Body of a mighty giant

Matt Salusbury and Tim-Holt Wilson (UK) “The Wonder of Our Times: Being the True and Exactly Relation of the Body of a Mighty giant dig’d up at Brockford Bridge neer Ipswich in the county of Suffolk.” That’s the title of a printed pamphlet from 1651, now in the Thomason Collection of the British Library (Ref 1). It was written in the form of a letter from “I.G.” to his brother in London, updating him on “the town of his nativity” (Ipswich). It describes a skeleton found by workmen digging in the “gravelly way”. Brockford is a hamlet in the parish of Wetheringsett, located on the A140 road (grid reference TM117669) about 15 miles north of Ipswich (Figs. 1 and 2). It is not exactly “neer” (near) the town in seventeenth century terms – in those days it would have been the best part of half a day’s ride on horseback. It’s unlikely that “I.G.” travelled all the way from Ipswich to Brockford to see what the pamphlet called “The Wonder of the Age” for himself; he probably relied on descriptions he received in letters. The pamphlet refers to a John Vice as having found the bones, so the account is second-hand, at least. Fig. 1. The Brockford area shown on Hodskinson’s map of Suffolk, 1783. It is crossed in a north-south direction by a turnpike (the modern A140) and diagonally by a lane between Mendlesham and Thorndon. (Image by kind permission of David Yaxley – ‘Hodsksinson’s Map of Suffolk in … Read More