Archaeological finds point to habitation in the area from the Neolithic Age (2500–1700 BCE). A ritual site was found while excavations were made for the
East Anglia Array, a wind farm at Seven Springs Field. The area was occupied by the Romans for 300 years after Queen
Boudica's failed rebellion in 59 CE, but there is little evidence of their presence. After the Roman forces were recalled to Rome in 410 CE, substantial Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) settlement ensued. The Angles gave their name to East Anglia.
King Rædwald of
East Anglia was
Bretwalda, the most powerful king in England in the early 7th century. He died in about 624 CE and is often associated with the burial at
Sutton Hoo, across the River Deben from Woodbridge. The burial ship is long. The treasures discovered there in 1939 were the richest finds ever on British soil. They are held now in the
British Museum in London, but replicas of some items and the story of the finds can be seen in the Woodbridge Museum. The National Trust has built a visitor centre on the site. The earliest record of Woodbridge as such dates from the mid-10th century, when it was acquired by St
Aethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, as part of the endowment of a
monastery he helped to refound at
Ely, Cambridgeshire in 970. The Domesday Book of 1086 describes Woodbridge as part of
Loes Hundred with 35 households, i.e. one of the largest 20 per cent of settlements recorded. Much of Woodbridge was granted to the powerful
Bigod family, who built the castle at
Framlingham. The town has been a centre for
boatbuilding,
rope-making and
sail-making since the
Middle Ages.
Edward III and Sir
Francis Drake had fighting ships built in Woodbridge. The town suffered in the plague of 1349, but recovered enough, with encouragement from the Canons and growing general prosperity, to have a new church (St Mary's, behind the buildings on the south side of Market Hill) built of limestone from
the Wash and decorated with
Thetford flint. By the mid-15th century the Brews family had added a tower and porch. On 12 October 1534, Prior Henry Bassingbourne confirmed Henry VIII's supremacy over the Church and rejected the incumbent "Roman Bishop". Nonetheless,
Woodbridge Priory was dissolved three years later. As religious unrest continued under the Roman Catholic
Queen Mary, Alexander Gooch, a weaver of Woodbridge, and Alice Driver of
Grundisburgh were burnt for heresy on
Rushmere Heath. Alice had previously had her ears cut off for likening Queen Mary to
Jezebel. Subsequent religious settlement under Elizabeth I helped Woodbridge industries such as weaving, sail-cloth manufacture, rope-making and salt making to prosper, along with the wool trade. The port was enlarged, and shipbuilding and the timber trade became lucrative, so that a customs house was established in 1589. The town has various buildings of the
Tudor,
Georgian,
Regency and
Victorian periods, and a
tide mill in working order, one of only two in the UK and among the earliest. The mill first recorded on the site in 1170 was run by
Augustinian canons. In 1536 it passed to King
Henry VIII. In 1564, Queen
Elizabeth I granted the mill and the priory to
Thomas Seckford, who in 1577 founded
Woodbridge School and the
Seckford Almshouses for the poor of Woodbridge. Two
windmills survive,
Buttrum's Mill, and
Tricker's Mill, of which Buttrum's is open to the public. In 1943, the
Royal Air Force (RAF) built a
military airfield east of Woodbridge.
RAF Woodbridge was used during the
Cold War by the
United States Air Force as the base for two Tactical Fighter Squadrons until 1993. ==Governance==