IN point of situation and general appearance, Beccles has been accounted by some worthy to rank as the third town in Suffolk. Towards the west it is skirted by a cliff, once washed by the estuary which separated the eastern parts of Norfolk and Suffolk. {29} A portion of the most elevated ground is occupied by the parish church and church-yard, commanding a view somewhat more expanded and interesting than is common in this part of the county. It overlooks the valley of the appropriately designated river Waveney. The church is a handsome building, said to have been erected about A.D. 1369. Its south porch, of rather more recent date, affords a fine specimen of highly ornamented Gothic architecture. {30a} A massive tower of freestone, erected early in the sixteenth century, stands apart from the church. The other principal buildings, for public purposes, are, a town-hall; a spacious modern gaol; a theatre; an assembly room, to which is attached an apartment used as a public library; a free school for instruction in “writing, cyphering, and learning,” and in the established religion; a meeting-house belonging to the Society of Friends, appropriated to the purpose of an infant school room; {30b} and the meeting-houses or chapels of the Independent, Baptist, and Wesleyan denominations of christians. The population of Beccles, as stated in the census of 1831, was 3862, and is considered to be gradually increasing. The town possesses the commercial advantage of a communication by water with the sea at Yarmouth and Lowestoft. An extensive tract of marshes, formerly held by the abbot of Bury St. Edmund’s, as part of the manor of Beccles, has long been vested in incorporated trustees for the benefit of the inhabitants. There are also other lands held for charitable uses. It is probable, that long before the arm of the sea had retired within the humble banks of the Waveney—while Yarmouth was yet a sand-bank, swept by the ocean—the spot in question had become the settled abode of some who found in the adjacent waters a ready means of subsistence. {31} It is generally supposed that the name, Beccles, was adopted with reference to a church which had been built here at an early period. {32} Possibly Sigebert, king of the East Angles, and founder of a monastery at Bury, might select this place, among others, for the establishment and propagation of the Christian faith, which he had imbibed during a voluntary exile in France. {33} The manor and advowson of Beccles were granted by King Edwy, about A.D. 956, to the monks of Bury, and remained in their possession until the dissolution of the religious houses under Henry the Eighth.