Dunwich
Dunwich maps (2 available)
Map of Suffolk
Beautifully hand-drawn and coloured, dating from around 1840
Personalised maps
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Dunwich books (5 available)
- 1 photos on Dunwich appear in 1 Frith books - View photos of Dunwich
- Read extracts and see photos from these books on Dunwich and Suffolk
Dunwich memories
Read and share memories of Dunwich and Suffolk inspired by Frith photos
The Rubble on the Beach
I spent my teenage years in Dunwich, and in retrospect they were wonderful. Freedom, long walks, the beach and sea, cliffs, marshes and the old tank defences from WWII. My best friend Justin North, who lived at 'Marshside' opposite me at The Ship, and I spent hours during those years, roaming, swimming, canoeing, making carts to career down the hill from the monastery, and resurrecting a storm damaged painter's punt washed ashore to row to Walberswick on the irrigation rivers behind the dunes. Although All Saints had fallen off the cliff long before we were born, some of the cemetery remained on the cliff top, including numerous unmarked pauper's graves. Pieces of masonry and rubble still lay at the ...read more here
Contributed by James Ritchie
Dunwich Monastery Gateway
My earliest memory of Greyfriars in Dunwich was probably driving down the hill in my grandfather's old car in 1960 as he brought me to my new home at The Barne Arms Hotel. I had been at boarding school at Dollar in Scotland, and my grandfather had met me off the train in London and driven me along the tortuous roads (including the old A12) to Dunwich. Descending the hill, just before St James' Street opened out, the ruins on the right hand side seemed portentious, as I loved anything old and historic, and this was certainly both. Glimpses of the ruined buildings could be seen through the gate, and later I was to frequently circumnavigate the whole monastery, it's ...read more here
Contributed by James Ritchie
The Ghost at The Ship
My parents owned and ran The Ship Inn from 1960 to 1975. My father a retired soldier and wartime paratrooper had taken early retirement to buy the business, then called The Barne Arms Hotel after the estate. The new Inn sign was based on the Blue Peter logo from the BBC Children's programme (from whom he'd got permission to use a similar but not identical design). As boys, my brother and I shared an attic room. Shortly after I had left to go to the Army in about 1969/70 my brother had experienced a ghost in the attic room. Waking, he'd found what he described as a woman sitting beside his bed, grey in colour. As he woke, she'd risen, turned ...read more here
Contributed by James Ritchie
Suffolk memories
Dunwich Monastery Gateway
My earliest memory of Greyfriars in Dunwich was probably driving down the hill in my grandfather's old car in 1960 as he brought me to my new home at The Barne Arms Hotel. I had been at boarding school at Dollar in Scotland, and my grandfather had met me off the train in London and driven me along the tortuous roads (including the old A12) to Dunwich. Descending the hill, just before St James' Street opened out, the ruins on the right hand side seemed portentious, as I loved anything old and historic, and this was certainly both. Glimpses of the ruined buildings could be seen through the gate, and later I was to frequently circumnavigate the whole monastery, it's ...read more here
A memory of Dunwich contributed by James Ritchie
Extracts From Dunwich & Suffolk books
Not much more than St James’s Street is left of Dunwich, once the seat of the Saxon king of East Anglia, and once one of the greatest and most prosperous ports in the country. When this picture was taken, what remained of Dunwich still had the last of its old churches. It had started to collapse five years previously, and finally fell into the sea in 1918.
An extract from from"Suffolk Photographic Memories".
The story of the demise of Dunwich, in medieval times a prosperous port until the ravages of the North Sea gradually demolished its soft, sandy cliffs, is one of the most romantic of the Suffolk coast. There were still substantial remains of All Saints’ parish church on the cliff top above the beach tents when this photograph was taken; here we see the tower and nave. The church finally collapsed into the sea in about 1920, and nothing now remains except for a few scattered pieces of masonry.
An extract from from"East Anglia".
St Mary’s, one of the largest
in Suffolk, is not a typical
Suffolk wool church, and has
an elegant lead spire. Inside is
the 600-year-old Angelus Bell,
one of the oldest in the country,
which is inscribed ‘Ave Maria
Gracia Plena Dominus Tecum’.
Perhaps the man who made the
bell had other things on his mind
when it came to putting in the
inscription, as he forgot to invert
the words laterally in the mould,
and they appear backwards on
the finished article!
An extract from from"Ispwich Pocket Album".
A 20th-century means of pro-
ducing power shares the banks
of the Orwell with vessels which
harness one of the oldest forms
of power. With shallow mudflats
along the banks of the tidal
Orwell estuary, moored sailing
boats end up on their keels twice
a day.
An extract from from"Ispwich Pocket Album".
We are looking east along Tavern
Street from Cornhill. On the left
is the red brick and stone Lloyds
Bank building, with its fretted
skyline, while to the right is the
neo-classical Post Office, built
in 1881.
An extract from from"Ispwich Pocket Album".