There might now be a Duke and Duchess of East Anglia, rather than Sussex, if Meghan's aristocratic ancestry had been known earlier (we already have a Duke of Norfolk and an Earl of Suffolk). Don Black reveals details.

Nettlestead's humble name has always meant a place where nettles grow. So few people live in the Suffolk parish that some British gazetteers ignore it altogether and list its Kent namesake instead.

In the context of a certain royal wedding last Saturday, however, our Nettlestead is significant as the home of Sir Phillip Wentworth, great-grandfather (multiplied by 15) of Meghan, wife of Prince Harry.

Professional genealogists are certain of the fact and there's no doubt either that Sir Phillip is buried under the nave of St Mary's church, Nettlestead, his tomb marked by a memorial. The inscription has gone, but the armour he wears and his sword and spurs belong to his time.

The Wentworths were lords of the manor from 1450 until 1645 and Sir Phillip lived from 1424 until 1464. He fought for King Henry VII and held several royal posts.

He was High Sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, responsible for their law and order. The brass shows rather large feet standing on a grassy mound, which might symbolise both job and region!

This evidence and the church itself might have been destroyed on August 12 1940 when a German bomber, returning to base after attacking nearby Ipswich, released a stick of bombs over the fields and woods of Nettlestead.

One fell in the road close to the church and badly damaged its tower, roof and contents. St Mary's stayed derelict for 10 years.

A heated meeting in 1949 decided that it should be restored and the church was reopened on November 5 1950. The work was sympathetically done and the church is open daily with a perpetual flower festival.

The old hall of the Wentworth family has long been replaced and only an archway remains. It moved the Woodbridge poet Bernard Barton to write:

'Thou art noble yet, for thy ruins recall

The remembrance of vanished glory;

And time, which has levelled the ancient hall,

Still spares thee to tell its story.'

His classical style contrasts with that of a modern Suffolk poet, Gillian Bence-Jones of Nacton, whose ancestors crossed paths many times with the Wentworths.

The Suffolk recorded history of both families begins in parishes on tributaries of the River Gipping, hers near its mid-Suffolk source and the Wentworths shortly before the Gipping changes its name to Orwell.

Making tracks there on Saturday proved quite a challenge for me, for we had spent hours enjoying the happenings at Windsor on television, then needed to negotiate the narrow lines of Nettlestead before afternoon tea at Nacton to see Gillian's new book, Yachtsman's Cottage.

We noticed changes since we were last there. Firstly there were sheep grazing on her larger-than-average front lawn. Clearly every blade of grass earns its keep.

Secondly, we shared our late arrival with the Rev Canon Ian Wilson, busy in his eight parishes of the new Orwell-Deben benefice instead of his predecessor's two. Gillian, as she prefers to be known, forgave us and put the kettle on again.

Yachtsman's Cottage itself, subject of her first poem in the book, is an idyll under thatch opposite Pin Mill, which used to be the home of commercial sailing barges that plied the East Coast.

Final poem Sound the Trumpet, on the other hand, is a limerick that takes us across the Atlantic:

'There was an old man of New York

Who was never too reluctant to talk.

His boasting and sentiment

Made him the President

But some people wished he would walk.'

Gillian foresaw the marriage of Harry and Mark when she wrote Wedding Bells:

'As the bluebells

Turn the world

So the sky is living green

And the earth is blue,

Getting married

Alters the view.'

Subsequent verses lead charmingly to discovering true love among the bluebells. Gillian has always been candid about her family's creativity as well as its financial decisions that, with benefit of hindsight, look unfortunate.

Her Pretyman ancestors farmed land at Old Newton and Bacton at least from from 1361. Much later, renamed Tomline (for reasons of inheritance), they owned much of the Felixstowe peninsula.

Their complex pedigrees came together in Gill's great-great-great grandfather George Pretyman Tomline, who was born at Bury St Edmunds and became Bishop of Winchester.

She's a fervent Anglican. Her marriage to Mark Bence-Jones, a devout Roman Catholic from Ireland, raised doubts among relatives and friends.

But, from the time they met in Suffolk until his death just short of his 80th birthday, they adored each other and co-operated in their writing. They both wrote books, his mainly on Irelan and the aristocracy, hers mainly on small places in Suffolk.

She and son Nicholas lease a thousand acres from Trinity College, Cambridge, for their Home Farm. All and more had originally belonged to the family but Winston Churchill as well.

Depression in the early 1930s reduced the price of East Anglian farmland to as little as £5 an acre, if one could find a buyer. The market sank so low that Gillian's maternal grandfather, the second Lord Cranworth, described land as a liability, not an asset.

Trinity College, Cambridge, bought the 3,795-acre Trimley Estate for £25 an acre. It includes marshes subject to flooding.

But there was soon to be a joyful event. A son having been 'ordered', Gillian arrived in 1934 to turn into a worthy heiress.

Orwell Park mansion, though, remained a heavy financial burden. An architect was called in to see if Victorian additions could be pulled down, leaving a Georgian core and an observatory.

The place was so well built that even partial demolition would have been expensive. Fortunately the entire buildings were sold in 1936 to be a school.

In 1951 Gordon Parker, from Stoke Ferry in Norfolk, bought Felixstowe Dock for £50,000 to serve his agricultural business, as Wells proving too shallow for his growing exports of barley. Who could have foreseen that Felixstowe would become a world port?

I must admit that royalty is more interesting than millions of cargo containers. When King George V and Queen Mary stayed at Orwell Park in 1923 they brought so many servants and friends that some had to be farmed out to Nacton village.

Not all royal visits to Nacton were altogether happy. When King Edward VIII opened Ipswich airport there in 1936, Gillian's mother recalled, he was badly behaved.

She asked one of his aides, whom she knew well, what the matter was. 'He's been in terrible temper all day,' the aide sighed. 'His girlfriend has been blackballed by Frinton golf club and he's furious about it.'

Mrs Pretyman: 'Lady Furness?'

The aide: 'No, a rather boring American called Mrs Simpson.'

What happened next led eventually to Princess Elizabeth becoming our Queen. Gillian remembers that event in the last verse of a poem entitled Princess Charlotte:

'A courtier came, and she was queen.

But our princess, may she be seen

As mortal and magical. May it be her fate

To be useful, joyful and fortunate.'

Yachtsman's Cottage, £8, is available from the publisher, taylorderek201@aol.com, or from Amazon.

St Mary's Church, Nettlestead, by Roy Tricker, £1 at the church.