26th MAY 2001
A walk around Dunwich.
Today`s weather : Sunny and hot.
Dunwich, once a prosperous town of 4000 inhabitants,
it has been ravished for hundreds of
years by great storms and coastal erosion, until today most of Dunwich has been claimed by
the sea. The cliffs of today were once more than a mile inland. Legend has it that at certain
tides you can hear church bells ring from under the sea.
A Dunwich cottage.
Fishermen still traditionaly launch there boats from the beach.
A modern fibreglass fishing boat.
The impressive 14th century gateway to
Greyfriars, a Franciscan priory founded in 1289.
The only other parts of the priory which
remain are part of the refectory and the walls
which surround the site.
This was the site of All Saints Church,
which although abandoned in the late 1700s, only fell
over the cliff into the sea between 1903 and 1919.
One or two gravestones still remain
in what was once the graveyard. The epitaph on this
gravestone reads:
JACOB FORSTER
WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE
MARCH 12TH 1796 AGED
58 YEARS
Middlegate street, once one of the main routes
into Dunwich. The bridge was
build in the 19th century to link two parts of a large estate.
Dunwich Heath, an excellent place for walkers and birdwatchers.
One of the many footpaths on Dunwich Heath .
The remains of the Leper Chapel, once part of
a leper hospital built in the 12th century
to house lepers safely away from the town.
This buttress belonged to All Saints Church
, it was saved and rebuilt in the
grounds of St James Church in 1923 after the last remains
of the original
church had fallen over the cliff in 1919.
 |
 |