Dommoc

Dommoc (or Domnoc), a place not certainly identified but probably within the modern county of Suffolk, was the original seat of the Anglo-Saxon bishops of the Kingdom of East Anglia.

The primary authority for the foundation of the see of Dommoc is Bede's Historia ecclesiastica which stipulates Felix's mission in relation to Sigeberht's rule.

William Camden, in his Britannia, promoted general acceptance of the identification with Dunwich, formerly a splendid city on the Suffolk coast between Aldeburgh and Southwold, all but a tiny part of which has now been lost to coastal erosion.

This Walton is not to be confused with Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex, which stands on the south side of the Orwell and Stour estuary mouth, and which has never been seriously considered as a candidate for Dommoc.

[7] The re-use of Roman forts or fortified enclosures for early Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical and monastic purposes is well-attested, for instance at Othona (Bradwell-on-Sea, Essex), Rochester and Reculver (Kent), Durobrivae (Castor, Cambridgeshire), and in East Anglia at Fursey's monastery (probably Burgh Castle, or Gariannonum).

Be that as it may, the existence of additional forts not mentioned in the Notitia presents no difficulty since that is not a list of all fortresses, but of military units and their stations under the command of the Count of the Saxon Shore.

Dommoc is a difficult name to construe, but could derive from the Latin: dominicum,[citation needed] a church, possibly in an Irish-assimilated form domnach, as Fletcher notes.

If the name Dommoc became Dunwich, its original meaning was lost in the shift and a different etymological structure was adopted to explain and replace it, between the tenth and twelfth centuries.

Dunwich was thriving at Domesday, but following sea encroachments many of its ecclesiastical possessions were granted to the rising Priory of Eye in north Suffolk.

However, that site had its own independent Wuffing tradition connected with the grave of King Anna of East Anglia (died 653); conversely, its position at the fordable headwaters of the Blyth estuary, controlling the Blyth and its watershed hinterland suggests the likely existence of a royal dwelling in that neighbourhood in the time of Anna himself, and of Saint Felix.

A priory dedicated to St Felix was founded within the fort at Walton around the end of the eleventh century by Roger Bigod, 1st Earl of Norfolk, who invited monks from Rochester to establish themselves there.

During the twelfth century the powerful Bigod family also had a castle at Walton and a separate large residence there (the Manor, or Old Hall), at which King John issued the Ipswich Town Charter in 1200.

The church site at nearby Falkenham (overlooking the river Deben between Hemley and Felixstowe Ferry) may have early Wuffing associations, for it is dedicated to the royal martyr Saint Æthelberht (died 794).

Falkenham was at Domesday a sub-manor or berewick of Walton, and in the time of Archbishop Lanfranc it was claimed by Rochester as one of a group of possessions which had been taken from it into royal keeping during the Viking Wars.