Dunwich

52.2772222222221.6288888888889Koordinaten: 52 ° 17 ' N, 1 ° 38 ' E

The town of Dunwich in the County of Suffolk in England is the remnant of a once prosperous seaport and center of the wool trade in the early Middle Ages. The natural harbor at the mouth of the rivers Blyth and Dunwich River River was once the largest port city in East Anglia. The main exports were wool and grain. Import of goods were fish, furs and timber from Iceland and the Baltic countries as well as cloth from the Netherlands and wine from France.

History

The port of Dunwich provided the basis for a Roman military camp. The first documented mention was 632, as a missionary in Burgundy, St. Felix in Dunwich founded the first bishopric in East Anglia. According to the Domesday Book, the population and wealth count the Norman conquerors from the year 1086, Dunwich had about 3,000 inhabitants, eight churches, a Benedictine Abbey and two monasteries of the Franciscans and Dominicans. It was thus the tenth largest city in England. In the 13th century it was eighteen churches and monasteries to Norwich the second largest city in East Anglia.

In Roman times, the coastline was at least 2000 m away from the modern city. During a violent storm in 1286, large parts of the city were washed into the sea and the mouth of the Dunwich River silted partially. For a more violent storm flood in 1328, the inhabitants fought in vain to save the harbor. One quarter of the city of Dunwich was lost in the sea. In the next three centuries the rest of the city coastal erosion fell victim. Houses, which were listed on the cliff, were once more than a mile inland.

Almost all the buildings are sunk into the sea, including all eight churches. The last remnants of the church of All Saints, which since 1755 had no pastor, plunged into the sea in 1904 and 1919. Only a few walls of a Franciscan monastery and a leprosy hospital are. A legend tells that the church bells can still be heard in the roar of the waves in some storm surges. As a once important town of Dunwich had the right to appoint two members to send to parliament. It was not until 1832, after the cleanup of the rotten boroughs by the Reform Act, Dunwich lost this right.

For the few remaining inhabitants in 1832 slightly inland, a new church, St. James was built. This, the Ship Inn, a Tea Room, an interesting museum and a few houses with about 120 inhabitants are the rest of the once important city. In spring 2013, the first map of the ruins of Dunwich, which are now located in a water depth of three to ten meters was developed by the University of Southampton with the help of sonar technology.

The scenery in the area offers a variety of nature experiences. Called The now completely silted mouth of the Dunwich River in the north, Dingle Marshes, now can not imagine that there was one of the greatest English ports here. Large heathland with heather, gorse and tree and shrub groups, Dunwich Heath, covering the former grazing land to the south. There the Minsmere bird reserve adjoins in a vast swampy area.

2004 won the young architects Anne Niemann and Johannes Ingrisch a highly doped architectural competition and so given the opportunity to initiate a multi-million pound expensive art project that represented in the sea off the coast by metal column representation of a church. After prolonged resistance of the people of Dunwich, the focus of the project was relocated after years of effort to Peninsula The Naze. Due to the global financial crisis, the project has been suspended since 2009. The long-term documentary Lost Town accompanied the work.