It is bordered by Norfolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Essex to the south, and Cambridgeshire to the west. Ipswich is the largest settlement and the county town.
The county has an area of 3, km 2 1, sq mi and a population of , After Ipswich , in the south, the largest towns are Lowestoft 73, in the northeast and Bury St Edmunds 40, in the west. Suffolk contains five local government districts , which are part of a two-tier non-metropolitan county administered by Suffolk County Council.
Large parts of the coast are backed by heath and wetland habitats, such as Sandlings. Inland, the landscape is flat and gently undulating, and contains part of Thetford Forest on the Norfolk border and Dedham Vale National Landscape on the Essex border. It is also known for its extensive farming and has largely arable land.
Newmarket is known for horse racing , and Felixstowe is one of the largest container ports in Europe. The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Suffolk, and East Anglia generally, occurred on a large scale, [ 6 ] possibly following a period of depopulation by the previous inhabitants, the Romanised descendants of the Iceni.
The Anglo-Saxon inhabitants later became the "north folk" and the "south folk", from which developed the names "Norfolk" and "Suffolk".
