Qualla: Dunwich

Dunwich: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Donald MacDonald, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 1 January 1286 a storm surge reached the eastern edge of Dunwich and destroyed buildings that had stood for generations. Two more surges came the next year. Then the great Grote Mandrenke on 16 January 1362 finished most of what was left. Eight churches, the town hall, the priories, the houses of a port that had rivalled fourteenth-century London in area: all of it went, one cliff fall at a time, over six centuries. Local people say the church bells can still be heard ringing under the waves at certain tides. The archaeology says the ruins are still down there, and divers have stood among them.

Read more: Dunwich on Qualla

Image: Donald MacDonald | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dunwich: The Capital That Was

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thomas888b, CC BY-SA 3.0. In the Anglo-Saxon period Dunwich was the seat of bishops, possibly the Dommoc established for Saint Felix around AD 629-31 by Sigeberht, king of the East Angles, though many historians now place Dommoc at Walton Castle instead. By the Domesday Book of 1086 Dunwich had three chur...

Read more: Dunwich on Qualla

Image: Thomas888b | CC BY-SA 3.0

Dunwich: The Storms That Drowned It

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dave Briggs, CC BY-SA 2.0. The decline began in the New Year storm of 1286. February 1287 brought the South England flood. December 1287 brought St Lucia's flood. There was another fierce storm in 1328. The Grote Mandrenke of January 1362, a North Sea catastrophe that killed tens of thousands in the Low Co...

Read more: Dunwich on Qualla

Image: Dave Briggs | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dunwich: All Saints' and the Last Gravestone

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geographer, CC BY-SA 2.0. All Saints' Church was the last of the medieval parish churches still standing. The parishioners abandoned it in the 1750s because they could no longer afford the upkeep, and burials in the churchyard continued until the 1820s. By 1904 the cliff edge had reached the church itself...

Read more: Dunwich on Qualla

Image: Geographer | CC BY-SA 2.0

Dunwich: Britain's Atlantis Beneath the Waves

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Midnightblueowl, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Dunwich 2008 project, funded by English Heritage and the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, used multibeam sidescan sonar and aerial photography to map what was left of the town on the seafloor. Divers brought up stones with lime mortar still attached, and the mortar matched almost ...

Read more: Dunwich on Qualla

Image: User:Midnightblueowl | CC BY-SA 3.0