[4] There have been Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age finds in and around Eye, but the earliest evidence of settlement dates from the Roman period.

[5] A large Anglo-Saxon cemetery with many urned cremations and some furnished inhumations, in use in the 6th century, was excavated near the Waterloo Plantation in 1818.

[5] Eye before the Norman Conquest was one of numerous holdings of Edric of Laxfield, a wealthy, influential Saxon, who was the third largest landholder in Suffolk.

[8] In 1066–1071, Malet built a castle as his military and administrative headquarters and started a market that initiated the urbanisation of Eye.

[9] Eye began to lose its strategic importance after 1173 when the castle was attacked by Hugh Bigod, 1st Earl of Norfolk during a rebellion against Henry II, and later during the Second Barons' War of 1265, after which it never regained its former status.

[citation needed] The Lordship of the Manor of Eye (Sokemere) and Constableship of the Castle is held by the Palmer family of Haughley in Suffolk.

The Manor was held by the Malet family in Norman times, Henry Earl of Brabant, the De Ufford, De la Pole, Cornwallis and Kerrison families as well as King Stephen, Edward I, Mary I and Thomas Beckett in previous years.

Known as the Honour of Eye, it consisted of 129 manors and had the right to a court of pie poudre at its Whit Monday market fairs and those of Thrandeston and Finningham.

[19] Eye Town Hall, an imaginative and unorthodox building dating from 1856 and listed Grade II*, was designed by Edward Buckton Lamb.

This included installing an altar tomb to William Honnyng in the South or Lady Chapel and one to Nicholas Cutler to the north-west of the nave.