East Anglia

• 1. Introduction

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  East Anglia is a region in the east of England whose borders depend on who is drawing the map. Officially the name covers Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, the counties that make up the modern statistical unit. Parts of Essex are sometimes added in as well, and government reformers have proposed still other shapes for the region without ever settling the question. The name itself reaches back to the East Angles, a people who carried the name of Anglia across the North Sea. Anglia was a homeland in what is now northern Germany. Norwich grew into the region's principal settlement and historical capital. Long before any of those modern borders existed, thousands of East Anglian families packed up in the 1630s. They sailed for New England in America, carrying their customs with them. Why does a region with such a clear origin story still argue over its own edges? And what did those families carry across the Atlantic that can still be traced today?

• 2. Borders That Won't Sit Still

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  Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire have shared a Roman Catholic diocese, the Diocese of East Anglia, since 1976. The same three counties, together with the City of Peterborough unitary authority, make up the modern NUTS 2 statistical unit used for regional reporting. In 2016 those three counties were the subject of a possible government devolution package.

  The London Society of East Anglians counts Essex as part of the region. The old Kingdom of Essex was Saxon rather than Anglian, and it never called itself East Anglian. Yet many people living in Essex today still consider themselves East Anglian. Colchester United competes for an informal football title called Pride of Anglia. Southend United, from further south in the county, does not enter that contest. Northern Essex shares Suffolk's rural landscape, while the south of the county looks toward London and feels far more urban. Even so, Essex forms its own separate NUTS 2 unit within the East of England region.

  A different shape for East Anglia came from the Redcliffe-Maud Report of 1969. It followed a Royal Commission on the Reform of Local Government that recommended dividing England into eight new provinces. Its version of an East Anglian province would have added northern Essex, southern Lincolnshire and a small part of Northamptonshire onto Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. That same patchwork of loyalty extends beyond football, into the way people talk about where they are from.

• 3. A Region Apart

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  Norfolk and Suffolk each have their own distinct accent, setting East Anglia apart from the rest of the East of England region. The area is also considered less commercialised, with more of its business built around agriculture. That is starting to change. Several areas of East Anglia have recently seen new commercial chains arrive, including Taco Bell and Odeon Cinemas, as decentralisation takes hold. Despite that economic renaissance, East Anglia remains a poorer area than the rest of the East of England. Several areas still suffer from intense deprivation and poverty.

  The Fens, a stretch of low-lying marshland running through East Anglia and, to a lesser extent, the East Midlands, has helped define the region historically. Recent plans aim to restore parts of the Fens to their original wetland state, from before centuries of drainage turned them into farmland. Sitting on the east coast of England also gives the region a string of seaside towns not found elsewhere in the East of England. East Anglia is grouped with the Midlands more often than any other part of the East of England. Part of the reason is geography. The region sits above informal boundary lines such as the River Great Ouse, the River Nene and the Thames. East Anglia and the Midlands were once combined into a single grouping called Central England, based on European Parliament constituencies. Some East Anglian residents have even floated the idea of an independent East Anglian state.

  The Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft Enterprise Zone, set up by the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership, was announced in 2011 and launched in April 2012. Its six sites cover a combined 121 hectares and have drawn a number of energy-related businesses. They include Beacon Park and South Denes in Great Yarmouth. Other sites are Mobbs Way, Riverside Road and South Lowestoft Industrial Estate in Lowestoft, plus Ellough Business Park near Beccles. Cambridgeshire has its own enterprise zone as well, the Alconbury Enterprise Campus in Huntingdon.

  Felixstowe and Lowestoft in Suffolk, along with Great Yarmouth and Hunstanton in Norfolk, remain traditional coastal holiday resorts. Aldeburgh and Southwold draw visitors to Suffolk's coast as well. Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge and Ely pull in tourists as historic towns and cities, alongside Constable Country, the Broads and the North Norfolk coast. That rural, coastal identity did not appear overnight. It traces back to a kingdom that once ruled much of eastern England, centuries before Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex ever argued over a shared border.

• 4. From Kingdom To Earldom

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  Around the year 520, two Anglian groups known as the North Folk and the South Folk merged to form the kingdom of East Anglia. They settled on land once held by the Iceni people. Their arrival may have followed a depopulation of the region in the 4th century. Scholars have pointed to East Anglia as a place where continental Germanic settlers arrived especially early, and in unusually high numbers. Writing in the 12th century, the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon later defined East Anglia as one of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy kingdoms. The kingdom grew when the Isle of Ely joined it through the marriage of the East Anglian princess Æthelthryth, also known as Etheldreda.

  A 2016 genetic study found that modern East Anglians share a strong genetic link to Anglo-Saxon era skeletons. Iron Age and Roman era remains from the same ground look quite different, resembling Welsh populations more closely. A 2022 study led by Joscha Gretzinger found that people in Norfolk and Suffolk carry only 11-12.7 percent Iron Age or Roman British ancestry. That is the lowest share found anywhere in England. The same study found the highest share of Continental North European ancestry anywhere in England, at 45.9-46.1 percent. It also found the highest share of Continental West European ancestry in England, at 41.2-43.1 percent.

  Around 616, King Rædwald led East Anglia to victory over the rival kingdom of Northumbria. That victory briefly made East Anglia the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and Rædwald was recognised as Bretwalda, overlord of the other kings. East Anglia had just begun converting to Christianity at that point. The advantage did not hold. The Mercians defeated East Anglia twice over the following 40 years. In 794 the Mercian king Offa had King Æthelberht killed and took the kingdom for himself. A rebellion restored East Anglian independence in 825, but the Danes killed King Edmund on the 20th of November 869 and seized the kingdom. Edward the Elder later folded East Anglia into the Kingdom of England, and it eventually became an earldom.

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles record one more East Anglian holdout, a military leader named Ulfcytel. He was first noted for resisting a Danish attack in 1004. The Norwegian court poet Sigvatr Þórðarson gave the whole region a nickname in his honour, calling it Ulfkell's land. Long after Ulfcytel's stand, the land he defended would be reshaped entirely, not by armies but by drains and rivers turned from their courses.

• 5. Draining The Fens

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  Parts of East Anglia stayed marshland until the 17th century, when a major drainage of the Fens began. The Romans had already attempted some engineering work there, centuries earlier. Workers converted the alluvial land into wide stretches of arable farmland through systematic drainage projects. These projects relied mainly on drains and river diversions built along the lines of Dutch drainage practice. Wool, textiles and arable farming built much of East Anglia's wealth, making it one of the richer parts of England. That position held until the Industrial Revolution shifted manufacturing and development toward the Midlands and the North.

  During the Second World War, the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force built many airbases across East Anglia. The bases supported heavy bomber fleets flying as part of the Combined Bomber Offensive against German-occupied Europe. Open, level terrain close to mainland Europe made the region ideal for airfield construction. Many of those airfields are still visible today, especially in aerial photographs, and a handful remain active, most prominently Norwich International Airport. Pillboxes went up in 1940 to help defend against invasion, and a number still stand at strategic points across the region. Martello towers from an earlier conflict, the Napoleonic Wars, still line parts of the coast. That same coast keeps shifting even now, wherever the North Sea meets Norfolk and Suffolk.

• 6. Flat Land, Long Coast

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  North Sea coastline borders East Anglia to the north and east, while the estuaries of the rivers Orwell and Stour mark its southern edge. To the west, the region shares an undefined land border with the rest of England. Much of northern East Anglia, including the Fens of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, is flat, low-lying and marshy. Centuries of drainage, though, have made this one of the driest areas in the United Kingdom. Inland, Suffolk and Norfolk roll gently, with glacial moraine ridges creating pockets of steeper ground. Norfolk's highest point, Beacon Hill, rises just 103 meters. Its supposed flatness even found its way into literature, in a line from Noël Coward's Private Lives that reads, 'Very flat, Norfolk.'

  The Wash, a bay on East Anglia's north-west corner, has seen its coastline shift over historical time as sediment built up and land was reclaimed. Several towns that once sat on the Wash, King's Lynn among them, now sit some distance inland. On the opposite, North Sea-facing coast, the pattern reverses. Rapid erosion has pushed the shoreline inland significantly since historic times.

  The rivers Nene and Stour run through country that inspired the painter John Constable. The River Cam, a tributary of the Great Ouse, gave Cambridge its name, while Norwich grew up on the River Yare and River Wensum. The River Orwell flows through Ipswich and meets the sea alongside the Stour, at Felixstowe. Between Norwich and the coast, the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads form a network of waterways popular with recreational boaters. The Ouse itself empties into the Wash at King's Lynn. Cambridge, Peterborough and the town of Ipswich round out the region's major urban areas alongside Norwich, with smaller centers such as Newmarket as well.

  Rainfall across East Anglia rarely tops 700 millimeters a year, spread fairly evenly across the seasons. Winter temperatures average 1-10 degrees Celsius, and summer temperatures average 12-22 degrees, though daily readings often swing well outside those ranges. Coastal areas see more sunshine than the interior. In summer, the dry ground occasionally turns tinder-dry enough to spark field and heath fires. That same flat, dry terrain also made it straightforward to lay the roads and rail lines that cross the region today.

• 7. Moving Through And Learning

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  The A14 links the Midlands to the Port of Felixstowe. Felixstowe is the busiest container port in the United Kingdom, handling over 40 percent of the country's container traffic. Other main roads, the A12 and the A47, connect East Anglia to the rest of the UK. The region has very little motorway of its own.

  The Great Eastern Main Line runs from Norwich to London Liverpool Street, and the West Anglia Main Line connects Cambridge to London. Sections of the East Coast Main Line also cross the region, with Peterborough serving as an important interchange. Smaller local services fill in the gaps, among them the Bittern Line, which runs from Norwich to Sheringham.

  National Cycle Route 1 passes through East Anglia, and a quarter of Cambridge's residents commute by bicycle, the highest such proportion in the UK. The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway, opened in 2011, stretched 13.3 miles, or 21.4 kilometers, making it the longest guided busway in the world at the time. Norwich Airport is the region's only major commercial airport. London Stansted, the fourth busiest passenger airport in the UK, sits just south of Cambridge in north-west Essex.

  The University of Cambridge was founded at the start of the 13th century, in the town that shares its name. It is East Anglia's best-known institution of higher learning, and among the oldest and most famous universities in the world. Newer institutions have grown up alongside it. They include the University of East Anglia in Norwich, the University of Essex, and Norwich University of the Arts. Others are Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, the University of Suffolk in Ipswich, and University Centre Peterborough. Long before any of these campuses opened their doors, the region's identity was already being carved into stone and stitched into flags.

• 8. Three Golden Crowns

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  A shield bearing three golden crowns, two set above one, on a blue background has represented East Anglia for centuries. Medieval heralds ascribed the design to the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia and its ruling Wuffingas dynasty. The arms are, strikingly, almost identical to the coat of arms of Sweden.

  The baptismal font in Saxmundham's parish church, dated to around 1400, carries the three crowns in stone, as does the 15th-century porch of Woolpit church. Both churches sit in Suffolk. The crowns also live on in local heraldry. They appear in the arms of the diocese of Ely, and in the arms of the borough of Bury St Edmunds. There, the crowns are pierced with arrows, marking the martyrdom of Edmund the Martyr, East Anglia's last king. The former Isle of Ely County Council, the Borough of Colchester and the University of East Anglia have all used the same three crowns. Cambridgeshire adopted a flag of its own in 2015 that also carries the three gold crowns on a blue field.

  George Henry Langham proposed a separate East Anglian flag, adopted in 1902 by the London Society of East Anglians, a group established in 1896. That flag places the three crowns inside a blue shield laid over a Saint George's Cross.

  Graham Swift set his 1983 novel Waterland against the backdrop of East Anglia's waterways and drainage history. L.P. Hartley, Arthur Ransome and Dorothy L. Sayers have all drawn on the region in their own work as well. That same regional character shows up in paint as well as print. 'Suffolk pink,' a pastel whitewash, still colors houses across Suffolk, Norfolk and their neighboring counties today.