Before the last few years of the 19th century there was no road as such, just a worn track to the beach and the brick kilns, across the north side of St Edmund's Green, hugging the boundary of Town Farm and its fields. The few houses that there were used 'St Edmund's Green' as their address. The west half of the road, up to the junction with Cumberland Road, was still referred to as 'St Edmund's Green' in the 1911 census with 'Field Stile' being confined to the eastern portion. The name 'Field Stile' may relate not to a pedestrian stile but to the wooden frames (stiles) erected by fishermen on which to dry their nets.

From an 1893 photograph taken from the top of the just-built Lighthouse. Blyth Terrace (now numbered 17- 23 Field Stile Road) with Victoria Cottages (nos 24-25) on the right. The latter were built on the site of the demolished Baggott's Mill.

The houses fronted directly onto an earth track over St Edmund's Green. Beyond them, to the north lay open fields and Buss Creek.

Southwold Museum P2794 - 2

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Clearing up in 1941 after a bomb had fallen across the road in Tibby's Green.
Reproduced from Barrett Jenkins' book 'Reminiscences of Southwold through the two World Wars' by kind permission of the author's daughter, Ann Thornton.
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