[11][12] A series of earthworks in the west of the parish were partially excavated during the 1950s and may be the remains of a camp used by Danish invaders during the Anglo-Saxon period or of a dock recorded in the Domesday Book as being at Frostenden.

The population was listed as 12 households, with Count Alan of Brittany and Robert Malet holding land in the village.

[c][18][22][23] A second manor, named Polfrey or Blueflory-Cove, was owned by the Gooch baronets of Benacre Hall by the start of the 19th century.

[18][23] The family owned most of the land in South Cove and in neighbouring Covehithe by the middle of the century and remain the major landowners in the area.

The majority of the parish is classified as forming part of the North Suffolk Sandlings landscape with quick draining sandy soils.

[30][31] The southern and eastern boundaries of the parish feature areas of low-lying wetlands with marshland and reed beds classified as estuarine marsh.

[34][35] The marshland areas were navigable in the early medieval period, with a port recorded at neighbouring Frostenden at the Domesday survey.

[36] The coast at Covehithe to the east and the former parish of Easton Bavents to the south-east,[d] are subject to rapid coastal erosion.

[5][17][40][41] Part of the rood screen survives, and a 15th-century painting of St Michael was rediscovered in 1929 and restored by Ernest William Tristram in the 1930s.

It is Grade II listed and also mentions the loss of an American Air Force plane in the parish in March 1945.

[17][47] The population of the parish is concentrated in a small cluster of buildings around the church and another at Cove Bottom, close to the site of the former brickworks.