Iken is a small village and civil parish in the sandlands of the English county of Suffolk, an area formerly of heathland and sheep pasture.

During World War II most of Iken and the neighbouring village of Sudbourne were used as a battle training area in advance of the D-Day landings in June 1944.

[3] Benjamin Britten set his opera The Little Sweep in Iken Hall, then the home of Margery Spring Rice, who was one of the founders of the Aldeburgh Festival.

[4] The Anchorage, formerly an island in what was a marsh at the edge of the estuary, is the most likely site of Saint Botolph's Abbey, Ikenhoe, although this is disputed with other possible locations, including Boston in Lincolnshire, and Hadstock on the Cambridgeshire/Essex border.

During excavations in 1977 Dr Stanley West discovered part of a large stone Saxon cross incorporated into the wall of St Botolph's Church tower.

Julian Tennyson, (1915-1945), writer and historian, most famous for his writings on his home county of Suffolk, is commemorated by a headstone in the churchyard of St Botolph's.

The former rectory next door, now the Anchorage, was sold to a private individual after the Second World War, and as a result of a conveyancing mistake, access to the church was greatly restricted by the new owner.