John William Draper was priest to the four parishes covered by the Village Voice (newsletter for the parishes of Hoxne, Denham, Syleham & Wingfield) from 1975 to 1985. From the moment he arrived here, he identified with us. After a life that had taken him far and wide, including his ‘journey’, as he put it, from Gold beach to the Rhine crossing, he had finally come home. John was Suffolk born and bred or, as he preferred it, a man of Silly Suffolk.



During those ten memorable years among us, he grew to know Hoxne’s special place in history and vowed to research and record as much as he could. Ten years on from that, in spite of failing health, he put those researches into a written record.



What follows is a series of some nineteen articles for the Village Voice between 1996 and 1999. John died in 2002 aged 84, mission accomplished.



John Ball