Eye | |
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Eye Town Hall |
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Eye shown within Suffolk | |
Population | 2,154 (2011) |
OS grid reference | TM144739 |
District | |
Shire county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | EYE |
Postcode district | IP23 |
Dialling code | 01379 |
Police | Suffolk |
Fire | Suffolk |
Ambulance | East of England |
EU Parliament | East of England |
UK Parliament | |
Eye is a small market town in the north of the English county of Suffolk. The town is around 4 miles (6.4 km) south of Diss, 17.5 miles (28.2 km) north of Ipswich and 23 miles (37 km) southwest of Norwich. It lies close to the River Waveney which forms the border with Norfolk and is on the River Dove. Eye is twinned with the town of Pouzauges in the Vendée Department of France.
The town of Eye derives its name from the Old English word for 'island' and it is believed that the first settlement on the site would have been almost entirely surrounded by water and marshland formed by the River Dove and its tributaries. The area is still prone to flooding in areas close to the River Dove.
There have been Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age finds in and around Eye but the earliest evidence of settlement in the town dates from the Roman period and includes buildings and coins dated circa 365. A large Anglo-Saxon cemetery including many urned cremations and some furnished inhumations, in use during the 6th century, was excavated near the Waterloo Plantation, Eye, in 1818.
In 1781 some labourers unearthed a lead box by the river at Clint Farm in Eye, 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Scole and 2 miles (3.2 km) south–west of Hoxne. The box contained about 600 Roman gold coins dating to the reigns of Valens and Valentinian I (reigned 364–375), Gratian (375–383), Theodosius I (378–395), Arcadius (395–408), and Honorius (393–423). This was the largest hoard of Roman gold coins ever discovered in Britain, similar in content to the Hoxne Hoard.