All was sleepy on a midwinter afternoon in rural east England. The River Deben sauntered through the stubble fields. Crows observed, beady-eyed, from the naked trees. The flint-stone tower of Rendlesham’s Church of St Gregory the Great loomed large and lonely on the horizon, bathed in golden light. It was a hushed, modest scene. But a place once fit for kings.
The English county of Suffolk was one of the first areas of Britain to be settled by the Anglo-Saxons, from the 5th century. This specific part, around the Deben Valley, was the heartland of the Kingdom of the East Angles. Ruled over by the powerful Wuffingas dynasty until its fall in 794, it was one of the pre-eminent kingdoms of early medieval Europe.
The Venerable Bede, an English
