St Gregory’s Church at Rendlesham is a good place to consider some of the current evidence for the site of the Wuffing royal hall and church at Rendlesham. Bede mentions it in his account of the baptism there, around the year 660, of the East Saxon king Swiðhelm at the hands of St Cedd, with Rædwald’s nephew King Æþelwald standing as his godfather (Historia Ecclesiastica, III, 22).
 

The work of Rupert Bruce-Mitford ("Saxon Rendlesham" in Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology [London 1974], pp.73-113), Norman Scarfe (The Suffolk Landscape [London 1972], pp.89-90, 103) and the recent fieldwork survey by John Newman ("The Late Roman and Anglo-Saxon Settlement Patterns in the Sandlings of Suffolk", The Age of Sutton Hoo, ed. M.Carver [Boydell 1992], pp.36-38) suggests that King Æþelwald’s royal church may have been a former royal temple, perhaps even the famous temple of the two altars described by Bede in his account of the baptism of King Rædwald (Historia Ecclesiastica, II, 15).

A well-built royal temple is likely to have been consecrated for Christian use in line with the policy for the conversion of the English specified by St Gregory (Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, I, 30). It is possible that the present later medieval church of St Gregory stands on the site of this temple. The royal hall itself may have stood a little to the north, where Naunton Hall now stands [as shown on the map provided]. However, a location for the main hall to the south, where Eyke Church now stands, cannot be ruled out, as Peter Warner has since argued in his book (The Origins of Suffolk [Manchester 1996], pp.115-118).
 

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