Men of Dunwich

by Rowland Parker

Men of The story of a vanished town

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting story of a lost early medieval seaport brought to life by some well written historical research. I have had this book for 40 years and re read it several times.

[Charles Inglin · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Men of Dunwich" is a book I found at a library book sale a few years ago, bought and put on the shelf for later. Then I was browsing Youtube and found an episode of the BBC "Time Team" series, where the team was doing an archeological dig at what remains of Dunwich, so I decided it was time to read this.

Dunwich today is a small village on the Suffolk coast. In the Middle Ages it was a major sea port, its harbor formed by the estuary of the Dunwich and Blyth rivers. The land on which Dunwich stands is composed of sand and gravel deposited by the sea and subject to severe erosion. At the time the village was established the mouth of the estuary stood near Dunwich and the Blyth flowed south to join it. Local current tend to move sand and gravel southward along the coast, closing the mouth and making new openings in the spit that separates the Blyth from the sea. The modern river Blyth empties directly into the sea several miles north of what remains of Dunwich and the Dunwich river is a tributary of it. The North Sea issued a one-two punch to Dunwich, not just washing much of the town away but filling in it's harbor and closing of direct access to the sea. This adding insult to injury to the Men of Dunwich, since for several hundred years their prosperity had been based on control of the hard and a royal charter giving them the right to collect tolls and fees from the boats and ships of the villages of Walberswick, Southwold and Blythburgh further up the river Blyth.

The book starts off a bit slow. There's much conjecture and limited evidence about Dunwich in Roman and Saxon times. Things pick up in the 12th and 13th centuries. The author relies heavily on many records contains in the various "rolls" preserved from the Middle Ages, as well as work done in the 1750's by Thomas Gardner, a resident of Southwold. It was a surprisingly bureaucratic time, though at the same time ne in which ignoring the king's writ seems not to have bothered anyone very much and a little piracy was not much of a blot on one's reputation. What emerges is a surprisingly lively portrait of life in a seaport town of the Middle Ages, sprinkled with bits of wry humor. Speaking of William Fitzjohn, head of a rather unruly and probably criminally inclined family, "Old William must have died; the only good deed he ever did as far as I know."

It largely came to an end in 1328 with a massive storm that washed a good part of the town away and irreversibly sealed up the entrance to the harbor, creating a new entrance near Southwold, Dunwich's hereditary rivals. The harbor itself silted up and is now a marsh.

Worth a read by students of the era.

[Nick Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this because I have ridden the Dunwich Dynamo bike ride a few times and I was intrigued by the old parts of the town that had been taken by the sea.

The book impresses as a scholarly feat with loads of detail but it didn't really work for me. It gave quite a good incite into how a local historian works as much as anything, the amount of information Parker was able to get from old documents about rents, harbour levies, court records and the like from the 14c was very impressive.

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've visited Dunwich and the surrounding area twice in the ten plus years I owned this fascinating book. I should be returning for a further visit in the not distant future and hopefully I will retain some of the information parted in this book. One thing is certain, I'm glad the wars between the neighbouring towns/villages have ended. Or have they?

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without a doubt my favourite Suffolk history book. Some narrative speculating on lost pasts gives it a wistful air, and turns what could be quite dry material on a sunken city on its head.

[Chris Fellows · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned that shipwrecks could not be legally scavenged if a cat remained alive on board the wreck, which will be very useful.

It was tricky keeping track of the vast cast of characters, and the book skates mischievously from straight history to fanciful fictionalisation. And, with court records the main source of information on 13-14th century Dunwich, we cannot help but get a somewhat jaundiced view of the inhabitants.

You know how it ends, right? So there is no need to worry about spoilers. Here is a quote to give you the flavour:

"The only historical record of the event which I am going to describe is this, written twenty-seven years later: 'On Jan 14th in the first year of the present king there was a certain port - by the force of the sea it was completely blocked'. ... The unwonted calm of thse autumn days of 1327 should have warned the Dunwich folk. There may have been - there would have been, were I a mediaeval chronicler - dire portents of impending doom. The sea at sunrise one December morn would have been as a sea of blood. The swirling clouds in the western sky would have taken on the shapes of apocalyptic riders waving swords of flame. The rooks, blacker still against the winter sky, would have spiralled heavenward in joyous flight, then fallen wildly down from tremendous height like damned souls hurtling to their doom. Strange lamentations would have been heard out on the lonely wastes of King's Holme at dead of night. The cross on the top of St. Peter's church, leaning drunkenly ever since the night the parson was murdered, would have crashed to the ground on a day of calm.'