ALDEBURGH IN ROMAN AND SAXON TIMES

Alde burh is a Saxon name meaning "old defended enclosure". This suggests that when the Saxons came they found the remains of an old - Roman - settlement at the mouth of the river and took over the site for themselves. There are no written records but archaeology supports this theory and it is now thought that in the second century there may have been a Roman port at the river mouth and another small Roman settlement three miles along the North bank of the river at Barber's Point.

The existence of a small Saxon trading post now under the sea, seems highly probable; "Slaughting" (Slaughden) is a Saxon name.
By Saxon times the river was narrower but still navigable by large craft as far as Snape.
Excavations at Barber's Point have uncovered both Romano-British pottery and evidence of a later Saxon settlement.

The possible coast in Roman times (c200AD) is shown in the picture to the right. The sea would have been further from the present shoreline and  the Alde a wide estuary.

At Snape cross roads the Anglo-Saxons used the site of a much earlier Bronze Age burial place for their cemetery.

Beneath one of the mounds at Snape was found the imprint of an Anglo Saxon clinker built boat, used perhaps for a royal burial. With it were a beautiful gold ring, set with a re-used Roman intaglio and the fragments of a glass claw beaker.