St Michael South Elmham
village and civil parish in Suffolk, United Kingdom
St Michael South Elmham is a village and civil parish in the north of the English county of Suffolk. It is 4 miles (6.4 km) south of the market town of Bungay in the East Suffolk district. It is one of the villages surrounding Bungay which make up the area known as The Saints.
The parish is sparsely populated with an estimated population of around 60. It borders the parishes of St Peter South Elmham, All Saints and St Nicholas South Elmham, Ilketshall St Margaret and Rumburgh. The parish council operates jointly with All Saints and St Nicholas and St Michael.
With no residents killed during World War I, the village is one of two Thankful Village in Suffolk. It is one of only fourteen doubly thankful villages in England, in that it lost no residents in World War II either.
The village is featured on Darren Hayman's album, Thankful Villages Volume 1.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “St Michael South Elmham” is village and civil parish in Suffolk, United Kingdom. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Michael, South and Elmham, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “village and civil parish in Suffolk, United Kingdom” 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.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2684939. Authority coordinates are 52.404, 1.438. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
A single description cannot reconcile every naming convention, rebuilding phase or administrative transfer associated with a place. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
- Jurisdictional context
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “St Michael South Elmham”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow St Michael South Elmham primary sources, St Michael South Elmham archive and Michael research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “St Michael South Elmham” 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.