Felixstowe
The apparent connection between Felixstowe and the name of Felix is suggestive, but the placename Felixstowe is not recorded before the thirteenth century and its origin is disputed. A Stow may be a holy site, but the Domesday name for the Walton fort is Burch, a form of the word Burgh. 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 (d.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.
The situation of Walton fort, overlooking the seaward reaches of the Deben estuary towards the former island of Bawdsey on the north bank, was of prime importance to the control of that river and lay directly within the sphere of Rendlesham, the Wuffinga royal dwelling known to have existed a little above the fordable headwaters of the Deben estuary in c 660. The Sutton Hoo cemetery demonstrates the outstanding importance of this river as a seat of regnal power shortly before Sigeberht's time, during the period of Rædwald's reign, and as the centre of a regio or province spreading from the Orwell to beyond the River Alde and across the tributary hinterlands of the Alde and Deben rivers.
It is strongly inferred that St Paulinus, from the Canterbury mission, was present in East Anglia at Rædwald's court in around 616, and it seems likely that the dedication of Rendlesham church to Saint Gregory the Great belongs to the early phases of that mission into East Anglia. After his escape from York in 632-3, Paulinus became Bishop of Rochester until his death in c644, during the first decade of Felix's episcopacy of Dommoc. Bede records that Felix obtained teachers from Kent to supply the school founded in East Anglia by Sigeberht. Rochester was then the closest bishopric to East Anglia by the sea-route to Kent from the Deben. It is therefore possible that when Roger Bigod founded a priory at Walton fort he was consciously renewing a connection between Rochester and Walton which had been developed in the time of Felix and Paulinus.
Rochester's claim is expressed thus: 'b. Felix fundavit eccl'iam q'e m'o Felixstowe uocatur et in ea sedit xvji annis' (The blessed Felix founded the church which is now called Felixstowe and sate in that (place) 17 years). It appears in the monastic register compiled before 1251 (Harleian MS 261), under the annal for 633. The 16th century antiquary John Leland noted sources supporting both the claims of Eye for Dunwich and of Rochester for Walton. However it must be remembered that there are several East Anglian sites associated with the work of Saint Felix. Although one of these two seems most likely, there is no absolute certainty that it was either.
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