Alston, Suffolk

Alston was a medieval parish in the county of Suffolk. Without enough people to ensure its survival (it was a long trek on foot for a priest in the days before cars), the parish was consolidated with that of Trimley St Martin as early as 1362, according to Blatchly in the 1975 revision of the 1937 book Suffolk Churches and Their Treasures by diocesan architect Henry Munro Cautley (1875-1959). The group of houses now called Trimley Street was in the parish of Alston. The parish included the still-surviving Grimston Hall, as well as the church St. John the Baptist, which was demolished before the Reformation. At the end of Trimley Street today there are two cottages to the right, and in the field to the left, the church St. John the Baptist stood.