A RUINED CITY.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 337, 23 May 1885, Page 14

A RUINED CITY.

Dunwich, in ancient times a city with six or eight churches, but now a mere village, three miles and a half from Southweld, stands upon, elevated ground on the Suffolk coast, washed by the German Ocean. It was once an important, opulent, and commercial city, but is now wasted, desolate, and void. Its palaces and temples are no more, and its environs present an aspect lonely, stern, and wild. The city being seated upon a hill of loam and loose sand, on a coast destitute of rock, the buildings successively yielded to the encroachments of the sea. In the reign of Henry 111. it madeso great a breach that the king wrote to the Barons of Suffolk to assist the inhabitants in stopping destruction. The church of St. Felix and the cell of monks were lost very early, and before the twenty- third year of the reign of Edward 111. upwards of four hundred houses, with certain shops and windmills weredevoured by the sea, St. Leonard's Church wasnext overthrown ; and in the 14th century St. Martin's and St. Nicholas were also destroyed by the waves. In the sixteenth century two chapels were overthrown with two gates, and not one-quarter of the town was left standing. In 1677 the sea reached the market place. In 1702 St. Peter's Church was divested of its lead, timber, bells, &c.,, and the walls tumbled over the cliffs as the wares undermined them. The place was wholly disfranchised by the Reform Bill of 1832.