THE NORTHERN BOUNDARY OF the East Saxon kingdom (with East Anglia to the north) appears to have lain on the sparsely settled high Boulder Clay Plateau just south of the Gipping and Lark valleys in Suffolk. Chapters 4–10 have suggested that most if not all of the East Saxon kingdom was divided up into a series of early folk territories, and this chapter shows that comparable territories were also found in the southern part of East Anglia in central Suffolk (Figure 11.1), as well as in the regio of the Hicca in Hertfordshire (Figure 11.3).

THE DEBEN AND ALDE VALLEYS: LAND OF THE WUFFINGAS

KEY INFORMATION

Possible folk name: Wuffingas

Royal vill(s): Rendlesham

Minster church(s): Eyke, ?Butley

Possible meeting place: Gallows Hill in the manor of Wicklaws in Hacheston

Area: 692km2

Successor hundreds: Carlford, Colneis, Loes, Parham (excluding its detached parishes, which appear to have been a later addition), Plomesgate, Wilford and Claydon's detached part (which became Thredling Hundred).

In Domesday, the south-east part of Suffolk comprised the Liberty of St Etheldreda (a Liberty being a territory within which royal jurisdictions were delegated to a monastery). This Liberty was created in 970, when King Edgar granted the six hundreds of Carlford, Colneis, Loes, Parham, Plomesgate and Wilford – that together were known Wicklawan (Wicklaw) – to the monastery at Ely that Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester had refounded as a Benedictine house (Hart 1966, no. 55; Warner 1988, 15–17, fig. 1.3; Martin 1999b; Plunkett 2005, 133). The hundred boundaries within Wicklaw are characterised by their complexity and numerous detached parcels that are suggestive of two possible origins: first, that they had, by the time of the Domesday survey, already existed for a relatively long period of time during which they had lost their original coherence (e.g. Warner 1988, 14–21); or, secondly, that they had in fact been cobbled together relatively recently in the context of a territorial landscape that was already very complex. Warner (1988, 17–21) has suggested that Wicklaw had far older origins, having been part of the original endowment of Ely when it was founded by Etheldreda, daughter of King Anna of East Anglia, in 673.