Exning is a village in Suffolk, 2 miles north-east of Newmarket, 11 miles south-east of Ely, 14 miles east of Cambridge and 14 miles west of Bury St Edmunds. Its name may go back to the Celtic Iceni (pronounced Ikeni) tribe, who lived in what became Norfolk and North Suffolk. They may be recalled by other place-names on their southern border like the local Icknield Way, Ickworth and Ixworth, and Iken on the Suffolk coast. Exning too may have been a centre for the Iceni, famous for Queen Boudicca, who in the first century AD fought back against the sadistic Romans.
Whatever its origin, by the seventh century Exning was a well-fortified, strategic location. From the north it was protected by the low-lying, swampy fenlands and from the south by the low hills and then the forests and rivers of southern East Anglia. In the gap from the west it was protected by a huge manmade earthwork, today known as the ‘Devils Dyke’, though originally called ‘the Great Ditch’. This defensive earthwork, seven miles long, was built some time in the mid-sixth century as a border wall to protect the East Anglians from peoples to the west.
The Apostle of East Anglia, now Suffolk, Norfolk and eastern Cambridgeshire, is St Felix. Coming from Burgundy in Gaul (France) in 633, he sailed to Canterbury and then across to the Roman fortress by Felixstowe, which is named after him – ‘stowe’ means monastery – to enlighten the pagans. He opened his activities by setting up churches and monasteries near royal halls. One of these was in Rendlesham, upriver from the monastery in Felixstowe in the south-east, another was in Blythburgh, near the port of Dunwich, and to the north-east in Loddon and Reedham.
Around the coast, o the north-west of East Anglia there was another mission centre in Babingley and in the south-west was another in Soham and nearby in the stronghold of Exning. Here there was another royal hall located by the strategic border of East Anglia and it was here that Bishop Felix baptised the King of the East Angles, Anna, and his family. All of them, Jurmin of Blythburgh (+ 653), Audrey (Etheldreda) of Ely (+ 679), Saxburgh of Ely (+ 700), Wendred of March (?) and probably a grand-daughter, Withburgh of Dereham (+ 743), were to become saints.
Even today there is a holy well named after St Wendred in Exning (and also a road) and its water was famed locally among believers for its healing powers. Nobody can remember it freezing over, nor can anybody remember it drying up. It was in the water of this well that Wendred, Audrey and their siblings were baptised. It would seem certain that the original church in Exning was founded by Bishop Felix. Indeed, that church has always been dedicated to St Martin of Tours, who was much venerated by Bishop Felix and throughout Gaul, as well as in Canterbury.
Only in the early thirteenth century was Exning taken over in importance by a ‘new market’, what is now the town of Newmarket, first recorded in 1228, just to the south. The importance of this ‘new market’ may have come about as the result of the many pilgrims who came walking from London by the Icknield Way, whose route is now followed by the A11. They were heading for the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in north-west Norfolk, where the Mother of God had appeared to Edith the Fair in 1061, warning of hardships to come under the Norman Yoke.