![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/a-starry-sky-over-houses-in-thorington-street-in-suffolk-as-the-hamlet-was-recognised-with-internati.jpeg\")
A starry sky over houses in Thorington Street in Suffolk, as the hamlet was recognised with International DarkSky Community status (Dedham Vale Dark Skies campaign\/PA)<\/p>\nA hamlet in Suffolk has been recognised as England\u2019s first dark sky community by DarkSky International.<\/p>\n
Thorington Street, in Dedham Vale, gets \u201csome really lovely dark skies\u201d and the \u201cMilky Way can be seen very clearly in the late summer\u201d, an astronomer said.<\/p>\n
The hamlet has been designated as an International DarkSky Community by DarkSky International, an organisation which said it has been spreading the word about light pollution since 1988.<\/p>\n
It joins just six other communities with the status in the UK: Orkney, Coll, and Moffatt in Scotland; Presteigne and Gower in Wales; and Sark in the Channel Islands.<\/p>\n
The picturesque Dedham Vale and Stour Valley has been a source of inspiration for many artists, from John Constable to Thomas Gainsborough.<\/p>\n
DarkSky International has already recognised other areas of England in different categories, such as Bodmin Moor in Cornwall in the parks category, but Thorington Street in Suffolk is England\u2019s first in the community category.<\/p>\n
Charles Clover, chairman of the Dedham Vale Society, which initiated the nine-year campaign to get the status for Thorington Street, said it was an \u201cimportant win\u201d.<\/p>\n
A Tudor barn owned by the National Trust is being used as a DarkSky Discovery Centre, for stargazing, astronomy, teaching and community events.<\/p>\n
Astronomer Mike Barrett, who helped with the hamlet\u2019s application, said: \u201cDedham Vale is in a sweet spot.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the darkest area outside London when you\u2019re coming north.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s snug right in between Colchester, Ipswich, Felixstowe to a certain extent and Sudbury.<\/p>\n
\u201cThorington Street is right in the centre of that sweet spot and we do get some really lovely dark skies here.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Milky Way can be seen very clearly in the late summer.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/the-milky-way-and-lyrid-meteors-falling-through-the-sky.jpg\")
He said it was \u201cquite difficult\u201d to get the status and during the application process they \u201chad to get the parish council and the county council to say there weren\u2019t going to be any street lights in the community\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said they talked to residents and \u201cexplained about downlights, timed lighting, motion sensors, that sort of thing, but they were all very much on board already\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Barrett, who has an observatory in nearby Polstead, said that dark sky community status was a \u201crelatively new classification\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI suspect a lot of people don\u2019t know or realise that there\u2019s this international body that does the accreditation so we need to make more awareness of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody knows about littering, looking after trees, looking after animals, but very often you forget you need to look up as well and conserve the night skies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dan Oakley, policy and destination manager of DarkSky, said: \u201cThe level of commitment to achieve dark sky status from such a small community was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that a \u201ckey component of their success\u201d was adopting a lighting management plan, and that they would \u201cundoubtedly inspire other places to follow their example\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A hamlet in Suffolk has been recognised as England\u2019s first dark sky community by DarkSky International. Thorington Street,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[111,139,69,147,392],"class_list":["post-283215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}