MILDENHALL

town (parish), Forest Heath district, administrative and historic county of Suffolk, England, on the River Lark. The town retains its hexagonal market, cross dating from the reign of Henry V and now scheduled as an ancient monument. The Church of St. Mary is of the 13th15th centuries and has a tower 112 feet (34 metres) high. It is distinguished for the open-timber hammerbeam roof of the nave. Mildenhall lies amid a farming area for which it acts as the main service centre. The so-called Mildenhall Treasure is a hoard of Roman silver tableware acquired by the British Museum in 1946, having apparently been discovered four years before in the plowing of a field at West Row, 2 miles (3.2 km) northwest of Mildenhall, near remains of a 4th-century Roman building. The majority of the pieces, 34 in all, seem to be of 4th-century workmanship, and some are products of Mediterranean factories. Possibly the owners buried their family plate in the troubled days of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. Pop. (1991) 10,468.