About the town » Rendlesham, Suffolk, England, Great Britain

Rendlesham, near Woodbridge, Suffolk was a royal centre of authority for the king of the East Anglians, of the Wuffinga line; the proximity of the Sutton Hoo ship burial may indicate a connection between Sutton Hoo and the East Anglian royal house. Swithhelm, son of Seaxbald, who reigned from 660 to around 664, was baptised at Rendlesham by Saint Cedd with King Aethelwald of East Anglia acting as his godfather. He died around the time of the great plague of 664 and may have been buried at the palace of Rendlesham. Its name is recorded in Old English about 730 AD as Rendlæsham, which may mean "Homestead belonging to [a man named] Rendel", or it may come from a theorized Old English word *rendel = "little shore". It was also the location of Rendlesham Hall, a large manor house demolished in 1949. More recently Rendlesham was the site of the Rendlesham Forest Incident, a series of reported sightings of unexplained pulsing lights off the coast of Orford Ness in December 1980.