Strictly speaking, East Anglia is made up of just three
counties - Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire - which were settled
by Angles from Holstein in the fifth century, though in more recent
times it's come to be loosely applied to parts of Essex too. As a
region it's renowned for its wide skies and flat landscapes, and of
course such generalizations always contain more than a grain of
truth - if you're looking for mountains, you've come to the wrong
place. That said, East Anglia often fails to conform to its
stereotype: parts of Suffolk are positively hilly, and its
coastline can induce vertigo; the north Norfolk coast holds steep
cliffs as well as wide sandy beaches; and even the pancake-flat
fenlands are broken by wide, muddy rivers and hilly mounds, on one
of which perches Ely 's magnificent cathedral. Indeed, the
whole region is sprinkled with fine medieval churches, the legacy
of the days when this was England's most progressive and prosperous
region.
Of all the region's counties, Suffolk is the most varied.
Its undulating southern reaches, straddling the River Stour, are
home to a string of picturesque, well-preserved little towns -
Lavenham and Kersey are two excellent examples -
which enjoyed immense prosperity during the thirteenth to sixteenth
centuries, the heyday of the wool trade. Elsewhere, Bury St
Edmunds can boast not just the ruins of its once-prestigious
abbey, but also some fine Georgian architecture on its grid-plan
streets. Even the much maligned county town of Ipswich has
more to offer than it's generally given credit for. Nevertheless,
for many visitors it's the north Suffolk coast that steals the
local show. In Southwold , with its comely Georgian high
street, Suffolk possesses a delightful seaside resort, elegant and
relaxing in equal measure, while neighbouring Aldeburgh
hosts one of the best music festivals in the country.
Norfolk , as everyone knows thanks to Noël Coward, is
very flat. It's also one of the most sparsely populated and
tranquil counties in England, a remarkable turnaround from the days
when it was an economic and political powerhouse - until, that is,
the Industrial Revolution simply passed it by. Its capital,
Norwich , is still East Anglia's largest city, renowned for
its Norman cathedral and castle, and for its high-tech Sainsbury
Centre, a provocative collection of twentieth-century art. The one
part of Norfolk which has been well and truly discovered is the
Broads , a unique landscape of reed-ridden waterways that
has been over-exploited by farmers and boat-rental companies for
the last twenty years. Too far from London to attract day-trippers,
the Norfolk coast - with the exception of touristy Great
Yarmouth and, to a lesser extent, the Victorian resort of
Cromer - remains one of the most unspoilt in England, with
Blakeney Point and the surrounding marshes among the
country's top nature reserves. Meanwhile, sheltering inland, is an
outstanding stately home - Blickling Hall - plus a couple
more within easy striking distance of the steady resort of
Hunstanton .
Cambridge is, however, the one place in East Anglia
everyone visits, largely on account of its world-renowned
university, whose ancient colleges boast some of the finest
medieval and early modern architecture in the country. The rest of
Cambridgeshire is dominated by the landscape of the Fens ,
for centuries an inhospitable marshland, which was eventually
drained to provide rich alluvial farming land. The one great
highlight here is the cathedral town of Ely , settled on one
of the few areas of raised ground in this region and an easy and
popular day-trip from Cambridge.
Heading into the region from the south, almost inevitably takes
you through Essex , though there's little here to divert
you. Not properly part of East Anglia, but generally lumped
together with the region, Essex's proximity to London has turned
many places into soulless commuter towns with only the historic
town of Colchester being really worth a detour.