Dunwich

Dunwich
Dunwich, view down St. James Street; to the right is the local museum.
Dunwich  Dunwich shown within Suffolk
Population	84 (2001 census)
OS grid reference	TM475705
Civil parish	Dunwich
District	Suffolk Coastal
Shire county	Suffolk
Region	East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	SAXMUNDHAM
Postcode district	IP17
Dialling code	01728
Police	Suffolk
Fire	Suffolk
Ambulance	East of England
EU Parliament	East of England
UK Parliament	Suffolk Coastal
List of places UK England Suffolk

Dunwich /ˈdʌnɨtʃ/ is a village and civil parish in the English county of Suffolk. It is located in the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB around 92 miles (148 km) north-east of London, 9 miles (14 km) south of Southwold and 7 miles (11 km) north of Leiston on the North Sea coast.

In the Anglo-Saxon period, Dunwich was the capital of Kingdom of the East Angles but the harbour and most of the town have since disappeared due to coastal erosion. At its height it was an international port similar in size to 14th century London.^[1] Its decline began in 1286 when a storm surge hit the East Anglian coast, and it was eventually reduced in size to the village it is today. Its population at the 2001 census was 84.^[2]

History

The former leper hospital, Norman window detail

Since the 15th century, Dunwich has frequently been identified with Dommoc – the original seat of the Anglo-Saxon bishops of the Kingdom of East Anglia established by Sigeberht of East Anglia for Saint Felix in c. 629–31.^[3] Dommoc was the seat of the bishops of Dommoc until around 870, when the East Anglian kingdom was taken over by the initially pagan Danes. Years later antiquarians would even describe Dunwich as being the "former capital of East Anglia".^[4] However, many historians now prefer to locate Dummoc at Walton Castle, which was the site of a Saxon shore fort.^[5]

The Domesday Book of 1086 describes it as possessing three churches.^[6] At this time it had an estimated population of 3000.^[7]

On 1 January 1286^[8] a large storm swept much of the town into the sea, and the River Dunwich was partly silted up; this was followed by two further surges in the following year, the South England flood of February 1287 and St. Lucia's flood in December. Residents fought to save the harbour but this too was destroyed by an equally fierce storm in 1328,^[8] which also swept away the entire village of Newton, a few miles up the coast.^{[citation needed]} Another large storm in 1347 swept some 400 houses into the sea. The Grote Mandrenke finally destroyed the village.^[9]

Seal of Dunwich, cast (French National Archives, Paris)

Most of the buildings that were present in the 13th century have disappeared, including all eight churches, and Dunwich is now a small coastal "village", though retaining its status as a town.^{[citation needed]} The remains of a 13th-century Franciscan priory (Greyfriars) and the leper hospital of St James can still be seen.^[10] A popular local legend says that, at certain tides, church bells can still be heard from beneath the waves.^[11]

By the mid-19th century, the population had dwindled to 237 inhabitants and Dunwich was described as a "decayed and disfranchised borough".^[12] A new church, St James, was built in 1832, after the last of the old churches, All Saints, which had been without a rector since 1755, was abandoned. All Saints' church fell into the sea between 1904 and 1919, the last major portion of the tower succumbing on 12 November 1919.^[13] In 2005 historian Stuart Bacon stated that recent low tides had shown that shipbuilding had previously occurred in the town.^[14]

As a legacy of its previous significance, the parliamentary constituency of Dunwich retained the right to send two members to Parliament until the Reform Act 1832 and was one of Britain's most notorious rotten boroughs.^[15]

Marine archaeology

The beach at Dunwich

The Dunwich 2008 project funded by English Heritage and the Esmee Fairbarn Foundation was intended to collate all reliable historic mapped data on the same coordinate system and combine this with aerial photography and an underwater survey.^[16][17] New digital maps were produced by Prof. David Sear of Southampton University, marine archaeologist Stuart Bacon and the Geodata Institute. The survey also used multibeam and sidescan sonar to map the seafloor across the entire area of the town. These surveys identified a series of ruins which were confirmed by divers who recovered stones with lime mortar still attached. The lime mortar matched nearly perfectly with medieval mortar in existing churches on the coast. In 2009 Wessex Archaeology working with Professor Sear, captured the highest resolution sidescan images of the town site including the ruins found in 2008. Further work in 2010 with BBC Oceans and the BBC One Show used novel acoustic imaging cameras (DIDSON) to film the ruins through the turbid water. These clearly showed the jumble of ruined blocks and worked stone associated with medieval church and chapel sites. A large survey and updating of the mapped data was commissioned by English Heritage in 2011 and reported in 2012. This compiled all previous survey data and enhanced the historical map and coastal pilot charts for the site. The results have produced the most comprehensive survey of the Dunwich town site - the largest medieval underwater site in Europe. Data from these surveys including maps and images explaining the different technologies are displayed in Dunwich Museum which is accredited by the Museum Archives Libraries Council. Details of Dunwich's 800 year battle to protect against coastal erosion are also displayed in the museum and it is hoped more work will be done in future.^[17] A database of references to Dunwich "designed to aid academic researchers, family historians and students" is available online.^[18]

In June 2011, at the invitation of Prof David Sear and the Dunwich Town Trust the Anglo-Saxon and medieval archaeology of Dunwich was the subject of a Channel 4 Time Team investigation.^[19]

Further work to explore new sites using DIDSON and diver surveys and a campaign of land based archaeology is scheduled for 2013-15 via the "Touching the tide" ALSF project. This work hopes to confirm the date of the town ditches and roads and explore the record of environmental change in the marsh sediments. Altogether this work has identified the ruins of St Peter's and St Nicholas's churches, a chapel most probably St Katherine's, and ruins associated with Blackfriars friary and the town hall. The location of the Knight's Templar church and All Saints' church are known from the digital mapping but remain buried beneath an inner sandbank. The early town is buried under 1-3m of sand to the east of the ruins found by Bacon and these later surveys.^[20]

Churches and other notable structures

• Greyfriars: Franciscan priory situated in the south west of the city. This inland position has resulted in it being one of the few significant parts of ancient Dunwich still visible. It was founded on a site nearer the sea in 1277, moved to its current position in 1290 and survived to the Dissolution of the monasteries in 1538. The priory was originally enclosed by a stone wall much of which remains. The most impressive structures still standing are part of the refectory and the 14th century gateway which would have been the main entrance to the monastic buildings.

Remains of Greyfriars Priory

• St Bartholemew's and St Michael's were both chapels of ease that had been constructed by the end of the 11th century.^[21]
• St Leonard's: was a parish church that fell to the sea in the 14th century.^[21]
• St Nicholas: this was a cruciform building which lay to the south of the city. Lost to the sea soon after the Black Death.
• St Martin's: built before 1175, it was lost to the sea between 1335 and 1408.
• St Francis Chapel: standing beside the Dunwich River, the chapel was lost in the 16th century.
• St Katherine's Chapel: situated in the parish of St John, this was lost in the 16th century.
• Preceptory of the Knights Templar: the preceptory is thought to have been founded around 1189 and was a circular building not dissimilar to the famous Temple Church in London. When the sheriff of Suffolk and Norfolk took an inventory in 1308 he found the sum of £111 contained in three pouches - a vast sum. In 1322, on the orders of Edward II, all the Templars' land passed to the Knights Hospitallers. Following the dissolution of the Hospitallers in 1562 the Temple was demolished and the foundations washed away during the reign of Charles I.
• St Peter's: similar in length to the church at nearby Blythburgh, St Peter's was stripped of anything of value as the cliff edge drew nearer. The east gable fell in 1688 and the rest of the building followed in 1697. The parish register survives and is now in the British Library.
• Blackfriars: Dominican priory situated in the south east of the city. It was founded during the time of Henry III by Roger Holish. By 1385 preparations were made for the Dominicans to move to nearby Blythburgh as the sea front drew nearer, although these were certainly premature as the priory remained active and above sea level until at least the Dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, with the last building recorded as having fallen to the sea in 1717.

The ruins of All Saints' Church in Dunwich, here in a postcard of 1904

• All Saints' Church: last of Dunwich's ancient churches to be lost to the sea, All Saints' was abandoned in the 1750s after it was decided the parishioners could no longer afford the upkeep, although burials occurred in the churchyard until the 1820s. The cliff edge reached All Saints' in 1904 with the tower falling in 1922.^[22] One of the tower buttresses was salvaged, however and now stands in the current Victorian-era St James' Church. One of the last remaining gravestones, dedicated to John Brinkley Easey,^[23] fell over the cliff in the early 1990s. A single gravestone still remains (as of 2011) around 15 feet from the cliff edge in memory of Jacob Forster who died in the late 18th century.

RAF Dunwich

During the Second World War RAF Dunwich was one of the Chain Home Low stations which provided low level radar cover for the central East Anglian coast.^[24]

See also

• Lost city
• Covehithe
• Easton Bavents

References

Further reading

• Ancient Dunwich: Suffolk's Lost City, Jean Carter and Stuart Bacon. (Segment, 1975)
• The Lost City of Dunwich, Nicholas Comfort (Terence Dalton, 1994), ISBN 0-86138-086-X
• Men of Dunwich, Rowland Parker (Alastair Press, 1978), ISBN 1-870567-85-4
• A Suffolk Coast Garland, Ernest Read Cooper (London: Heath Cranton Ltd, 1928).
• Memories of Bygone Dunwich, Ernest Read Cooper (Southwold: F. Jenkins, 1948).
• The little freemen of Dunwich, Ormonde Pickard
• "By the North Sea" and Tristram of Lyonesse, Algernon Charles Swinburne, in Major Poems and Selected Prose, Jerome McGann and Charles L. Sligh, eds. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) 189-202, 206-312.
• Dunwich: A Tale of the Splendid City, James Bird, 1828.
• Bernard Cornwell, The Saxon Chronicles, Book 5 - The Burning Land

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dunwich.

• Saxmundham Community website
• Dunwich, UK (New Scientist article)
• Reconstructed map of Dunwich town