Norman Scarfe explores place names, the Sutton Hoo ship burial, the coming of Christianity, and the abbey at Bury St Edmunds, concluding with an evocative study of five Suffolk places - Southwold, Dunwich, Yoxford, and Wingfield and Fressingfield. The modern landscape of Suffolk is still essentially a medieval one, though much of it is even earlier: the five hundred medieval churches and ten thousand 'listed' houses 'of historic or architectural interest', and the 'Hundred'lanes going back at least to the tenth century, are often found to be set in a landscape created before the Roman conquest. Suffolk in the Middle Ages opens with a discussion of the earliest written records, the place-names, as a guide to settlement-patterns, including the setting of Sutton Hoo. Among the grave-goods found in that celebrated ship and discussed here was the whetstone-sceptre; asked to carry it from its showcase in the British Museum to the laboratory, the author acknowledges a closer feeling of involvement even than helping to re-open the ship in its mound in 1966. His explanation of the presence of the whetstone-sceptre, printed here, has never been challenged. The identification of a carved Anglo-Saxon cross at Iken in 1977 prompted the essay here on St Botolph and the coming of East Anglian Christianity. This leads to a consideration of the Danish invasion of East Anglia, and a reexamination of the posthumous victory of King Edmund and Christianity as portrayed in an imaginary Breckland warren on the front of this book. Scarfe's carefully reasoned argument that the Metropolitan Museum's famous walrusivory cross was made for the monks' choir at Bury has never been refuted. Life in Bury abbey is vividly reconstructed: it was the most richly documented flowering of the work of East Anglia's apostles, Felix and Fursa, which alsoled to the phenomenal establishment in Suffolk by 1086 of four hundred of the five hundred medieval churches. In four East Suffolk essays, Southwold, Dunwich, Yoxford and Wingfield are exposed to Norman Scarfe's interpretativeskills. He reveals a past few could have guessed at, often quite as curious as the 'Two Strange Tales' unravelled in his concluding pages.

A record of crests of Suffolk and Norfolk families arranged by charge or object, covering 600 years and c.8,000 names. This volume offers a comprehensive guide to the heraldry of Suffolk over more than six centuries, covering around 8,000 names and acting as a companion to the earlier Dictionary of Suffolk Arms(1965). It is the first attempt to produce an Ordinary of crests, a classification by charge or object using standardised groupings, arranged in such a manner that they may be readily identified when the name of the bearer is unknown; the usual arrangement isalphabetical by name, an Armory. Although it relates specifically to Suffolk, many crests relating to Norfolk families are given, the two counties having always been closely connected heraldically and genealogically. The book willbe of interest for all those interested in heraldry and, on a wider level, act as a handbook for the identification of crests when borne alone, on artefacts ranging from signet rings and silverware to pub signs and school uniformcrests. JOAN CORDER, the author of a Dictionary of Suffolk Arms, is an independent scholar and recognised authority on East Anglian heraldry.

After the Civil War, African Americans throughout Suffolk and Nansemond County fought against injustice by demanding equality before the law, the right to vote, and equal access to schools, employment, and professions. Because of their tolerance and sense of fortitude, they were able to own land and businesses and to establish churches, schools, and social organizations that paved the way for generations to come.

Census returns provide a detailed information about patterns of religious life in 19c Suffolk, revealing much about both orthodox Anglicanism and Dissent. The reader is in John Clare's world... Every county should publish its Census and see that it is done as excellently as that for Suffolk. RONALD BLYTHE, CHURCH TIMES The census returns edited in this volume provide a unique sample of mid nineteenth-century religious life. They are printed in calendared form, and their findings set in local and national context; information about land and property ownership is supplied, making it possible to compare patterns of ownership in most parishes with the presence or absence of Dissent. Chapel dates are collated with those in meeting-house certificates and printed notices, while much detail refused by Anglican clergymen is recovered, together with communicant numbers and/or information about the frequency of Holy Communion. The appendices present the evidence about places of worship omitted, and contain facsimiles of the census forms. T.C.B. TIMMINS has prepared editions of two volumes of church registers: of John Chandler, Dean of Salisbury, 1404-17, and John Waltham, Bishop of Salisbury, 1388-1395.

A guide to many medieval historical places of interest in Norfolk and Suffolk, first published in 1930.