Genetic analysis of a pre-Norman skull unearthed in a garden in Hoxne, Suffolk, has added to a growing body of evidence that East Anglia may have been the epicentre of an epidemic of leprosy that spread through medieval England. A strain of the disease may have been brought to East Anglia’s coast line through contact with Scandinavia via Anglo-Saxon movement or possibly the later sustained trade in squirrel fur, the new study suggests.