(che)+Emms

F.H. Emms in a paper dated 1972 entitled ‘THE COOKLEY ROCKSTONE’ refers to a picture of the Chediston stone, which he remembered seeing in the Eastern Daily Press in, or about, 1935. He described it ‘as a mushroom shape with a stumpy stem’.

He says there are records of 'similar pro-historic stones - known as "erratics" by geologists in other parts of East Anglia. At Merton near Watton in Norfolk,is a monolith of great size: 12 feet long by 8 feet wide. Another stone is at Necton near Dereham. One also was at Hartest, near Bury St. Edmund's in West Suffolk- this came in all probability from the glacier which deposited the Merton stone. It appears there is a record of this giant boulder having been brought from a field into the village by a team of horses to mark the signing of the Treaty of Utrech in 1713. Many small boulders are commonly seen in farmyards etc.,used in olden times as mounting stones for horse-riders.

Regarding the stone, which he visited in Cookley, it was described in Kelly's Directory of Suffolk for 1925 as follows:- "In a retired, part of the parish stands a huge block of stone, possibly Druidical, which gives the name of Rockstone to the farm on which it lands".

The Cookley stone is now in the garden of a bungalow built on land formerly belonging to Rockstone Manor. It now lies recumbent as a stratified conglomerate.

A name rather like Rockstone first appears in the manorial records for Cookley as Rughaugh Manor in the 13th century. The nearest modern equivalent is //Rock in the Hedge Manor.//

According to Copinger: ‘This was not a manor at the time of the Domesday survey, but the land subsequently composing it was held, not as Stated by Davy, by Robert de Vallibus of Roger Bigot, but probably by William de Scoies, and somewhat later Roger de Cressy enfeoffed of it, and it passed to his son Hugh de Cressy, who died in 1263. Jophn de Vaux of Kesewyk seems to have had a grant of free warren here the following year, but the manor apparent, passed on Hugh de Cressy's death to his nephew, William Roscelys, as it is stated that William le Mareschal of him in 1298'.

This is not perfectly clear, but it is certain that the manor was acquired in 1302 by Walter, son of Seman de Fresynfield and Leonora his wife, and John their son, under a fine levied against Alan Houel, and was held with the main manor in 1313 by Sir John de Fressingfield, Knt., the manor being included in the two fines, 8 HenIV. and 19 Hen.VI., referred to in the account of the principal manor’.