The Martyrdom of St Edmund and the Wolf

Hoxne: a martyred king, a head lost in the woods, and a wolf that would not let anyone else touch it.

Tradition says King Edmund was taken by the Danes at Hoxne, tied to an oak, shot through with arrows and beheaded. His head was thrown into the woods. His followers searched for it, calling out, and heard a voice answering 'here, here, here'. They found the head lying between the paws of a great grey wolf that guarded it unharmed. When head and body were laid together they joined again. The oak where he died was said to stand in a field at Hoxne. When an ancient oak there fell in 1848, an old arrowhead was reportedly found in its trunk, and a stone cross now marks the spot.