The lost village

Sunday
Today we were joined by Janet and Andrew, who had arrived yesterday evening, and were staying on a nearby campsite. We first went walking at nearby Dunwich Heath, an area of coastal lowland Heath, in the hands of the National Trust, and adjacent to Minsmere RSPB, where we were yesterday morning. It was a grey morning, but the large expanses of heather were still a beautiful sight. We then went down to the village of Dunwich and it’s pebble beach. It’s hard to believe that this sleepy village, consisting now of just a few streets, a pub and a few houses, was once the capital of the Kingdom of East Anglia back in the Anglo-Saxon Period. The city devastation began in 1286 when huge cyclones hit the East Anglian coast. It was followed by two great storms the next year. The most extensive damage to the city was caused by a further great storm in 1347, which resulted in the destruction of almost 400 houses, and finally the Saint Marcellus’ flood on 16 January 1362 destroyed what was left of the town, reducing it to the size of a village. Almost all of the buildings and seven churches had disappeared under the sea. My collage shows scenes from Greyfriars, a Franciscan friary founded before 1277, that just 12 years later was forced to move inland as the threat by coastal erosion increased. Middle left shows how much of the town was lost to the sea, and the bottom left shows a panel depicting what the friary would have looked like. Janet and Andrew had kindly offered to treat us all to lunch, and had booked a table at a recommended pub restaurant in the village of Sibton. It was a really picturesque place, all decked out with loads of flowers outside, with a beautiful garden area at the back, and the food was excellent - a wide variety, and beautifully cooked. We returned to our accommodation for a drink, then the more active ones amongst us went out for another walk through the countryside, to walk some of it off - ending up at Minsmere, where we’d been yesterday!