Great Bealings is a small village in Suffolk, England. It has about 302 people living in it in around 113 households. Its nearest towns are Ipswich and Woodbridge. Nearby villages include Little Bealings, Playford, Culpho, Hasketon and Grundisburgh. The village does not have an obvious centre, and the population is split between two areas — one around Lower Street to the East of the village, and the other at Boot Street/Grundisburgh Road to the West of the village. St Mary's, the village church, is about in the middle of these two centres of population. The village shares a playing field with Little Bealings, which is located behind the joint Village Hall, and includes a grassed plateau, a fenced and hard surfaced multi-sports court, children's play equipment, and a boules piste. It is named after John Ganzoni, Lord Belstead, who lived in the village for many years, and whose Charitable Trust Fund supported the project. The River Lark passes through the middle of the village, and is crossed by the main road with a hump back bridge.
History
In the Domesday Book there is mention of the Saxon Hall, owned by Halden, with Anund the priest in attendance. This was on the meadow by the church and was owned by several families such as the de Peche, Clench, and Majors, who knocked it down in 1775 to use the material to aid the construction of Bealings House. The village has always had a strong agricultural base with several small farms. In White’s gazetteer of Suffolk in 1855, the listed tradesmen are: brickmaker, two boot makers, builder, wheelwright, blacksmith, gardener, shopkeeper, and miller as well as several farmers and gentlemen.
Historical writings
In 1870–72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described the village as: In 1887, John Bartholomew also wrote an entry on Great Bealings in the Gazetteer of the British Isles with a much shorter description:
Notable residents
The Seckford family had been landowners in the time of Edward I, with local benefactor Thomas Seckford rebuilding Seckford Hall as the country residence in 1530. He was a close advisor to Elizabeth I. His parents are buried in Great Bealings Church.
Major Edward Moor. He served with the East India Company, being wounded three times, rising to the rank of brevet-captain. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and an author on Indian mythology. He wrote the mystery, Bealings Bells, published in 1841, about an apparently haunted system of bell-pulls. In the 1820s, with the help of his son the ReverendEdward James Moor, he built a low pyramid southeast of Bealings House, about ten feet high, of mixed found materials but incorporating at the apex the triple-headed figure of Shiva and in a niche the seated figure of Brahma. These were found by Moor on Malabar Point, Bombay, and appear to be 11th century. His son-in-law William Page Wood, 1st Baron Hatherley PC, a lawyer and statesman who served as a Liberal Lord Chancellor from 1868-72 in William Ewart Gladstone's first ministry, is buried in the churchyard.
Winifred Beech, the author and wife of Sir John Fortescue, was born in Great Bealings rectory, the daughter of Rector Howard Beech, in 1888.
John Ganzoni, 2nd Baron Belstead, Baron Ganzoni PC, a Conservative politician and peer who served as Leader of the House of Lords under Margaret Thatcher from 1988–90, is buried in the churchyard.
