MysteryFamous
Drowned Bells of Dunwich
Eight churches lost to the sea, still ringing.
Stand where it happened
- What's there
- Friary ruins above a crumbling cliff
- Legend from
- Medieval loss, later legend
- Tone
- Eerie
Dunwich: once a great port with eight churches. Now there is a beach, a ruin, and, at certain tides, bells beneath the sea.
Dunwich was once one of the great ports of England, with eight churches, but storms from 1286 onward and centuries of erosion swept most of it into the North Sea. All Saints, the last of its old churches, was abandoned in the 1750s and fell over the cliff piece by piece in the early twentieth century. Only the ruins of the Greyfriars friary and the leper hospital remain on land. A popular local legend says that at certain tides the bells of the drowned churches can still be heard ringing from beneath the waves.
One sourceOnly one written account of this legend has been found so far.