Pakefield Park

The wooded walkway shown here, under the title above, represents part of the former golf course which once occupied this particular sector of Pakefield parish. It was originally laid out for the Lowestoft Golf Club, as a nine-hole amenity, in 1906 - the club (which was formed in 1887) having moved from its original playing area on the North Denes. 

This was located to the north of what is now Swimming Pool Road and the original clubhouse is still to be seen at the bottom of the Ravine, on the left-hand side of the road. The new Pakefield course was increased in size to eighteen holes, when extra land was acquired in 1924, and a man named James Braid designed the layout. With the increasing pressure exerted by growing population numbers and the road traffic accompanying it, much of the area was eventually designated for building development and the Lowestoft club moved to the present Rookery Park location during the 1970s - the land being purchased in 1972 and the course itself ready to be used in the late summer of 1975.

The change of venue also led to a change of title, with the club taking the name of its new course. In historical terms, the dominant landscape feature in this area, running parallel with the relief road Tom Crisp Way (and more visible, now, than it was before the highway was built), is the Kirkley Stream, or Beck, which rises on the lower levels of Bloodmoor Hill (OS 1:25000 - TM 59 521904) and makes its way into Lake Lothing via an inlet to the east of Riverside Road, once flanked by the Co-operative Factory and the Richards Shipyard. This watercourse gave its name to a small independent community recorded in the Domesday Survey of 1086 as Bechetunaand Bektuna (Beckton), which had two tenants-in-chief as landlords. In sequence with the names given, the King himself had 120 acres of arable land worked by five freemen, while Hugh de Montfort (Constable of Dover Castle) held another sixty acres worked by six freemen. No annual rental is mentioned for the monarch’s estate, but Hugh de Montfort had as his due 21s 4d and 1500 herrings yearly. He drew a number of local rents in herrings as well as cash, probably to help feed the large household dependent upon him.

Beckton was absorbed by Pakefield during the post-Domesday period, but if its eleven freemen were all family heads (which they may not have been), an approved demographic multiplier of 4.75 would give a population of fifty-two people. Pakefield had only seven freemen recorded (which would produce thirty-three inhabitants) and sixty-one and a half acres of arable land (compared with Beckton’s 180) - so, it would be interesting to know how it came to incorporate Beckton rather than the other way about. The presence of a church there may have had something to do with it. In one sense, Becton did continue to survive for a while after its absorption, in the form of a local surname - and even as late as 1327 a Hugh de Beketon is found paying the sum of 4s in the Lay Subsidy of that year - the largest sum of all thirty-two Pakefield contributors.
 

A possible “core” location for this settlement is Grove Farm, Pakefield (near the junction of Stradbroke Road with Bloodmoor Road) - a long-established site with a large late 16th-early 17th century house occupying it and standing on higher ground above the stream. This location today has lost much of its landscape significance because of the sheer volume of motor traffic which passes around the large roundabout adjacent to it and which detracts greatly from its former integrity. However, the basic landforms are still there, even if obscured by the march of time and the changes this brings, and there is some degree of satisfaction to be had in that.