East Anglia is an area in the East of England. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a tribe that originated in Angeln, northern Germany. Today it is legally defined as a NUTS 2 statistical region, comprising the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, including the city of Peterborough unitary authority area.

History

The kingdom of East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of the East Anglian princess Etheldreda, the Isle of Ely also became part of the kingdom.

The kingdom of the East Angles, formed about the year 520 by the merging of the North and the South Folk (Angles who had settled in the former lands of the Iceni during the previous century), was one of the seven Anglo-Saxon heptarchy kingdoms (as defined in the 12th century writings of Henry of Huntingdon). For a brief period following a victory over the rival kingdom of Northumbria around the year 616, East Anglia was the most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England, and its King Raedwald was Bretwalda (overlord of the Anglo-Saxons kingdoms). But this did not last: over the next forty years, East Anglia was defeated by the Mercians twice, and it continued to weaken relative to the other kingdoms until in 794, Offa of Mercia had its king Æthelberht killed and took control of the kingdom himself.

The streamlined East Anglian service of the London and North Eastern Railway was introduced in Autumn 1937, soon after the Coronation and the West Riding Limited, but differed from those – and from the Silver Jubilee of 1935 – in several respects. It did not use new Class A4 4-6-2 locomotives but instead existing Class B17 4-6-0s were given a streamlined casing; although new carriages were built, these were neither articulated nor streamlined; there was no special livery; it ran at speeds not much greater than those achieved by existing expresses on the Norwich line; and there was no supplementary fare.

Locomotives