49-517: East Anglian English is a dialect of English spoken in East Anglia , primarily in or before the mid-20th century. East Anglian English has had a very considerable input into modern Estuary English . However, it has received little attention from the media and is not easily recognised by people from other parts of the United Kingdom. The dialect's boundaries are not uniformly agreed upon; for instance,
98-680: A NUTS 2 statistical unit in the East of England region . Other definitions of the area have been used or proposed over the years. For example, the Redcliffe-Maud Report in 1969, which followed the Royal Commission on the Reform of Local Government, recommended the creation of eight provinces in England. The proposed East Anglia province would have included northern Essex, southern Lincolnshire and
147-515: A blue background has been used as a symbol of East Anglia for centuries. The coat of arms was ascribed by medieval heralds to the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia and the Wuffingas dynasty which ruled it. The arms are effectively identical to the coat of arms of Sweden . The three crowns appear, carved in stone, on the baptismal font (c.1400) in the parish church of Saxmundham , and on
196-635: A distinctive "lilt" lack robust empirical evidence. In addition to above features, one specific accent is associated with urban Norfolk and namely its largest city, Norwich . The treatment of the Norfolk dialect in the television drama All the King's Men in 1999 in part prompted the foundation of the Friends of Norfolk Dialect (FOND), a group formed with the aim of preserving and promoting Broad Norfolk. Arnold Wesker 's 1958 play Roots used Norfolk dialect. During
245-519: A few remain in use, the most prominent being Norwich International Airport . Pillboxes were erected in 1940 to help defend the nation against invasion, and they can also be found throughout the area at strategic points. Similarly, but from the Napoleonic Wars , a number of Martello towers can be found along the coast. East Anglia is bordered to the north and east by the North Sea , to the south by
294-564: A job o' work." Trudgill identifies possible influences as the Viking occupation of the area and the Dutch protestant refugees, the Strangers . East Anglian English shows some of the general accent features of South East England, including: However, several features also make East Anglian accents unique: In addition to the above phonological features, East Anglian English also has a distinct rhythm. This
343-597: A number of local rail services, such as the Bittern Line from Norwich to Sheringham . East Anglia is ideal for cycling and National Cycle Route 1 passes through it. Cambridge has the largest proportion of its residents in the UK cycling to work with 25% commuting by bicycle. The city is also home to the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway , which at 13.3 miles (21.4 km) was the longest stretch of guided bus-way in
392-543: A small part of Northamptonshire as well as Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. The kingdom of East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk , but the Isle of Ely also became part of it upon the marriage of East Anglian princess Æthelthryth (Etheldreda). It was formed around 520 by merging the North and South Folk, Angles who had settled in the former lands of the Iceni during
441-655: A strong genetic affinity with Anglo-Saxon era skeletons, but differ substantially from Iron Age and Roman era ones, which are more similar to the Welsh. This was taken to support a major influence of the Anglo-Saxon migrations on the genetic makeup of East Anglia. In a 2022 study by Joscha Gretzinger et al., the populations of Norfolk and Suffolk were found to be the group with the lowest amount of Iron Age/Roman period British Isles-related ancestry, with only about 11-12.7% of their ancestry being derived from that group, while having one of
490-680: A year and this is fairly evenly distributed throughout the year. Sunshine totals tend to be higher towards the coastal areas. Transport in East Anglia consists of an extensive road and rail network. Main A roads, such as the A12 and A47 link the area to the rest of the UK, and the A14 links the Midlands to the Port of Felixstowe . This is the busiest container port in the UK, dealing with over 40% of UK container traffic and
539-638: Is a major gateway port into the country. There is very little motorway within East Anglia. Rail links include the Great Eastern Main Line from Norwich to London Liverpool Street and the West Anglia Main Line connecting Cambridge to London. Sections of the East Coast Main Line run through the area and Peterborough is an important interchange on this line. The area is linked to the Midlands and north-west England by rail and has
SECTION 10
#1733085982534588-750: Is among the oldest and most famous universities in the world. Other institutions include the University of East Anglia (in Norwich ), University of Essex , Norwich University of the Arts , Anglia Ruskin University (based in Cambridge), University of Suffolk (based in Ipswich) and University Centre Peterborough . Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft Enterprise Zone, an enterprise zone initiated by New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership,
637-412: Is due to the loss of unstressed syllables associated with East Anglian speakers. There appears to be no agreed framework for describing the prosodic characteristics of different dialects (see Intonation ). Writing in 1889, the phonetician Alexander John Ellis began his section on East Anglian speech with these comments: Every one has heard of the [Norfolk] 'drant', or droning and drawling in speech, and
686-597: Is generally dry and mild. Temperatures range from an average of 1–10 °C in the winter to 12–22 °C in the summer, although it is not uncommon for daily temperatures to fall and rise significantly outside these averages. Although water plays a significant role in the Fenland and Broadland landscapes, the area is among the driest in the United Kingdom and during the summer months, tinder-dry conditions are frequently experienced, occasionally resulting in field and heath fires. Many areas receive less than 700 mm of rainfall
735-434: Is gently undulating, with glacial moraine ridges providing some areas of steeper relief. The highest point in Norfolk is the 103 metres (338 ft) Beacon Hill ; the supposed flatness of Norfolk is noted in literature, including Noël Coward 's Private Lives – "Very flat, Norfolk". On the north-west corner East Anglia is bordered by a bay known as The Wash , where owing to deposits of sediment and land reclamation ,
784-754: Is included in Sweet (1946 :188–89). S. L. Bensusan set out to record elements of the East Anglian dialect and records a statement made by a local when she caught him making notes on the sleeve of his shirt: "Whatever you bin makin' them little owd squiggles on y'r cuff fower?" Bensusan replied that he was "writing history". He then recorded her retort: "You dedn't wanter done that. Telly f'r why. When you've got y'r shirt washed there won't be nawthen left. I've never wrote nawthen all me born days, ne yet me husban', an he got all his teeth an' I kin thread me needle without spectacles. Folk don't wanter write in this world, they wanter do
833-402: Is one of the clubs competing for the informal football title Pride of Anglia , but not Southend United F.C. from further south in the county. Culturally, north Essex has much more in common with Suffolk and the rest of East Anglia due to its similar rural landscape, when compared to the south which is much more urban given its proximity to London . However, the county of Essex by itself forms
882-564: The Mercians defeated it twice over the next 40 years, and East Anglia continued to weaken in relation to the other kingdoms. Offa of Mercia finally had king Æthelberht killed in 794 and took control of the kingdom himself. Independence was temporarily restored by rebellion in 825, but the Danes killed King Edmund on 20 November 869 and captured the kingdom. Edward the Elder incorporated East Anglia into
931-703: The Second World War , the Royal Air Force and the United States Army Air Force constructed many airbases in East Anglia for the heavy bomber fleets of the Combined Bomber Offensive against German-occupied Europe . East Anglia was ideally suited to airfield construction, as it includes large areas of open, level terrain and is close to mainland Europe. Many of the airfields can still be seen today, particularly from aerial photographs, and
980-631: The University of East Anglia . The flag of Cambridgeshire (adopted in 2015) includes the three gold crowns on a blue field. The East Anglian flag as it is known today was proposed by George Henry Langham and adopted in 1902 by the London Society of East Anglians (established in 1896). It superimposes the three crowns in a blue shield on a St George's cross . East Anglia features heavily in English literature, notably in Noël Coward 's Private Lives and
1029-454: The estuaries of the rivers Orwell and Stour , and shares an undefined land border to the west with the rest of England. Much of northern East Anglia is flat, low-lying and marshy (such as the Fens of Cambridgeshire and Norfolk ), although the extensive drainage projects of the past centuries actually make this one of the driest areas in the UK. Inland, much of the rest of Suffolk and Norfolk
SECTION 20
#17330859825341078-642: The 'Norfolk Origins' series by Poppyland Publishing, Cromer . East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England , often defined as including the counties of Norfolk , Suffolk and Cambridgeshire . The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles , a people whose name originated in Anglia , in what is now Northern Germany . Definitions of what constitutes East Anglia vary. The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of East Anglia , established in
1127-576: The 15th-century porch of Woolpit church, both in Suffolk. They also appear in local heraldry and form part of the arms of the diocese of Ely and the arms of the borough of Bury St Edmunds , where the crowns are shown pierced with arrows to represent the martyrdom of Edmund the Martyr , the last king of East Anglia. Other users of the arms include the former Isle of Ely County Council , the Borough of Colchester and
1176-517: The 1630s, thousands of Puritan families from East Anglia emigrated to New England in America, taking much East Anglian culture with them that can still be traced today. East Anglia based much of its earnings on wool, textiles, and arable farming and was a rich area of England until the Industrial Revolution caused a manufacturing and development shift to the Midlands and the North. During
1225-431: The 1960s, Anglia Television produced a soap opera called " Weavers Green " which used local characters making extensive use of Norfolk dialect. The programme was filmed at the "cul-de-sac" village of Heydon north of Reepham in mid Norfolk. An example of the Norfolk accent and vocabulary can be heard in the songs by Allan Smethurst , aka The Singing Postman. Smethurst's Norfolk accent is well known from his releases of
1274-460: The 1960s, such as "Hev Yew Gotta Loight Bor?" . The Boy John Letters of Sidney Grapes , which were originally published in the Eastern Daily Press , are another valid example of the Norfolk dialect. Beyond simply portrayers of speech and idiom however, Smethurst, and more especially Grapes, record their authentic understanding of mid-20th century Norfolk village life. Grapes' characters,
1323-564: The 6th century, originally consisted of the modern counties of Norfolk and Suffolk and expanded west into at least part of Cambridgeshire , typically the northernmost parts known as The Fens . The modern NUTS 2 statistical unit of East Anglia comprises Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire (including the City of Peterborough unitary authority). Those three counties have formed the Roman Catholic Diocese of East Anglia since 1976, and were
1372-642: The BBC earned him a spot on Ralph Tuck's BBC East regional radio programme Wednesday Morning . His popularity led to Tuck recording Smethurst on his own record label , ‘The Smallest Recording Organisation in the World’, based in Lowestoft . A four-track EP containing his signature tune “Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy”, made the EP charts in 1965. This was followed by another EP release by Ralph Tuck, and an album The Singing Postman's Year . He
1421-646: The Boy John, Aunt Agatha, Granfar, and Ole Missus W, perform a literary operetta celebrating down-to-earth ordinariness over bourgeois affectation and pretence. Charles Dickens had some grasp of the Norfolk accent which he utilised in the speech of the Yarmouth fishermen, Ham and Daniel Peggoty in David Copperfield . Patricia Poussa analyses the speech of these characters in her article Dickens as Sociolinguist . She makes connections between Scandinavian languages and
1470-468: The Fens were traditionally an uninhabited area that was difficult to cross, so there was little dialect contact between the two sides of the Fens leading to certain internal distinctions within that region. Linguist Peter Trudgill has identified several sub-dialects, including Norfolk ( Broad Norfolk , Norwich), Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire, and various Fenland dialects. In Jacek Fisiak's and Peter Trudgill 's book, East Anglian English, they describe
1519-513: The Kingdom of England, and it later became an earldom . Parts of East Anglia remained marshland until the 17th-century drainage of the Fens, despite some earlier engineering work during the Roman occupation. The alluvial land was converted into wide swaths of productive arable land by a series of systematic drainage projects, mainly using drains and river diversions along the lines of Dutch practice. In
East Anglian English - Misplaced Pages Continue
1568-657: The Singing Postman's best known hit "Hev Yew Gotta Loight, Boy?" won Smethurst the Ivor Novello Award for best novelty song of the year. Rolf Harris recorded a cover version without success. The song had a small comeback in 1994, when it was featured on a television commercial for Ovaltine . It was also covered by punk band Splodgenessabounds in 1981. Smethurst left the music industry in 1970 citing stage fright and arthritic hands. He later admitted to an alcohol problem and revealed all his earnings were gone and he
1617-475: The Wash at King's Lynn. Major urban areas in East Anglia include the cities of Norwich , Cambridge and Peterborough , and the town of Ipswich . Other towns and cities include Bury St Edmunds , Ely , Lowestoft , Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn . Much of the area is still rural in nature with many villages surrounded by a mixture of breckland , fens , broads and agricultural land. The climate of East Anglia
1666-560: The [Suffolk] 'whine,' but they are neither of them points which can be properly brought under consideration here, because intonation has been systematically neglected, as being impossible to symbolise satisfactorily, even in the rare cases where it could be studied. There does appear to be agreement that the Norfolk accent has a distinctive rhythm due to some stressed vowels being longer than their equivalents in RP and some unstressed vowels being much shorter. Claims that Norfolk speech has intonation with
1715-700: The age of 11. His mother came from the village of Stiffkey , 15 miles to the west. It is often thought that he became a postman in Lavenham , Suffolk , but photos of him in the area are just promotional material. Smethurst joined the Post Office in 1953, and later worked in Grimsby . He never worked for the GPO in Norfolk or Suffolk. Smethurst hummed tunes on his daily post round for 12 years, writing and singing songs in his characteristic Norfolk dialect . An audition tape sent to
1764-538: The city of Norwich. Ethel George was born in 1914, and in 2006 provided the Blackwells with extensive tape-recorded recollections of her childhood as the seventeenth offspring of a relatively poor Norwich family. Carole Blackwell has reproduced a highly literal written rendering of this. An erudite and comprehensive study of the dialect, by Norfolk native and professor of sociolinguistics Peter Trudgill can be found in his book The Norfolk Dialect (2003), published as part of
1813-526: The coastline has altered markedly within historical times; several towns once on the coast of the Wash (notably King's Lynn) are now some distance inland. Conversely, over to the east on the coast exposed to the North Sea the coastline is subject to rapid erosion and has shifted inland significantly since historic times. Major rivers include the River Nene and Suffolk's Stour , running through country beloved of
1862-434: The highest amounts of Continental North European (45.9-46.1%), and the highest amount of Continental West European (41.2-43.1%) ancestry in all of England. East Anglia was the most powerful of the kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England for a brief period following a victory over the rival kingdom of Northumbria around 616, and its King Rædwald was Bretwalda (overlord of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms). However, this did not last;
1911-402: The history of its waterways and drainage forms the backdrop to Graham Swift 's novel Waterland . The area also figures in works by L.P. Hartley , Arthur Ransome and Dorothy L. Sayers , among many others. "Suffolk pink" and similar pastel colours of whitewash are commonly seen on houses in Suffolk, Norfolk and their neighbouring counties. East Anglia has holiday resorts that range from
1960-660: The important influence East Anglian English has had on the development of the English language . In addition to its influence in the Standard English that is known today all around England, there is evidence according to Oxford English Dictionary that East Anglian English grammar was heard in North Carolina . Very little is known about the Anglo-Saxon East Anglian dialect; a Suffolk charter (of Æthelflæd, before 991)
2009-576: The painter John Constable . The River Cam is a tributary of the Great Ouse and gives its name to Cambridge, whilst Norwich sits on the River Yare and River Wensum . The River Orwell flows through Ipswich and has its mouth, along with the Stour at Felixstowe . The Norfolk and Suffolk Broads form a network of waterways between Norwich and the coast and are popular for recreational boating. The Ouse flows into
East Anglian English - Misplaced Pages Continue
2058-473: The particular variant of Norfolk dialect spoken in the Flegg area around Great Yarmouth , a place of known Viking settlement. Significantly, the use of 'that' meaning 'it', is used as an example of this apparent connection. The publication in 2006 by Ethel George (with Carole and Michael Blackwell) of The Seventeenth Child provides a written record of spoken dialect, though in this case of a person brought up inside
2107-406: The previous century, and it was one of the Anglo-Saxon heptarchy kingdoms as defined in the 12th-century writings of Henry of Huntingdon . East Anglia has been cited by a number of scholars as being a region where settlement of continental Germanic speakers was particularly early and dense, possibly following a depopulation in the 4th century. A 2016 study found that modern East Anglians share
2156-552: The subject of a possible government devolution package in 2016. Essex has sometimes been included in definitions of East Anglia, including by the London Society of East Anglians. Although the Kingdom of Essex to the south was a separate element of the heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England and did not identify as Angles but Saxons , many people in Essex today still consider themselves to be East Anglian. For example, Colchester United F.C.
2205-672: The traditional coastal towns of Felixstowe and Lowestoft in Suffolk and Great Yarmouth and Hunstanton in Norfolk, to towns like Aldeburgh and Southwold in Suffolk. Other tourist attractions include historic towns and cities like Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge and Ely as well as areas such as Constable Country , the Broads and the North Norfolk coast. 52°30′N 1°00′E / 52.5°N 1°E / 52.5; 1 Allan Smethurst Allan Francis Smethurst (19 November 1927 – 22 December 2000), aka The Singing Postman
2254-402: The world when it opened in 2011. The only major commercial airport is Norwich Airport , although London Stansted Airport , the fourth busiest passenger airport in the UK, lies just south of Cambridge in north-west Essex. The University of Cambridge , established at the start of the 13th century and in the town of the same name, is East Anglia's best-known institution of higher learning and
2303-543: Was an English folk singer and postman . He is best known for his self-penned novelty song "Hev Yew Gotta Loight, Boy?", which earned him an Ivor Novello Award in 1966, “Come Along A Me” and "A Miss from Diss". The Guardian dubbed him a "bookishly melancholy folk-satirist". Born in Walshaw , near Bury , Lancashire , the son of Allan and Gladys Mabel ( née Curson), Smethurst was raised in Sheringham , Norfolk , from
2352-849: Was announced in 2011 and launched in April 2012. It includes six sites with a total area of 121 hectares (300 acres), which have attracted a number of energy-related businesses. The sites are Beacon Park and South Denes in Great Yarmouth, Mobbs Way, Riverside Road and South Lowestoft Industrial Estate in Lowestoft and Ellough Business Park in Ellough near Beccles. There is also an enterprise zone in Cambridgeshire, Alconbury Enterprise Campus in Huntingdon . A shield of three golden crowns , placed two above one, on
2401-423: Was then signed to EMI who re-released earlier songs and recorded new items. A colour promotional film was made of “Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy” which has survived to this day. He made numerous live and promotional performances, including on Top of the Pops , but was afflicted by nerves and stage fright . His live performances included a summer season in 1965 at the Windmill Theatre in Great Yarmouth . In 1966,
#533466