Landmarks
Long Melford is fairly unusual for a village in that it has a parish church of dimensions more suited to a cathedral. The origin of Holy Trinity Church dates from the reign of Edward the Confessor; it was then substantially rebuilt between 1467 and 1497 by John Clopton of Kentwell Hall. It is one of the richest "wool churches" in East Anglia and is renowned for its flushwork, The Clopton chantry chapel and the Lady Chapel at the East end with some surviving medieval stained-glass. Edmund Blunden, the World War I poet, is buried in the churchyard. Next to the church is the Hospital of the Holy and Blessed Trinity, an almshouse founded by William Cordell in 1573.
Another unusual feature of Long Melford is its large elongated village green, dominated until the 1980s by a group of great elms that included one of the largest in England. The elms were painted in 1940 by the watercolourist S. R. Badmin in his 'Long Melford Green on a Frosty Morning', now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The village contains two stately homes, Kentwell Hall and Melford Hall, both visited by Elizabeth I, and all built from the proceeds of the wool trade in the Middle Ages. Kentwell Hall and the Holy Trinity Church were financed by the Clopton family, in particular by John Clopton. Both Kentwell Hall and Melford Hall are open to the general public, with Melford Hall being a National Trust property. The village's history is recorded in the Long Melford Heritage Centre, and contains artifacts uncovered in the July 2011 Long Melford Dig.
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