Yet Dunwich, However Ruined, Retains Some Share Of Trade, As
Particularly For The Shipping Of Butter, Cheese, And Corn, Which
Is
so great a business in this county, that it employs a great many
people and ships also; and this
Port lies right against the
particular part of the county for butter, as Framlingham, Halstead,
etc. Also a very great quantity of corn is bought up hereabout for
the London market; for I shall still touch that point how all the
counties in England contribute something towards the subsistence of
the great city of London, of which the butter here is a very
considerable article; as also coarse cheese, which I mentioned
before, used chiefly for the king's ships.
Hereabouts they begin to talk of herrings and the fishery; and we
find in the ancient records that this town, which was then equal to
a large city, paid, among other tribute to the government, fifty
thousand of herrings. Here also, and at Swole, or Southole, the
next seaport, they cure sprats in the same manner as they do
herrings at Yarmouth; that is to say, speaking in their own
language, they make red sprats; or to speak good English, they make
sprats red.
It is remarkable that this town is now so much washed away by the
sea, that what little trade they have is carried on by Walderswick,
a little town near Swole, the vessels coming in there, because the
ruins of Dunwich make the shore there unsafe and uneasy to the
boats; from whence the northern coasting seamen a rude verse of
their own using, and I suppose of their own making, as follows,
"Swoul and Dunwich, and Walderswick,
All go in at one lousie creek."
This "lousie creek," in short, is a little river at Swoul, which
our late famous atlas-maker calls a good harbour for ships, and
rendezvous of the royal navy; but that by-the-bye; the author, it
seems, knew no better.
From Dunwich we came to Southwold, the town above-named: this is a
small port town upon the coast, at the mouth of a little river
called the Blith. I found no business the people here were
employed in but the fishery, as above, for herrings and sprats,
which they cure by the help of smoke, as they do at Yarmouth.
There is but one church in this town, but it is a very large one
and well built, as most of the churches in this county are, and of
impenetrable flint; indeed, there is no occasion for its being so
large, for staying there one Sabbath day, I was surprised to see an
extraordinary large church, capable of receiving five or six
thousand people, and but twenty-seven in it besides the parson and
the clerk; but at the same time the meeting-house of the Dissenters
was full to the very doors, having, as I guessed, from six to eight
hundred people in it.
This town is made famous for a very great engagement at sea, in the
year 1672, between the English and Dutch fleets, in the bay
opposite to the town, in which, not to be partial to ourselves, the
English fleet was worsted; and the brave Montague, Earl of
Sandwich, Admiral under the Duke of York, lost his life.
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