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Dunwich has a storied history in the British House of Commons. It was a truly gerrymandered seat for several hundred years after the city could no longer be called more than a village. I haven't read up on this in a long time, until the rising power of Industrialists forced a House of Lords reform through in 1832 to eliminate the rotten boroughs. Effectively, the House of Lords and other Agriculturist old line powers used it to maintain influence in the House of Commons for a few centuries. Stripped The term "rotten borough": referred to a parliamentary borough or constituency in Great Britain and Ireland which, due to size and population, was "controlled" and used by a patron to exercise undue and unrepresentative influence within parliament. Rotten boroughs existed for centuries, although the term rotten borough only came into usage in the 18th century. Typically rotten boroughs were boroughs which once had been flourishing cities with remarkable population, but which had deteriorated, declined and become deserted during the centuries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunwich_%28UK_Parliament_constituency%29 (Pops)

From http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/4/7/4/14742/14742.htm (Pops):

One of the greatest prizes of the sea is the ancient city of Dunwich, which dates back to the Roman era. The Domesday Survey shows that it was then a considerable town having 236 burgesses. It was girt with strong walls; it possessed an episcopal palace, the seat of the East Anglian bishopric; it had (so Stow asserts) fifty-two churches, a monastery, brazen gates, a town hall, hospitals, and the dignity of possessing a mint. Stow tells of its departed glories, its royal and episcopal palaces, the sumptuous mansion of the mayor, its numerous churches and its windmills, its harbour crowded with shipping, which sent forth forty vessels for the king's service in the thirteenth century. Though Dunwich was an important place, Stow's description of it is rather exaggerated. It could never have had more than ten churches and monasteries. Its "brazen gates" are mythical, though it had its Lepers' Gate, South Gate, and others. It was once a thriving city of wealthy merchants and industrious fishermen. King John granted to it a charter. It suffered from the attacks of armed men as well as from the ravages of the sea. Earl Bigot and the revolting barons besieged it in the reign of Edward I. Its decay was gradual. In 1342, in the parish of St. Nicholas, out of three hundred houses only eighteen remained. Only seven out of a hundred houses were standing in the parish of St. Martin. St. Peter's parish was devastated and depopulated. It had a small round church, like that at Cambridge, called the Temple, once the property of the Knights Templars, richly endowed with costly gifts. This was a place of sanctuary, as were the other churches in the city. With the destruction of the houses came also the decay of the port which no ships could enter. Its rival, Southwold, attracted the vessels of strangers. The markets and fairs were deserted. Silence and ruin reigned over the doomed town, and the ruined church of All Saints is all that remains of its former glories, save what the storms sometimes toss along the beach for the study and edification of antiquaries.

I'm amazed I remembered all this from a Anglosphere history course I took 9 years ago.