Forest Heath is a local government district in Suffolk, England. Its council is based in Mildenhall. Other towns in the district include Newmarket.
The district's name reflects the fact that it contains parts of both Thetford Forest and the heathlands of Breckland. The district was formed on 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, by a merger of the Newmarket urban district and Mildenhall Rural District.
Forest Heath is the home to two of the largest USAF air bases in the UK, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, as well as the headquarters of British horse racing, Newmarket Racecourse.
Forest Heath has had a high suicide rate when compared to the rest of Suffolk, to the East of England and to England overall. The reasons for this are unknown.
Famous quotes containing the words forest and/or heath:
“The moose will, perhaps, one day become extinct; but how naturally then, when it exists only as a fossil relic, and unseen as that, may the poet or sculptor invent a fabulous animal with similar branching and leafy horns ... to be the inhabitant of such a forest as this!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We are the trade union for pensioners and children, the trade union for the disabled and the sick ... the trade union for the nation as a whole.”
—Edward Heath (b. 1916)