Woodbridge is a port town and civil parish in the East Suffolk district of Suffolk, England. It is up the River Deben from the sea. It lies north-east of Ipswich and around 74 miles north-east of London.
The town is close to some major archaeological sites of the Anglo-Saxon period, including the Sutton Hoo burial ship, and had 35 households at the time of the Domesday Book of 1086. It is well known for its boating harbour and tide mill, on the edge of the Suffolk Coast and Heath Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Several festivals are held. As a "gem in Suffolk's crown", it has been named the best place to live in the East of England.
Etymology
Historians disagree over the etymology of Woodbridge. The Dictionary of British Placenames suggests that it is a combination of the Old English wudu (wood) and brycg (bridge). However, in the Sutton Hoo Societies' magazine Saxon points out that is no suitable site for a bridge at Woodbridge, or any fordable sites until Wilford, the site of the current bridge, several miles upstream. It also raises that an Anglo-Saxon bridge being wooden would have been unlikely to be worthy of comment. It suggests that it might instead have been a combination of odde (a cognate of the Old Scandinavian oddi meaning promontory or cape) and breg (from the Anglo-Saxon brego meaning king - note the closeness of Sutton Hoo) or more likely bryg (a cognate of the Norwegian brygge or quay).
The Suffolk Traveller suggests a similar origin to The Dictionary but originating from a bridge over a hollow way that leads from Woodbridge Market Place to the Ipswich. But this is disputed by Rev. Thomas Carthew, then perpetual curate of Woodbridge who points out that the bridge had existed for less than a hundred years at that point and therefore was not old enough to be the source of the name. He instead suggests Oden or Woden (Odin) and Burgh, Bury, or Brigg (town). The Topographical Dictionary of England suggests a combination of Woden and Bryge.
History and heritage
Archaeological finds point to habitation in the area from the Neolithic Age (2500–1700 BCE). A ritual site was found while excavations were made for the East Anglia Array, a wind farm at Seven Springs Field. The area was occupied by the Romans for 300 years after Queen Boudica's failed rebellion in 59 CE, but there is little evidence of their presence.
After the Roman forces were recalled to Rome in 410 CE, substantial Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) settlement ensued. The Angles gave their name to East Anglia.
King Rædwald of East Anglia was Bretwalda, the most powerful king in England in the early 7th century. He died in about 624 CE and is often associated with the burial at Sutton Hoo, across the River Deben from Woodbridge. The burial ship is long. The treasures discovered there in 1939 were the richest finds ever on British soil. They are held now in the British Museum in London, but replicas of some items and the story of the finds can be seen in the Woodbridge Museum. The National Trust has built a visitor centre on the site.
The earliest record of Woodbridge as such dates from the mid-10th century, when it was acquired by St Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, as part of the endowment of a monastery he helped to refound at Ely, Cambridgeshire in 970. The Domesday Book of 1086 describes Woodbridge as part of Loes Hundred with 35 households, i. e. one of the largest 20 per cent of settlements recorded. Much of Woodbridge was granted to the powerful Bigod family, who built the castle at Framlingham.
The town has been a centre for boatbuilding, rope-making and sail-making since the Middle Ages. Edward III and Sir Francis Drake had fighting ships built in Woodbridge. The town suffered in the plague of 1349, but recovered enough, with encouragement from the Canons and growing general prosperity, to have a new church (St Mary's, behind the buildings on the south side of Market Hill) built of limestone from the Wash and decorated with Thetford flint. By the mid-15th century the Brews family had added a tower and porch.
On 12 October 1534, Prior Henry Bassingbourne confirmed Henry VIII's supremacy over the Church and rejected the incumbent "Roman Bishop". Nonetheless, Woodbridge Priory was dissolved three years later.