Mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as having 12 heads of household (nine of which villagers (villeins), three as smallholders) and four tied serfs (slaves), Ickworth rendered £3 and a small vill-tax to its overlords and was valued as being worth £4 per year.

[15] Samuel Lewis's overview of 1848 reads: ...a parish, in the union and hundred of Thingoe, W. division of Suffolk, 2½ miles (S. W.) from Bury St. Edmund's; containing 62 inhabitants.

The surface is varied, and the lower grounds are watered by a rivulet which expands into a broad lake, the whole forming one of the most splendid demesnes in the country.

[16] The bulk of the land formed Lord Bristol's main freehold estate which was sold for public benefit to the National Trust to pay the precursor to inheritance tax in 1956.

[17] To the east is the A143 which is linked to the A14 by the shortest route via a turning onto a minor straight road in Horringer, Westley Lane, immediately to the north.