The Eastern Frontier

By Matthew Ward Hunter

England has been within the same bounds for most of 2000 years, long before the English speaking culture arrived. What is now England was then Britannia, the North West corner of the Roman Empire. The boundaries of this land were defined both by natural geography and by manufactured frontiers at the four cardinal points. To the south, the iconic white cliffs of Dover and English Channel have served in the office of a wall ever since the Straits were cut through by the post glaciation waters. To the North, Hadrian’s Wall strides from coast to coast, taking advantage of crags and estuaries. Less well known is the Western frontier, called Offa’s Dyke. Constructed over a long period by the Kingdom of Mercia, it also takes advantage of natural geography and it follows the same basic line as the English-Welsh border of today. Forgotten and overlooked is the Eastern Frontier, despite being the second oldest after the South. The Eastern Frontier is a complex of natural geographical features reinforced by manufactured defences. Defined and fought across for centuries, it runs deep through the history of England, uniting into one common thread many of the best known stories from our past.

The Eastern Frontier runs from the Wash in the North down to the Stour estuary at Harwich, and the Old West forms the central section. A modern map of the East of England shows East Anglia firmly attached to the Midlands, with innumerable roads connecting them. Rewind a couple of millenia and a much wetter landscape is evident, with the Fens and the River Stour almost touching each other near Newmarket. This was the only reliable dry route betwixt the Midlands and East Anglia. The chalk ridge formed part of the ancient ridgeway route which is still recorded on local maps as the Icknield Way. A series of defences were built across this narrow chalk ridge by the Kingdom of East Anglia to reinforce the Eastern Frontier, but our story starts much earlier.

Iron Age to Roman Britannia

Before the Romans invaded this land, the Eastern Frontier already defined the territories of three significant Iron Age peoples: the Iceni; Trinovantes, and Catuvellauni. They left very little in terms of historical records compared to the Romans, but they did leave enough archaeology to enable us to estimate the limits of their territories. Julius Caesar invaded and subjugated Gaul, modern day France, and then attempted to invade Britannia in 55 and 54 BCE. A significant consequence of this was that the Iron Age people of Britannia started to have a trading and commercial relationship with the Roman Empire. Goods such as ceramics and agricultural produce were exported, and silver, as payment, was imported. This silver was minted into coins by the Iron Age peoples and then lost, over the years, in significant numbers by unfortunate folk as they went about their daily lives. Iron Age coins are regularly discovered by archaeologists, metal detectorists, gardeners and farmers. They are reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, who record their locations and identities on their database. This data is used to generate a heat-map of the coins which show that Iceni coins are mostly found in Norfolk, Suffolk and part of Cambridgeshire. Trinovante coins are mostly found in Essex and Suffolk. Catuvellauni coins are found in Beds, Bucks and Herts in addition to western Cambs and western Essex. This data is backed up by the Roman historical record which states where their territorial capitals were and is further reinforced by the presence of Iron Age ring forts along the Eastern Frontier. The best known of these, at Wandlebury, commands the chalk ridgeway, dividing the Catuvellauni from Iceni. After the Claudian invasion of Britain, The Romans had initially imposed a client relationship with the Iceni rather than invading their territory. This changed with the death of the Iceni king Prasutagus c60/61CE when the Romans sought to take direct control. According to the Roman historical record, this was resisted by Boudica, widow of Prasutagus, who instigated an uprising against their aggressive colonialism. She brought her forces along the chalk ridge from Iceni into Roman territory then swept south to attack Colchester, old capital of the Trinovantes, London and St Albans, capital of the Catuvellauni. She then turned North West to face the main Roman army which had been ravaging North Wales. The two forces met, somewhere near Mancetter, and Boudica’s army was destroyed. The Romans then took control of East Anglia and pushed their northern boundary to Lincoln, York and then Hadrian’s Wall.

Migration to Medieval

Three centuries after Hadrian’s wall was constructed, the Western Roman Empire collapsed. Roman Legions were withdrawn and the Romano-British people were left to rule themselves. This period marks the transition between Roman Britain and the new Kingdoms of the English speaking peoples. There is a vibrant debate and investigation ongoing to clarify how significant the movement of peoples from the Jutand area was, and how much was a transfer of culture. Whatever the results of these investigations, the Eastern Frontier remained in use because it was such a strong natural boundary. The chalk ridge running past Newmarket was fortified in this period by a series of massive ditches and banks. These were constructed by the East Angles to produce an indomitable barrier against the land that became Mercia. The largest of these defensive ditches is the Devil’s Dyke, which is about 12 kilometres long and, in places, 9 metres deep. All dug by hand into the chalk and as formidable a barrier now as it was when new. As to when it was new, this has not been pinpointed by archaeology, but an early Anglo-Saxon date is most likely. It is in the historical record, mentioned in 902CE, and archaeological finds confirm it is post Roman. Furthermore, the construction made use of an existing Roman feature to anchor the northern end. The Dyke starts at the old Roman dockyard in Reach, where the Roman Reach Lode (canal) terminates. It then marches south east, almost as straight as an arrow, until it meets one of the sources of the River Stour. This creates a barrier from the Wash to Felixstowe, making East Anglia into a fortress Kingdom. Over the centuries, America and East Anglia vied for preeminence along the frontier but the applecart was kicked into the ditch in 865CE when the Great Heathen Army marched into England. This mighty Viking Army carved out a new Kingdom in the East and North of England which became known as the Danelaw. Many famous names are interwoven in this history, including Alfred the Great, King of Wessex, who fought back against the Danelaw. The Eastern Frontier was, at times, the boundary between the Danelaw and England/Greater Wessex and so continued in active use. One of the best known uses of the Eastern Frontier was when it was the bulwark against a new invasion, this time from Normandy. England was not a single unified state when William of Normandy invaded in 1066 and Northumbria and East Anglia strongly resisted the takeover. An alliance of resistance forces coalesced in East Anglia, including local forces, Northumbrians and Danes, all under the leadership of Hereward the Wake. They were able to keep the invading Normans out of East Anglia because of the strong Eastern Frontier. Most famously, they defeated an attempted Norman invasion at Aldreth in 1071. Their resistance along the Eastern Frontier was undone, not by frontal assault but by back-door politics. The Danish Army, which had joined Hereward had attacked Peterborough Abbey and made off with most of their riches. The Normans were then guided into Ely, Hereward’s headquarters, by a guide from Peterborough, taking the resistance in the flank and utterly destroying them. Hereward disappears from the historical record so it is not clear whether he was slain in battle or escaped into exile. William of Normandy’s triumph did not end the story of the Eastern Frontier as a defensive boundary, because rebellions and rivalries continued. Rebels against King John and rival powers in the time of Stephen and Matilda fought across the Eastern Frontier and also added new defences to reinforce it. One of the most notable is Burwell Castle, built in 1143CE by Stephen to enable him to control, then attack Geoffrey de Mandeville, who supported Matilda. Geoffrey de Mandeville had, like Hereward before him, used the Eastern Frontier to defend a territory around Ely. His campaign was short-lived because he was fatally injured attacking Burwell Castle whilst it was still under construction.

Early Modern Military Manoeuvres

The Eastern Frontier continued as a line of demarcation between rival powers in the late mediaeval and early modern periods but it was not refortified until the First English Civil War of the 1640s. During this long and bloody conflict, King Charles I made his Royal capital and headquarters at Oxford, in the heart of England. Although conveniently situated at the centre of friendly territory, yet within striking distance of London, it was a very long way from the sea. Access to the sea was crucial to the King’s strategy as he heavily relied on shipments of arms from abroad. When the war began in 1642, the Queen travelled from England to the Netherlands and purchased arms and armour for the King’s Army. Transporting it to Oxford proved to be an enormous challenge as no suitable ports were in Royalist possession. Oxford is of course on the Thames, but London was the Parliamentarian capital. A promising route from the East suddenly looked possible when the people of King’s Lynn swapped sides from Parliamentarian to Royalist. This raised the possibility of transporting the arms shipment via the Great Ouse system to Northamptonshire, leaving a short overland journey to Oxford. The Parliamentarian forces moved fast to block this route, both by besieging King’s Lynn and by refortifying the Eastern Frontier. A new sconce, which is an artillery fort, was constructed where the newly cut Bedford River met the Great Ouse at Earith. This very effectively put a cork in the bottle, preventing any arms shipments from King’s Lynn or a Royalist relief force marching to raise the siege. A sconce is a star-shaped fort built from earth, rather than stone or wood. The earth banks are sloped to deflect and absorb attacking artillery fire and the built-in gun emplacements are designed to give interlocking fields of fire. Just like Palmerston’s forts of the C19thCE, the Earith sconce was a white elephant. King’s Lynn soon fell to the forces of Parliament and it remained in their hands for the duration of hostilities. Following the end of the English Civil Wars, the Eastern Frontier slumbered once more because focus had shifted to rivalries with the Netherlands and France, who faced the Southern Frontier.

World Wars One, Two and Three!

More than two centuries of rivalry with France ended with the L’Entente Cordiale of 1904. Together, Britain and France faced a rising power from the East, the newly unified German Empire. The Great War may have been sparked by a shot in Sarajevo but it had been looming for more than a decade. Both sides knew this and had been making preparations. In Britain, a series of military exercises in the 1910s acted as dress rehearsals for the rapidly approaching war. In the largest of these, held in September 1912, the Red attacking force landed in North Norfolk with a mission to march on London and seize the capital. The defending Blue force was tasked with finding, intercepting and stopping the attack. Imaging a war game, not played on a computer or table top. But for real, with men, horses and aircraft across the fields of East Anglia. Once more the Eastern Frontier became vital in the defence of the nation. The only route open to the attacking Red force was to march their army across the chalk ridge by Newmarket into the heart of England, just as Boudica had done two millennia earlier. The defending Blue force was successful in intercepting the Red force and finally halted them on the Eastern frontier. The dust had barely settled upon the Great War when an Austrian Corporal’s mania made war inevitable once more. Lessons had been learned from the Great War and France had prepared for conflict by fortifying her Eastern Frontier. The main threat to Britain was thought to be, once more, from across the North Sea. Nazi forces could land in East Anglia and quickly march to London. At that stage, nobody in the War Office anticipated that France would fall in a few days in 1940, placing Nazi forces only a few miles from Dover. The War Office theorised that the newly mechanised armies of Europe would fight wars of rapid manoeuvre, rather than the muddy siege of the Great War. To buy time for the home army, a series of stop lines were constructed across the East and South of Britain. These were designed to slow any attacking Nazi force, allowing the home army to intercept and halt the attack. The main stop line was called GHQ, and ran the length of the Eastern seaboard from the Forth to the Thames. The Eastern Frontier was an essential link in this chain. The old frontier was reinforced with pill boxes and gun emplacements. One was even situated within the Civil War sconce at Earith. Thankfully, the Eastern Frontier never had to stop a Nazi invasion, but the pillboxes remain in the fields of Cambridgeshire. Just as the Swastika fell from the Reichstag in May 1945, an Iron Curtain fell across Europe. World War Two marched straight into the Cold War and the Eastern Frontier remained as the front line. The new defences were not rivers and earth banks but concrete runways hosting the US Air Force. The Three-base area is based along the Eastern Frontier, and every day US aircraft take off to patrol the Poland-Ukraine border. The Cold War is now a hot and brutal war with Eastern Frontier forces in the firing line.

Based on talks given by Matthew Ward Hunter, HistoryNeedsYou.com, during 2023, as part of Fenland Natural Heroes (and Villains!), sub project of New Life on the Old West.

Copyright Matthew Ward Hunter, HistoryNeedsYou.com, 2023. All rights reserved.