Dunwich and the bells beneath the sea
Dunwich in Suffolk, once a major port and capital of the Kingdom of the East Angles, was eaten by storms and erosion from 1286 onward; local legend says its church bells still ring under the sea.
1286 CE · 52.28, 1.63 · status: account
The account
A storm surge in 1286 was followed by two more in 1287, a storm in 1328, another in 1347 that swept away some 400 houses, and the Grote Mandrenke of 1362. All eight medieval churches were eventually lost, the last tower falling in the early 20th century. Sonar surveys led by David Sear of Southampton University have mapped the ruins on the seabed. The town kept two members of Parliament until 1832 as a notorious rotten borough.
The sceptical view
The loss is documented history; the bells are legend, perhaps from the sound of surf and shingle.
Connections in the atlas
- Port Royal swallowed by the sea
- Rungholt, the drowned town
- Lyonesse, the lost land of Cornwall
- Doggerland, the land under the North Sea
- Cantre'r Gwaelod, the drowned hundred