The royal cemetery at Sutton Hoo - where Raedwald, King of East Anglia, was buried in AD 625 - is just ten miles inland, overlooking the River Deben. There is a splendid exhibition centre at the site.
Visit these websites for more information www.nationaltrust.org.uk/places/suttonhoo/ and www.suttonhoo.org
The early settlers favoured the light, sandy areas for their settlements, specially near the rivers in the east and west of the county, but from the 8 th century they expanded onto the heavy clay soils of central 'High Suffolk'.
The re-constructed Anglo-Saxon village at West Stow, near Bury, is well known, and well worth a visit.
See also
www.stedmunds.co.uk, which includes sections on West Stow.
Later, the Anglo-Saxons in their turn tried to prevent Viking invasions. The number of Suffolk place names with Danish or Norse endings ( -thorpe, -by and -toft) indicates how impossible they found it to do so.
The most famous episode of this period was the killing of St.Edmund, the King of East Anglia, in 869. More than one village claims to be the place where the Danes shot him with arrows, but the abbey at Bury St Edmunds is definitely the spot where his body was eventually laid to rest.
When miracles were reported at his tomb, the abbey became the most important shrine in the country for pilgrimage, until Canterbury overtook it after the murder of Archbishop Thomas à Becket, in 1170.
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