suffolk.

Lady Drury's Closet (also known as the Hawstead Panels), now in Christchurch Mansion in Ipswich, is a series of painted wooden panels of early 17th-century date. They originally decorated a painted closet adjacent to a bedroom in Hawstead Place. It is believed they were made for Anne Drury, Lady Drury, wife of Sir Robert Drury, who died in 1624.


Lt Col Edward Robert Drury, son of Rev Sir William Drury, was the first general manager and president of the Queensland Bank of Australia now the National Australia Bank; he named his Queensland home 'Hawstead' in 1875.

  1. ^ "Civil Parish population 2011". Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 22 August 2016.
  2. ^ Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names, pp.227 and 213.