East Anglia
East Anglia is an area of the East of England, officially defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included.
The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in what is now the Schleswig-Holstein state of Northern Germany. East Anglia is a predominantly rural region and contains mainly flat or low-lying and agricultural land. The area is known for considerable natural beauty, sharing a long North Sea coastline, and The Broads. Norwich is the largest city in the region.
Area
Definitions of what constitutes East Anglia vary. The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia, established in the 6th century, originally consisted of the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and expanded west into at least part of Cambridgeshire, typically the northernmost parts known as The Fens. The modern NUTS 2 statistical unit of East Anglia comprises Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. Those three counties have formed the Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia since 1976, and were the subject of a possible government devolution package in 2016.Essex has sometimes been included in definitions of East Anglia, including by the London Society of East Anglians. Although the Kingdom of Essex to the south was a separate element of the heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England and did not identify as Angles but Saxons, many people in Essex today still consider themselves to be East Anglian. For example, Colchester United F.C. is one of the clubs competing for the informal football title Pride of Anglia, but not Southend United F.C. from further south in the county. Culturally, north Essex has much more in common with Suffolk and the rest of East Anglia due to its similar rural landscape, when compared to the south which is much more urban given its proximity to London. However, the county of Essex by itself forms a NUTS 2 statistical unit in the East of England region.
Other definitions of the area have been used or proposed over the years. For example, the Redcliffe-Maud Report in 1969, which followed the Royal Commission on the Reform of Local Government, recommended the creation of eight provinces in England. The proposed East Anglia province would have included northern Essex, southern Lincolnshire and a small part of Northamptonshire as well as Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
Cultural identity
Despite being considered by some to be a sub-region of the East of England, it is considered to have its own differing cultural identity and characteristics, with some considering it an informal region in its own right. It has more distinct accents within the area compared to the rest of the East of England region, such as the Norfolk and Suffolk accents. It is also considered a less commercialised area, with more agricultural business being based within East Anglia. However, several areas of East Anglia are starting to experience a renaissance, with more frequent decentralisation and expansions of certain businesses taking place in several areas such as the recent introductions of commercial businesses such as Taco Bell and Odeon Cinemas into areas of East Anglia. However, despite a recent economic renaissance, East Anglia is also still a poorer area than the rest of the East of England region, with several areas suffering from intense deprivation and poverty.From a geographical perspective, East Anglia also differs hugely from the rest of the East of England due to it being somewhat situated on the east coast of England, leading to several seaside towns being situated within the area. A more noticeable differing geographical feature is The Fens, an area of low-lying marshland populated throughout East Anglia as well as, to a lesser extent, the East Midlands. It has managed to define East Anglia, especially from a historical perspective, and help it stand out from the rest of the East of England, with several plans recently set up to restore The Fens to its initial state, prior to its drainage, as a big wetland area. East Anglia is also more likely than any other area in the East of England to be considered part of the Midlands. This is mostly because East Anglia's geographical location aligns with The Midlands. It is also likely due to several areas of East Anglia being situated above or on several somewhat common but unofficial borders that separate the Midlands and even the North in some cases, from Southern England such as River Great Ouse, River Nene or even the Thames. East Anglia and the Midlands were also previously combined in a grouping known as "Central England" based on European Parliament constituencies in the United Kingdom. Similarly, some East Anglian citizens have expressed interests in turning East Anglia into its own independent state.
History
The kingdom of East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but the Isle of Ely also became part of it upon the marriage of East Anglian princess Æthelthryth. It may have been formed around 520 by merging the North and South Folk, Angles who had settled in the former lands of the Iceni during the previous century, and it was one of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy kingdoms as defined in the 12th-century writings of Henry of Huntingdon. East Anglia has been cited by a number of scholars as being a region where settlement of continental Germanic speakers was particularly early and dense, possibly following a depopulation in the 4th century.A 2016 study found that modern East Anglians share a strong genetic affinity with Anglo-Saxon era skeletons, but differ substantially from Iron Age and Roman era ones, which are more similar to the Welsh. This was taken to support a major influence of the Anglo-Saxon migrations on the genetic makeup of East Anglia. In a 2022 study by Joscha Gretzinger et al., the populations of Norfolk and Suffolk were found to be the group with the lowest amount of Iron Age/Roman period British Isles-related ancestry, with only about 11–12.7% of their ancestry being derived from that group, while having one of the highest amounts of Continental North European, and the highest amount of Continental West European ancestry in all of England.
East Anglia was the most powerful of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England for a brief period following a victory over the rival kingdom of Northumbria around 616, and its King Rædwald was Bretwalda. Just before this point East Anglia started becoming Christian. However, this did not last; the Mercians defeated it twice over the next 40 years, and East Anglia continued to weaken in relation to the other kingdoms. Offa of Mercia finally had king Æthelberht killed in 794 and took control of the kingdom himself. Independence was temporarily restored by rebellion in 825, but the Danes killed King Edmund on 20 November 869 and captured the kingdom. Edward the Elder incorporated East Anglia into the Kingdom of England, and it later became an earldom.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles make reference to East Anglian military hero Ulfcytel, first described for his attempts to ward off an attack by the Danes in 1004. The Norwegian court poet Sigvatr Þórðarson called all of East Anglia "Ulfkell's land", named for the military leader.
Parts of East Anglia remained marshland until the 17th-century drainage of the Fens, despite some earlier engineering work during the Roman occupation. The alluvial land was converted into wide swaths of productive arable land by a series of systematic drainage projects, mainly using drains and river diversions along the lines of Dutch practice. In the 1630s, thousands of Puritan families from East Anglia emigrated to New England in America, taking much East Anglian culture with them that can still be traced today. East Anglia based much of its earnings on wool, textiles, and arable farming and was a rich area of England until the Industrial Revolution caused a manufacturing and development shift to the Midlands and the North.
During the Second World War, the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force constructed many airbases in East Anglia for the heavy bomber fleets of the Combined Bomber Offensive against German-occupied Europe. East Anglia was ideally suited to airfield construction, as it includes large areas of open, level terrain and is close to mainland Europe. Many of the airfields can still be seen today, particularly from aerial photographs, and a few remain in use, the most prominent being Norwich International Airport. Pillboxes were erected in 1940 to help defend the nation against invasion, and they can also be found throughout the area at strategic points. Similarly, but from the Napoleonic Wars, a number of Martello towers can be found along the coast.
Geography
East Anglia is bordered to the north and east by the North Sea, to the south by the estuaries of the rivers Orwell and Stour, and shares an undefined land border to the west with the rest of England. Much of northern East Anglia is flat, low-lying and marshy, although the extensive drainage projects of the past centuries actually make this one of the driest areas in the UK. Inland, much of the rest of Suffolk and Norfolk is gently undulating, with glacial moraine ridges providing some areas of steeper relief. The highest point in Norfolk is the Beacon Hill; the supposed flatness of Norfolk is noted in literature, including Noël Coward's Private Lives – "Very flat, Norfolk".On the north-west corner East Anglia is bordered by a bay known as The Wash, where owing to deposits of sediment and land reclamation, the coastline has altered markedly within historical times; several towns once on the coast of the Wash are now some distance inland. Conversely, over to the east on the coast exposed to the North Sea the coastline is subject to rapid erosion and has shifted inland significantly since historic times.
Major rivers include the River Nene and Suffolk's Stour, running through country beloved of the painter John Constable. The River Cam is a tributary of the Great Ouse and gives its name to Cambridge, whilst Norwich sits on the River Yare and River Wensum. The River Orwell flows through Ipswich and has its mouth, along with the Stour at Felixstowe. The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads form a network of waterways between Norwich and the coast and are popular for recreational boating. The Ouse flows into the Wash at King's Lynn.
Major urban areas in East Anglia include the cities of Norwich, Cambridge and Peterborough, and the town of Ipswich. Other towns and cities include Bury St Edmunds, Ely, Lowestoft, Great Yarmouth, King's Lynn, and Newmarket. Much of the area is still rural in nature with many villages surrounded by a mixture of breckland, fens, broads and agricultural land.