Southwold is a town, with no known Jewish community, on the North Sea coast, in the Waveney district of the county of Suffolk. Located on the North Sea coast at the mouth of the River Blyth, the town is around 11 miles south of Lowestoft and 29 miles northeast of Ipswich. [May 2011]
Conflicting information has been donated to the project:
Municipal Cemetery: The Church of England also used this cemetery. The active cemetery is land-marked and has a caretaker. The rural (agricultural) flat land is near the municipal cemetery. A sign in English marks the cemetery. The cemetery, reached by crossing public property, is open to all. A continuous masonry wall and a hedge or row of trees surrounds. The cemetery is not divided into special sections. Tombstones date from the 16th century. Inscriptions are in English. The present owner of the property is St. Edmunds Church of England. Properties adjacent are residential. The cemetery is visited frequently by organised individual tours. There appear to be three 4-foot gravestones with Stars of David and very worn inscriptions. One name appears to be Charles A. Ev..... age 50 and ___ age 27. The other two tombs may be legible. If restoration was carried out, individuals or groups of non-Jewish origin did it. Some graves are overgrown in this gentile cemetery. Pollution is the only serious threat. Vegetation is a seasonal problem. The survey was supplied anonymously. [date? and see below for conflicting information]
Municipal Cemetery: Southwold parish cemetery contains no Jewish graves. The headstones mentioned [above] are not Jewish as are none of the others that bear exactly the same carved decoration, the IHS monogram within a six-pointed star. (The inscriptions are not weathered and can be read clearly.) I would also like to point out that the information concerning the cemetery per se is incorrect. Your surveyor says that the headstones are located in Southwold municipal cemetery. This is not correct. The headstones are located in St Edmund's churchyard. St Edmund's is the parish church of Southwold. Southwold's municipal cemetery is situated about a mile further to the north-west, adjoining the churchyard of St Margaret's church. St Margaret is the parish church of the neighbouring village of Reydon. There are two Jewish graves in Section D of Southwold municipal cemetery. These two graves are not the ones described in your survey. Source: Evelyn Simak - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.