The earliest settlers of Germanic origin probably arrived in eastern England during the Roman period. The Romans recruited Anglians, Saxons and Frisians from mainland Europe to fight as auxiliaries in the north. Archaeological evidence suggests that some of them were given land in eastern England when they retired. Some cremation cemeteries, such as Caistor-by-Norwich and Spong Hill in Norfolk, may represent a continuity of occupation from the end of Roman Britain.

According to the 8th-century historian Bede, the Angles arrived in Britain during the early 5th century. Probably originally from an area between southern Denmark and northern Germany, these people settled in two main areas: the ‘Middle Angles’ established their kingdom in modern Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire; the ‘East Angles’ settled in Norfolk and Suffolk.

The early Anglo-Saxons built entirely in wood, making evidence for their buildings hard to find today, although traces of a whole settlement of houses has been discovered (and reconstructed) at West Stow in Suffolk. As elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon England, archaeological evidence of these early settlers comes mainly from pagan cemeteries, which are thickly scattered in East Anglia.