The traveller as he leaves the English coast for Antwerp or Rotterdam or the northern ports of Germany, may remember that the last glimpse of his native land is the light from Orford Ness, which is a guiding star to the mariner as he ploughs his weary way along the deep. Of that part of Suffolk little is known to the community at large. When I was a boy it was looked upon as an ultima Thule, where the people were in a primitive state of civilization; where shops and towns and newspapers and good roads were unknown; where traditions of smuggling yet remained. Few ever went into that region, and those who did, when they returned, did not bring back with them encouraging reports. Barren sandy moors, along which the bitter east wind perpetually blew, fatal
alike to vegetation and human life, were the chief characteristics of a district the natives of which were not rich, at any rate as regards this world’s goods. Orford, like Dunwich, was once a place of some importance. ‘A large and populous town with a castle of reddish stone,’ writes Camden, but in his time a victim of the sea’s ingratitude; ‘which withdraws itself little by little, and begins to envy it the advantages of a harbour.’ In the time of Henry I., writes Ralph de Coggeshall, when Bartholomew de Glanville was Governor of its castle, some fishermen there caught a wild man in their nets. ‘All the parts of his body resembled those of a man. He had hair on his head, a long-peaked beard, and about the breast was exceeding hairy and rough. But at length he made his escape into the sea, and was never seen more,’ which was a pity, as undoubtedly he was the ‘missing link.’ Besides, as Camden remarks, the fact was a confirmation of what the common people of his time remarked. ‘Whatever is produced in any part of nature is in the sea,’ and shows ‘that not all is fabulous what Pliny has written about the Triton on the coasts of Portugal, and the sea man in the Straits of Gibraltar.’ Nor is that the only wonder connected with the district. Close by is
Aldborough, where the poet Crabbe learned to become, as Byron calls him,
‘Nature’s sternest painter, but the best;’
and as Camden writes, ‘Hard by, when in the year 1555 all the corn throughout England was choakt in the ear by unseasonable weather, the inhabitants tell you that in the beginning of autumn there grew peas miraculously among the rocks, and that they relieved the dearth in those parts. But the more thinking people affirm that pulse cast upon the shore by shipwreck used to grow there now and then, and so quite exclude the miracle.’ At the present the crag-beds are the most interesting feature to the visitor, especially if he be of a geological turn. These are so rich in fossil shells that you may find some of the latter in almost every house in Ipswich. The Coralline Crag is the oldest bed; but this formation does not occur in an undisturbed state, except in Sudbourne Park and about Orford. A drive thither from Ipswich, through Woodbridge, conveys the traveller through some of the loveliest scenery in Suffolk, and the numerous exposures of Coralline Crag in Sudbourne Park, which is about two miles from Orford, will amply repay the traveller, on account of the number of fossils which he can there obtain, and the ease
with which he can extract them. In this neighbourhood live the far-famed Garrett family, one of whom, as Mrs. Dr. Anderson, is well known in London society, as is also her sister, Mrs. Fawcett, the wife of the late popular M.P. for Hackney. Close by is Leiston Abbey, originally one of Black Canons, consisting of several subterranean chapels, various offices and a church, which appears to have been a handsome structure, faced with flint and freestone. The interior was plain and undecorated, yet massive. A large extent of the neighbouring fields was enclosed with walls, which have been demolished, as was to be expected, for the sake of the materials. We hear much of the dead cities of the Zuyder Zee. On her eastern coast England has her dead cities. Dunwich, of which I have already spoken, is one. Orford, now known solely by its lighthouse, is another; Blythburgh, in the church of which is the tomb of Anna, King of the East Angles, who was slain in 654, is a third. Like Tyre and Sidon, these places had their merchant princes, who lived delicately, and whose ships traded far and near. It is said incorrectly of Love, that it
‘At sight of human ties
Spreads its soft wings and in a moment flies.’
The remark is truer of commerce, which is a law to
itself, and which defies Acts of Parliament and royal patronage. Hence it is the east coast of Suffolk is so rich in melancholy remains of ancient cities, now given over to decay. In my young days the chief town of this district was Woodbridge. Manufactories were then unknown. The steam-engine had not then been utilized for the everyday use of man, and farmers, peasants, coal and corn merchants, solely inhabited the district, and in Woodbridge especially the latter rose and flourished for a time.
How it was, I know not, but nevertheless such was the fact, that the Ipswich of my youthful days seemed to have little, if any, literary associations connected with it. The celebrated Mr. Fulcher published his ‘Ladies’ Pocket-book’ at Sudbury, which had a great reputation in its day, and for which very distinguished people used to write. It was, in fact, more of an annual than a pocket-book, and was patronized accordingly. Then there was James Bird, living at Yoxford, ‘the garden of Suffolk,’ as it was called. Woodbridge had a still higher reputation. James Bird kept a shop, and was supposed to be a Unitarian; but Bernard Barton was in a bank, and, besides, he was a Quaker, and Quakers all the world over are,