Rushmere Common

Rushmere Common (also Rushmere Heath) is common land situated on the eastern outskirts of Ipswich mainly within the parish of Rushmere St. Andrew, Suffolk, England. It is predominately heathland, gorse and woodland, and hosts a golf course. It adjoins the Sandlings Open Space to the east (which is owned and managed by Suffolk Coastal Council) and is crossed by a number of footpaths, including the Sandlings Walk – a long-distance footpath which starts on the common and ends 50 miles away in Southwold.

Rushmere Common has probably been common land since the Middle Ages. For at least two hundred years, the ownership of the soil was claimed by one of the local manors. The commoners resisted the claims of the Lord of the Manor, the Marquess of Bristol, who tried to prosecute some of them.

It was used as a place of execution, with some one hundred recorded hangings between 1735 and 1797 – most frequently for house breaking and burglary, but also for highway robbery and murder. The heath was frequently used by the army, and in 1804 Sir James Craig had 11,000 men under arms on the common.

Nathanial Abblit championed the commoners' rights and in 1861 he had a stone tablet erected on the outside of his cottage, which can still be seen today on the wall of the Baptist Chapel and reads:

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