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Lackford Hundred

former administrative division of Suffolk

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 29, 2024
Entity authorityQ15241221 ↗
Source-derived summary

Lackford was a hundred of Suffolk, consisting of 83,712 acres (338.77 km2).

The hundred fills the north western corner of Suffolk and is triangular in shape, extending about fifteen miles (24 km) in length on each side. It is bounded on the north by Norfolk, on the west by Cambridgeshire, and on the south east by Blackbourn, Thingoe and Risbridge Hundreds. It is in the Franchise or Liberty of St Edmund, in the Diocese of Ely, the Archdeaconry of Sudbury and the Deanery of Fordham.

The main towns are Newmarket (detached from the rest of the hundred), Brandon and Mildenhall as well as a part of Thetford.

It is watered by the rivers Lark and Little Ouse, the latter of which separates it from Norfolk and the former after crossing it near Icklingham and Mildenhall flows northward and forms its western boundary with Cambridgeshire. The area to the north west of Mildenhall consists of low fen and part of the Bedford Level who drained the fens in the 17th century.

The name Lackford derives from the parish of the same name, Lackford just north-west of Bury St Edmunds, even though that village is actually in Thingoe Hundred. The village's name means "ford over the River Lark", referring to the ford on the village's border with Icklingham.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Lackford Hundred” is former administrative division of Suffolk. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Lackford, Hundred and former, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 216-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Lackford, Hundred and former is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “former administrative division of Suffolk” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 29, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q15241221. Authority coordinates are 52.400, 0.500. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Lackford Hundred” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.