Categories: Tourism | October 23rd, 2010 | by mark | no comments
Happisburgh (bus.pub) – East Ruston (bus. pub) – Honing (bus) – Briggate (bus) – Worstead (bus.pub) 7.4 miles or 11.84 km
52” 41’ 58.56 N 1” 24’ 46.13 E O.S. Landranger 133 Google Maps Camping
When you want to leave Happisburgh ride south along the main street, bearing right at the end for Happisburgh Common and Honing. Again you are in an ancient landscape that you can’t see, for crop marks show the fields around you have been cultivated for centuries in the past, possibly in Iron Age and Roman times and certainly in the medieval period. In fact before you reach the main road (B1159) there are suggestions of an early Saxon settlement of grubenhauser, houses built half underground. You can just see the old Saxons coming ashore soaking wet and saying By Woden, its cold, lets get out of the wind! Cross the road and head for East Ruston where you will come across the Butchers Arms pub on the left. Nice pub this of 16th century origin and once composed of some cottages and a butchers shop. It was, appropriately, run by the Rump family between 1925 and 1947.
Follow the road past the pub and you soon enter some marshy woodland. This is not what it seems. What you ride over now, may have been Honing Broad, one of the Norfolk Broads that has silted up. Nowadays most people know that the Broads are not natural but ancient peat diggings that were flooded, most likely in the 14th century. This one seems to have been reclaimed by the land. On an estate map of the early 18th century several areas of water are still shown while in Faden’s, at the end of that century there is still a large pond or pool. Now all that remains is marshy woodland. Next we come to Honing, a small but attractive village after which we bear left for Worstead and Brigate and past Honing’s SS Peter & Paul church on a hill on the right.
Just before you get to the village of Brigate you cross what looks like the ruins of canal lock. It is, for this was the North Walsham and Diham canal, built in 1826 and finally abandoned in 1927 although its value had fallen to £600 (from cost of over £40,000) by 1885 when it was sold for that sum and the company solicitor absconded with the funds. Like the Bure Navigation we have already visited, it prospered only for that short period before the railway age put canals out of business. Go through Briggate and you arrive at the A149, which is busy, so be careful crossing. Then it’s a short ride into a village that was once a town and gave its name to the English language.
I had ridden through Worstead many times over the years and had called into the pub one summer evening to be told that it had once been the biggest village in Norfolk, and that worsted cloth had been invented there. On my most recent visit I bought a booklet at the same pub, which together with my other usual sources, showed this to be, like most historical statements made in pubs, completely untrue. But to start, what is a worsted, and how does it differ from a woollen? I have now read a lot about this and am little wiser than I was before. But as I understand it, the difference is, while woollens are made from yarn made of staples of different lengths and going in different directions, worsted yarn is made from long pieces of wool, which have been combed in the same direction. Cloth woven from worsted yarns are smoother and heavier while that from woollens are rougher and warmer, because more air gets trapped in the unruly fibres. Our old friend William Paston (1378-1444) would write “I shall make my doublet all worsted for the glory of Norfolk.”
But this process was not invented in Worstead. It was known in antiquity. The Romans called it trita and probably introduced it to Britain. There seems to be a lot of Roman activity in this part of Norfolk. Unfortunately we have no means of knowing if trita making was one. England had to await the arrival of the Normans, a very sartorially conscious lot, who had been used to getting their worsteds from the Flemish. It seems that Flemish weavers began to arrive very early on. Sources vary as to a date, but one says intriguingly that in the Low Countries worsteds were known as ostades, so possibly they owe nothing to Worstead for their name.
The English economy at this time was based on wool, and so nobody forgot, the Lord Chancellor was given a woolsack to sit on, which I suppose might have been a com
ment on where they thought his brains were. Richard I’s ransom was paid in wool. The Lincolnshire wolds, the Cotswolds, Salisbury Plain and East Anglia provided grazing for vast flocks of sheep and the prosperous cities of the Low Countries and northern Italy were a ready market for their wool. The Hundred Years War was paid for largely by tax on this trade but this encouraged the producers to export less and think about added value. Then the Black Death arrived and halved the labour force, indigenous incomes rose and all these factors militated towards the birth of a local spinning, dying and weaving industry. These in turn produced new classes of people and a lot more local wealth, much of which pored into church building.
And St Mary’s Worstead is definitely a wool church. There are two conflicting stories here: one says there was another church in the village dedicated to St Andrew but that it was destroyed during the Reformation. Another says that St Mary’s was built on the site of an older St Andrew’s. The village sign still features a St Andrew’s cr
oss. St Mary was built in two stages; first in the early 14th century with the clerestory and hammer beam roof added a century later. It is a lovely church with all sorts of interesting things to see, most of all the rood screen. Although this has been badly restored it does feature some interesting folk, among them St.Wilgefortis, who may be here as a compliment to the Flemish, as she was popular over there, and St William of Norwich, who the guide book coyly says was a saintly boy who was murdered in Thorpe wood in 1144. In fact the story is more sinister. The murder was blamed on the local Jews and riots followed.
Weaving of woollens, worsteds and linen was the principal industry of Norfolk for hundreds of years and was widespread, in the case of the wool-based weavers, in the east and centre of the county. Norwich was the heart, but a heavy concentration existed between the towns of Aylsham, North Walsham and Worstead, and Worstead was a town in those days, for it had a market from 1336 to 1666. Given that most of the weavers’ cottages would have been wattle and daub, it is difficult to say how big it was but locals suggest it went out to the surrounding villages now ending in -gate (street) which would have made it quite the size of contemporary Aylsham or Walsham. Indeed, in 1449, the parish paid more tax than Walsham. I don’t envisage a town in the modern sense, but a huge straggle of cottages following all the roads out in all directions. Today the centre could easily be that of a prosperous market town if you didn’t know that fields lay behind the lovely 17th and 18th century houses that surround Church Plain.
But you were seeing something else with the flourishing of this industry apart from the appearance of new wool towns. You were seeing a huge social change. Eastern Norfolk had always had a disproportional number of free men and the labour shortage caused by the Black Death accelerated the collapse of the feudal system. There was a sellers market in labour and no number of royal ordinances capping wages would work. Attempts to introduce a pole tax provoked rebellion. Wat Tyler’s lieutenant in Norfolk during the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt was one Geoffrey – some say John – (the Dyer) Litester and he came from Worstead. So successful was he that he took Norwich and became known as the King of the Commons, before he was finally defeated in a battle to the north west of his birthplace and hanged in a corn field, which in now just the other side of the railway line. But the tradition would live on and during the Civil War, the weavers and dyers would continue to be a fertile ground for progressive thought and religious non-conformity until the collapse of their industry.
This certainly isn’t the case now at St Mary’s, which is just as well, because the high church treatment suites the English Perpendicular much better than the Cromwellians did. It is one of the most impressive and best-kept churches in the county and full of delightful and interesting features. There are some substantial 18th century box pews, any number of inscribed slabs, a war memorial where the commemorated are pictured and the personal standard of the late Queen Mother who visited the village in 1985. There is some modern wooden statuary, including Our Lady of Walsingham, St Christopher with a couple of children in slacks and jerseys but best of all, a working hand loom.
Goodness knows
how many pubs were in town at its heyday. By the early 19th century there were two malt houses, a brewery and four pubs, The Swan, The Kings Head, The White Horse (at Brigate) and the Sign of the Lemon. The brewery, which had once been a merchant’s house, was situated in a fine 17th century building next to the church (a drawing remains). The weavers would send their wares to Norwich on a Saturday and on Sunday their agent would return with the cash, at which point, they would repair there and have such a party that the worshippers next door complained of the noise. There is a story that, one New Year, the church bell began to toll at midnight. One of the revellers, full of Dutch courage went to investigate and was found later stone dead, his features contorted in terror! The building was demolished in 1842 and The New Inn replaced it. Even that had closed during my last visit so I just hope there will be a pub when you visit Worstead.
It was the industrial revolution, which did for the weaving industry in Norfolk, as you might expect it would. It is doubtful they saw it coming, because the 17th and 18th centuries the industry reached its height. Doomsday was the 1770s when it became obvious that the handloom could not compete in quality or price with the machine made stuffs that were coming out of Yorkshire, and that is where the industry migrated. In 1840 a Commission on Hand-Loom Weavers concluded that weaving in Norfolk was virtually dead. In 1882 John Cubitt, Worstead’s last weaver, died in his nineties. Now the handsome old buildings look out on a Church Plain as often as not deserted. But don’t get too mournful. Consider the remark of an elderly resident of Worstead after the first air raid:” My heart alive, my poor old inside is in a wuzzle this morning, an old Zepelian come over last night and dropped them insanitary booms.”
From Worstead station, about a mile to the west of the town you can go to Norwich or Cromer and Sheringham. The nearest town of any size is North Walsham that has all facilities. And it is quite an easy ride, via Swanton Abbot, to Aylsham, which bring us back onto our previous itinerary.
Categories: Tourism | October 19th, 2010 | by mark | no comments
Cromer (bus.bike/s. bike/h. accom. café. pub.rail) – Southrepps (bus.pub) - Trunch(bus. pub) - Knapton(bus) – Paston (bus) - Happisburgh (bus.pub) 15.4 miles or 24.64 km
52″ 4′ 20.99 N 1″ 34′ E OS Landranger 133 Google Maps Camping
In 1883 theatre critic Clement Scott used the new railway to visit Cromer but failed to find accommodation in town, so walked along the coast to Overstrand and Sidestrand, where he found a room at Mill House with the miller, Alfred Jermy, and his daughter Louie, who seems to have made a big impression on him. He certainly put this part of the coast on the map and coined the word Poppyland that now has several tourist and commercial applications. It first appeared in a poem he wrote in Sidestrand Churchyard. The sea has since claimed the churchyard but his happy choice of words has immortalised Clement’s lines:
On the grass of the cliff, at the edge of the steep,
God planted a garden – a garden of sleep!
‘Neath the blue of sky, in the green of the corn,
It is there that the regal red poppies are born!
Brief days of desire, and long dreams of delight,
They are mine when Poppy-Land cometh in sight.
In music of distance, with eyes that are wet,
It is there I remember, and there I forget!
O! heart of my heart! where the poppies are born,
I am waiting for thee, in the hush of the corn.
Sleep! Sleep!
From the Cliff to the Deep!
Sleep, my Poppy-Land,
Sleep!
(There is a second verse but we need to stay awake.) The area soon attracted many well-heeled London residents and a large hotel was built that the sea has also claimed. Records show that liquor licences were issued for two further inns but they were never built. For the boom of Poppyland was indefinitely postponed. Perhaps the rich investors chose warmer climes, as they had at Cromer. Perhaps it was seen that the real development of the coast was to go west from Cromer, not east. Even the name of Poppyland seems to have moved west, as with the Poppy Line to Holt. Today the area is largely residential. People still walk along the sea from Cromer to Overstrand and stop at the very good Cliff Top Café, but this area did not quite develop as Clement Scott might have foreseen, and perhaps regretted.
The coast is not ideal for the cyclist because the road doesn’t follow it, and the traffic is quite heavy. So we turn inland again, into countryside largely free from tourism. The train to Norwich passes among these quiet lanes and the view from the windows of church towers rising from fields of conveniently contrasting crop colours reminds you of a 1930s railway posters. Take the road to Overstrand towards Mundesley and turn right at the church for Northrepps and you are back in this rural idyl. It is this part of the country which brings Lilias Rider Haggard’s lines to mind:
this corner of England which once it holds your heart is more lovely than any place on earth. Beautiful with a hint of secrecy which haunts it, as the memory of a dark and tender sadness clouds the brilliance of a summer day.
It was in such countryside that a story from another friend was set. One morning his dog appeared with the dead pet rabbit of his neighbour’s daughter. Terrified of incurring his neighbour’s wrath, he hopped over the fence and installed the rabbit’s corpse in its hutch, in the hope it would be taken to have died of natural causes. Later in the pub he met the neighbour who was in a cold fury. “My daughter’s rabbit died,” he said, “ and some sick bastard has dug him up and put him back in the hutch!”
Both the churches of Northrepps and Southrepps are imposing but if you only have time for one, visit Southrepps. The road between the two is quiet and level but if yo
u want an interesting diversion go due south from Northrepps and you will pass Southern Rhodesia Memorial Avenue. This is an interesting thing to find in the Norfolk countryside and I suppose one of the few memorials to that vanished country, which used to inspire such passionate debate. The avenue itself replaces a much more ancient one that ran from the hall towards Southrepps church, whose tower can be seen on the skyline. The juxtaposition of the union flag on its pole in the foreground, all under a wide Norfolk sky, is quietly emotive.
At the heart of Southrepps village itself are a number of buildings mostly dating from the 18th century and it still has a nice pub and a medieval church, which is very fine and well maintained but much renovated. There has probably been a settlement here since at least the Iron Age as Iron Age or Roman period field systems have been identified either side of the village. Its got a post office and store too, so a good place to stop. I like Southrepps. Continue towards Mundeseley and you pass through those ancient fields, but you wont notice anything as they can only be seen by crop marks from the air. You will come to a stump cross, which you pass, and a Jacobean house called John of Gaunt’s House, which it clearly isn’t. How did it get that name, I wonder? He did hold land in Norfolk; was there a medieval hall on its site? Anyway, take the next right for Trunch.
Gimingham, Trimingham, Knapton, Trunch,
Northrepps, Southrepps, lie in a bunch.
It’s a short ride into one of the most striking villages in Norfolk
Well when first I wed me Norfolk girl, we all went back to Trunch
To drink a toast, and cut the cake, and have a bite of lunch
Now she and I was eager to start the honeymoon
But her father made a speech which went on half the afternoon
He told me: (chorus)
Treat me daughter decent don’t do her any ill
And when I go I’ll leave you my smallholding in my will
I’ll leave me muck heap and me silage me slurry and me swill
And all the great big gobblers in the garden.
Gobblers in the Garden – Sid Kipper
Trunch is no ordinary village but it’s hard to put your finger on why immediately. Even the name is mysterious. Erkwall (The Oxford Book of English Place-na
mes) can’t make up his mind if it’s French, Trunchet, or British, but it’s not English or Norse. The only thing it seems to be known for today is Sid Kipper’s songs, which feature it as the quintessential bucolic backwater. On the face of it, it qualifies; a church, pub and store and about 800 souls. But look a bit closer and you will notice at least a dozen fine 16th 17th and 18th century buildings. What was going on here then? Why such prosperity in such a place? Of course I have ridden through it often enough, but was always in a hurry to reach somewhere else. One day I decided to take a closer look, and rode over there again in sunny weather. On my way I met an old gent, who enquired where I was going? I told him and he asked me why. I said, to look at the church. Horatio Nelson’s husband is buried there. Either I had misheard him or he was mad. I knew Nelson was a womaniser, but not ambidextrous. I begged his pardon. Horatia Nelson’s husband, he repeated. Silly me. Nelson’s daughter Horatia married the Reverend Phillip Ward at Burnham Westgate in 1822. He died of a liver complaint after a trip to India.
The church would be worth a visit even without the occupancy of Mr Ward, who I couldn’t find anyway. There are also lots of other people who sound as though they were formidable in their time. St Botolph’s has all the features that make our churches interesting, a surviving painted rood screen, a hammer-beam roof and a 14th century provenance. But what makes it special is an amazing font canopy, which Simon dates to the 16th century and suggests it makes one speculate what the English Renaissance might have been like if it had been allows to continue. I tried unsuccessfully to photograph this, but my efforts were in vain, so you will have to follow the link. I notice Simon isn’t completely successful either. Per
haps it doesn’t like being photographed. The chancel is off-limits as the roof is dodgy.
But it is the other surviving buildings that make the village different. On the corner of the block on which the church stands is a little cottage that the charming young lady living there told be had been dated to 1660. Given its position it must have replaced an earlier building. Was it built for a weaver? There are an unusually large number of these to buildings to choose from so I have chosen one the hall, which dates from the late 1500s. The one thing they all have in common is brick, and brick defined the period. Peter Tolhurst writes:
The great re-building of the late 16th century, financed by trade and the redistribution of monastic lands, enabled the nouveaux riches to exhibit their prosperity in terms of the latest architectural styles when old manorial sites were too cramped and the buildings dilapidated.
But why here? Well, the ancient gent was right. He told me Wool, of course. What we have in Trunch is the embryo of a wool and weaving town, which never grew like Walsham, Aylesham, nor even got as far as Worstead. It is that feeling of what might have been that makes it fascinating.
Weaving was not the only industry ever in town. In 1837 William Primrose started a brewery. His son Phillip still had the business in 1877 but by 1905 it was sold to W. D. Churchill. Interestingly it was selling beer in cans as early as 1938. In 1952 Morgan’s bought and demolished it. The old premises are now a private residence but a Brewery Road survives. The surviving pub, The Crown goes back to at least 1745 when there is a record of it being sold to a John Norton. But given its position next door to the church I am sure there has been a pub there, at least on the site, for centuries. The other pub was the New Inn, which flourished from 1845 to 1961. Undoubtedly there were more in the preceding centuries. Trunch had a market granted in 1287 although I don’t know when it ceased. But for some time it would have been able to call itself a Market Town.
He drove us to our lodgings and he said cheerio
But I finally made him realise it was him he ought to go
And soon we lay together me wife say go to town
But my ambition withered when a window-pane flew down
This voice said: Chorus
She said you’ve really got to laugh but I was proper riled
I was so fed up I couldn’t even raise a smile
I couldn’t see the joke at all. All I saw was red
For every time we kissed he’d call from underneath the bed
And he said: Chorus
So why is Trunch, which might have been another Aylesham, or a Holt, get given the persona of a rural backwater? The answer is because of Sid Kipper, the alter ego of Chris Sugden, although his character is supposed to come from St-Just-by-Trunch. The Kipper Family and Sid have contributed much to Norfolk folk culture with such works as Moo Cows Poo, The Village P.I.M.P. The Trunch Wassail Song, The Wild Mounting Time, The Leaving of Sheringham, Bored of The Dance, My Grandfather’s Cock, Arrest These Merry Gentlemen, Underwood’s Milk, Walsingham Matilda, The Headless Horseman of Happisburgh, Sir Wayne The Green Knight, We Will Rob You, The Knapton White Hare, The Raggle Taggle Travellers Oh, Narborough Fair, Polly on the Floor, The Cruel She, Arrivadercci Cromer, Cod Pieces and many, many more. I wonder what Horatia would have made of Sid?
Now we’ve been married seven years and we’ve got three young pups
Well twice he went on holiday and once we tied him up
And every hour of every day his promises we’ve heard
Now me and my old twelve-bore think that’s time he kept his word.
Now if you say I am a philistine for quoting only one verse of Scott against three of Kipper, I suggest that after the first two lines of the second you wanted to know what happened next. With the first two lines of Scott one is already sleepy. Anyway Dr Johnson tells us, you may have a Scott for two kippers…
At the pub, take the road for Knapton. As with Trunch, you ride through fields with crop marks on either side of the road, here suggesting Bronze Age barrows, until you hit the main North Walsham – Mundesley road that you follow to Knapton. Here you leave the main road by turning right down the village street and pass the church of SS Peter & Paul on the left. It was not open on the only occasion I visited but Simon says it is worth seeing for its double hammer beam roof and its font cover. Go through the village, under a disused railway arch and bear left at the next intersection. Presently you are at Paston Green. Yes…Pastons again. For we are now just outside the village that gave its name to that illustrious family that we have come across so many times on our ride. Paston lies just up the lane on the main road.
If you try to research them on the web you may find references to noble ancestry for the Pastons. This comes from a royal certificate dated 1466, when they were trying to establish aristocratic forebears to avoid the accusation that they were of servile origin. This was important because they had already had two manors seized on the pretext they were originally bondmen of the king. An earlier document, called the Remeberaunces, states that Clement (the first recorded Paston) was a good plain husbandman from the peasantry. There is no means of knowing who was right, but there is no extant record of Clement’s ancestors, and there were good financial reasons to want to be posh. The person who I suspect kick-started the Paston engine was Goneld, alias Geoffrey Somerton, Clement’s brother in law, who, the Remeberaunces say, despite being born a villein, became an attorney and was rich enough to build a fair chapel at Somerton; also to educate William Paston, Clement’s son.
Paston church stands to the south of the main coast road. The nave is thatched, the tower embattled and Simon Knott reckons it to date from the 14th century, pointing out that the Pastons money was poured into Bromholm Priory rather than their own parish church. Indeed Bromholm, once a rival of Walsingham is central to the Paston story. Many were buried in it and the family were to claim relationship to the founder, Sir William Glanville in the 1466 document.
But it was at Paston they originally lived and squabbled with the neighbours and many a confrontation seems to have occurred in the churchyard. The cause for the first recorded contretemps was the realignment of a road by the hall and church, initiated by William Paston. I can’t work this out because my source states that the hall was to the north of the church and it is now to the southwest. A wall erected by the Pastons was pulled down by the villagers and we know all about the soap opera because Agnes, who bore the brunt of the hostilities, wrote to William about it.
Clement, the Paston dynasty founder, famously asked to be buried between his wife and the south door of the church so I sought this grave first, but was disappointed. There are only a number of early 19th century slabs. Was there ever a memorial to Clement I wonder? Was it destroyed in the Reformation? Or in one of the several church makeovers? Before the publication of the Letters this Paston would seem very obscure. On the north wall there is what is left of a huge St Christopher mural and of another featuring the Three Living and Three Dead as at Heydon. Did a St Christopher imply the church was on a pilgrimage route? If so it could quite easily fit an itinerary from Walsingham to Bromholm.
I have always wondered how much time the Pastons spent at Paston, and how much at their other manors. But St Margaret’s, for that is the dedication, is not really much help. At given points we can identify William and Agnes at Paston, Margaret at Oxnead, Hellesdon, Caister and Gresham and John at Caister and Oxnead. And they had other properties. Did they just rotate, or occupy the manor most under threat? If you look at the churchyard at Paston you will see a pine tree that had been deformed by the prevailing north wind and this suggests how comfortable Oxnead must have been in comparison. There are two late and substantial Paston monuments in St Margaret’s, but they both post-date the erection of Oxnead Hall, so they don’t help.
From the church yard there is a path that leads through to Paston Barn, which dates from 1581, is 70 metres long, 16 high and 9 wide, huge, in other words. By this time prominent families like
d to show their status by big barns, since it had become unfashionable to endow churches, and this one was commissioned by Sir William Paston as grain storage and threshing facility. It is seldom open because it is home to rare barbastelle bats, (among other species including Natterer’s.)
The pubs along this coast are inclined to be the sort of place where Dad escapes, while Mum is making tea in the caravan park and the kids are freezing on the beach. There are a few more exciting ones, but as to Paston, the last one, The Wherry, closed in 1965, following The Mariners, obit 1796, on the way of all pubs.
Riding east from Paston and its historic barn we have to contend with an open windswept hill where Bacton Gas Terminal stands. This is one of the three main terminals in the UK and is connected to the National Transmission System and by pipeline to Holland and Belgium. It’s not very pretty but the gas has to come ashore somewhere. It’s been here since 1968.
Next comes Bacton, and its satellite village of Keswick where Bromholm – or Broomholm – Priory stood. This was once a pilgrimage site second only to Walsingham and boasted a piece of the 
True Cross, which was reputed to have miraculous properties. Founded in 1114 it gets a mention by Chaucer and by Langland in Piers Ploughman. People making the pilgrimage to Walsingham would often take in Bromholm to kill two birds with one stone. That is why I wondered if the church at Paston might have been on the way between the two. The trouble is its on private land, and although you can see what’s left from a distance, it’s not open to the public.
So follow the main road to Walcott where it swings south just before the village of Ostend. This curiously named place is not marked on Faden’s map at all. Instead there are a couple of houses in a hamlet called Loungate. There was a house here called Ostend House. This was a small late 16th or early 17th century building that was demolished because of its proximity to the advancing sea. Was it one of the two recorded by Faden? Anyway, it seems to have given its name to Loungate.
The country now becomes quite open. You can’t see them of course but again there are lots of crop marks of vanished field systems either side of the road. This stretch of coast has had many Stone Age flint finds as well, and is full of various military sites, both WWII and Cold War. (There is even a gun emplacement in the ruins of Bromholm!) Then the road doglegs left and we begin to approach Happisburgh, sitting on its hill like an ancient citadel.
The first two things that anyone will tell you about Happisburgh is that it’s pronounced Hazeburrer and it is falling into the sea. Both are true, but it should be known for more than that. The name is thought to come from Haep’s Burgh and a quick look at Faden will show how much the sea has advanced since 1797 – there used to be a coastal lane connecting it with Ostend – Loungate. The church and the pub stand at its highest point and both are worth a visit.
When I first visited Happisburgh with the cycle club we used to have our break in a little café near the cliff, but this just got too close. Ian, who considers me too heavy, would invite me to stand on the edge to see if I could collapse it. Happily he was always disappointed. We then moved up to the pub for our meal and I could swear that I was told that it was here that Conan Doyle heard the story of Black Shuck, the East Anglian phantom dog, which gave him the idea for The Hound of the Baskervilles. In fact the story is even more interesting, and I needn’t have listened to hearsay, as there is a plaque on the wall.
The church, St Mary’s, has the second highest tower in the county after Cromer and you can climb the tower on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The graveyard contains the mass grave of those drowned when HMS Invincible sank offshore in 1801 on its way to join Nelson’s fleet. The neighbouring pub, Hill House, formerly the Windmill, has been around for a long time, I can’t find out how long but an Edmund Bartell records a visit in 1800, which he did not enjoy. It is certainly very nice now, and must have been so by the early 20th century when Conan Doyle visited
He stayed there and was shown by the landlord’s son, Gilbert Cubitt, how he could make his signature out of pin men or stick figures. Obviously intrigued, Doyle would write his Sherlock Holmes story The Dancing Men, using this theme for a code that Sherlock cracks. In acknowledgement of his debt to Gilbert he calls one the of the characters in the story Hilton Cubitt. But the village and the inn had literary connections well preceding Conan Doyle. The poet William Cowper had a long association with the village and his cousin John Johnson preserves a record of a visit in old age. You can find it on the Literary Norfolk site and I reproduce it here.
Aug. 31st, 1795. Walked to Happisbugh by the edge of the sea all the way. Dined in a Lodging House, where I borrowed a room for the purpose, to avoid the noise of the Public House and after dinner returned to Mundesley. This was the only instance of Mr. Cowper’s ever eating, as he told me afterwards, with anything like an appetite, in Norfolk; and to be sure, he did eat very heartily, though of very ordinary food, for the only things he would touch were Beans and Bacon, which were very old, and apple pye, the worst I ever saw. He ate, however, with a most complete relish of them all. I never knew him to enjoy a dinner anything like it after that, to the day of his death.
June 7th, 1798. I coaxed him to day into a boat in which he and I and our servant were rowed to Happisburgh. He went with me to see the Light House and appeared to enjoy in some measure looking thro’ a telescope from that very lofty building, at the ships in the offing. After dining at the Public House on the Hill, we walked home – the sea being too rough for us to venture in the boat.
There are several other authors associated with this place but I think I’ll leave you with another poet, Joan Barton.
Learning it is the hard thing. Happisburgh is a teacher
Pounding the grammar, rewarding with a poem:
For here beyond the caravans a village grows
In farms and elms and sheep-pens and a vigilant tower
Where Happisburgh church that great ark of light
Is filled with years of prayers, of griefs and fears
And homeliness, loving memorials no less
Of Kosikot and Cartref than of these generations
Whose tombstone lockers lie awash in grass;
For this is a father’s house where children come
And share their equalness: sameness not difference is the stem
For uncounted variations. And each is known by name.
Categories: Churches, Cycling, Norfolk, Pubs, Tourism | October 3rd, 2010 | by mark | no comments
Sheringham (bus.bike/s. bike/h. accom. café. pub.rail) –Beeston Regis (bus.café) – West Runton (bus. accom. rail) – East Runton (bus. pub) – Cromer (bus.bike/s. bike/h. accom. café. pub.rail) 4.4 miles or 7.04 km.
52” 51’ 55.97 N 1” 18’ 00.12 E O.S. Landranger 133 Google Maps Camping
The towns of this littoral have different personalities because of they way they developed. Wells has its silted harbour and modish Butlands, Blakeney its old streets and fashionable hostelries and Cromer its pier, souvenir shops and mild nostalgia. Sheringham is a bit different in that it was the only one that was never a port. In 1800, when all the others were still accepting cargoes to a greater or lesser degree, Sheringham was a seaside hamlet. Well, the present Sheringham was. Sheringham in those days was what we now call Upper Sheringham, a pleasant village a mile inland. Today’s Sheringham exists because of tourism and the railway.
Sheringham is a busting, busy and jolly place most of the time with its main shopping street running from the two stations to the sea. It gives the impression of quaint age if you don’t look at the buildings too closely which are all 19th and 20th century. The old village seems to have consisted only of a green, a ch
apel, a pub and a few houses. The new one has all the tourist needs, accommodation, pubs and cafés, a bus service two railway stations and a bike shop. Two railways? The line from Norwich terminates here but you can board a steam train (in season) and ride the North Norfolk Railway’s Poppy Line to Holt if you wish. The railway station is the original one and a perfect backdrop for reconstructions of forties dramas.
The churches of Sheringham are several and interesting. All Saints, the original, is not actually here but up the hill at Upper Sheringham and has a delightful tale about a mermaid attached to it. The newest church is the Methodist St Andrew’s on the Cromer Road which Simon calls the best 60s church in Norfolk. The Anglican parish church is St Peter’s, built to accommodate the new influx of holiday makers in the 1890s, but the most talked about is the Catholic church of St Joseph’s designed by Giles Gilbert Scott just after he had completed Liverpool Cathedral. It was built in two stages; the first completed in 1910 and is also on the Cromer Road.
We now head towards Cromer on the A149, a road that is rather suburban and very busy, and those used to city cycling should feel at home. So this might be a good place to mention the differences between city and country riding. To start with, in the country you are more likely to get punctures, so always carry a spare tube, or repair kit or both. A mate of mine from London who had never had a puncture came on a long sponsored ride without either and when he inevitably succumbed I left him. Asking my club members if they thought I was right, they said, no, I should have shot him. Just because you may be in darkest Norfolk don’t belive some idiot won’t be speeding along your country lane either – boy racers can be found proving their manhood among the wildlife and country folk of the back roads too.
Be cautious of the odd places cattle are on the road, usually parks, but be particularly careful of horse riders, not because they are a hazard to you, but because a young horse may be nervous of a bike and you don’t know how experienced the rider is. On a small road always slow down and if possible ask the rider if it’s OK to pass. There is usually
no problem, but I have had to dismount for a young and skittish horse before now. The rider has much further to fall than you. Dogs are the other things to watch. I have been mistaken for a sheep by a border collie and had puncture marks on my leg to show for it. On another occasion the rider in front of me was hit in the stomach my terrier making a kamikaze attack from the top of a bank.
There seems to be a different attitude to cyclist in town and country and this may have something to do with the riders themselves. I was astonished to read articles in London evening papers abusing cyclists as road hazards who should pay an extra charge. Most cyclists, I mused, were also car owners, so when they used their bikes th
ey should get a rebate on their road tax! The antagonism towards cyclists, not helped by the likes of Jeremy Clarkson, was epitomised for me when some yobs in a car pushed one of our young time-trialists off his bike. It was only when I rode in London and saw some of the things the local riders did that I began to understand this animosity. Crashing red lights, ignoring one-way streets and cycling on pavements seemed to be the norm. My defence is that these are not real cyclists; they are probably not members of clubs and have never learned the rules and etiquette. Perhaps they are commuters who have been driven to the bicycle by the congestion charge. Mind you, there are some things the urban driver needs to learn about cyclist on country roads, principally that is that the rider cannot always make use of its whole width. The driver sees a cyclist and thinks he is too far away from the curb, and annoyed, passes much too close. He does not realise the rider cannot negotiate the sand, thorns or flints that may have accumulated at the roadside, and cannot ride closer without risking a tumble.
Anyway, having got all that off my chest and can go back to the A149 which first arrives at Beeston Regis. The parish church here, which is worth a visit, has a fine rood screen and churchyard with a sea view and curious tale. (You have to cross the railway line to reach it, and its fi
ne view is rather compromised by a caravan park between it and the sea.) It is said that farmer James Reynolds was accosted by a grey ghost who emerged from behind two granite stones, (which were originally from Beeston Priory), and grabbed his horse’s bridle. Reynolds, who died in 1941, requested one of these stones be put on his grave where it still lies. The thing is, nobody remembers who Reynolds told the story to. I am inclined to suspect that it was made up by whoever would have to have paid for the headstone! By doing so they saved the cost and ensured Jim his immortality. There are canny folk in Norfolk you know! The Augustinian Priory itself was founded in 1216 and lasted till the dissolution. It was never very big and there isn’t a great deal to see now.The next village, although this is rather a road of ribbon development, is West Runton. Its church, Holy Trinity, is remembered by most people for its windows, especially that by Harry Stammers, erected in 1959 and portraying worshipers from the different ages through which the church has stood. But for me West Runton will always be associated with its Elephant, not Loxodonta africana but Mammuthus trogontherii, a steppe mammoth that appeared in the cliff in 1990 and is still the most complete skeleton of the species to be discovered.
My humble connection with this beast is that I was one of a number of volunteers recruited to guard it when it was being excavated and the archaeologists were not present. I was given a mobile and a number to ring if in trouble, and told not to let anybody look under the plastic sheeting. This was not as easy as it sounds. It was freezing. Some people called me a power-hungry fascist. Others whinged that little Johnny was going to be an archaeologist and it was vital he saw it for his education. (Said infant was throwing stones at the sea). I eventually gave in to an elderly threesome that included a ninety years old gent. A few bits of the elderly creature (the elephant, not the gent) are on display in the Cromer Museum.
An elem
ent of the past that is heavily present along this coast but not often apparent, are its defences. These were first erected at the time of the Armada and got increasingly numerous with each subsequent invasion threat, culminating in WWII, when virtually the entire littoral was affected. Roadblocks, mortar bases, pill boxes, battery sites, encampments, tank traps, you name them, this coast had them and the stretch we are on now was one of the heaviest fortified. There is little to see unless you look for it, but both Google Earth and the Norfolk Heritage site show many that are still visible.Next comes busy little East Runton, which is a fishing village turned seaside resort with all that that implies around here, particularly the caravan park. It remembers with pride James Leak, local black smith and prize-fighter, who in 1827 took off his own gangrenous toe with a hammer and chisel and cauterised the wound with a red-hot poker. He recovered, continued prize fighting and died at 82. Normal for Norfolk, you might say.
At last we come to Cromer – Crow’s Lake – the great 19th century resort of this coast. The origins of Cromer seem to lie with a village called Shipden, which lay to the seaward of it, somewhere off the end of Cromer pier. As late as 1888 a rock that people said was the remains of Shipden Church was still visible at low tide but it was blown up after a steam ship, the Victoria, was wrecked on it; the only ship, said the wits, to be wrecked on a church. Divers in the 80s found pieces of masonry two metres high on the site. Certainly it was a town in its own right when John Taylor wrote of his adventures in 1622 in a A Very Merry – Wherry – Ferry Voyage or Yorke for my Money; sometimes perilous, sometimes quarrillous performed with a paire of oares by sea from London. Taylor describes his arrival in town and it’s worth quoting.
And thus half soused, half stewed, with sea and sweat,
We land at Cromer Town half dry, half wet;
But we supposing all was safe and well,
In shunning Scylla on Charybdis fell;
For why, some women and some children there
That saw us land, were all possessed with fear;
And much amaz’d ran crying up and down,
That enemies were come to take the town.
Some said that we were pirates, some said thieves,
And what the women says, the men believes.
With that four constables did quickly call,
Your aid! to arms your men of Cromer all.
Then straightway forty men with rusty bills,
Some arm’d in ale, all of approved skill,
Divided into four stout regiments,
To guard the city from dangerous events.
Brave Captain Pescod did the vanguard lead,
And Captain Clarke the rearward governed,
Whilst Captain Wiseman and hot Captain Kimble,
Were in main battalia fierce and nimble.
The poem goes on for another two verses about poor John’s treatment in Cromer but in the end we get a comment on the town and its perceived inevitable destruct
ion, like Shipden, by the sea. Indeed it might have been had it not been for the sea wall erected in 1845.
It is an ancient market town that stands
Upon a lofty cliff of mouldring sands
The sea against the cliff doth daily beat
And ever tide into the land doth eat
The town is poor, unable by expense
Against the raging sea to make defence
Still waiting washing down the sand doth win
That if some course be not ta’en speedily
The town’s in danger in the sea to lie
A goodly church stands in these brittle grounds
Not many fairer in Great Britain’s bounds
And if the sea should swallow it as some fear
Tis not ten thousand pound the like could rear
No Christian can behold it without grief
And with my heart I wish them quick relief
So fairwell Cromer I have spoke for thee
Though thou didst much unkindly deal with me.
It is a goodly church too. SS Peter and Paul stands right in the town centre and is large, impressive and has the highest tower in East Anglia, which you can climb. When Taylor saw it, its best days were probably over for it seems to have suffered a long decline and by the eighteenth century was ruinous and in danger of demolition. Happily the 19th century the Anglican revival coincided with Cromer’s renaissance as tourism began to replace fishing and maritime trade as the town’s main business. It started with Norwich commercial and banking moguls building holiday homes. In Jane Austen’s Emma it is described as the best of all sea bathing places. Indeed its career as a resort started in the 1790s and came to a peak 100 years later. By 1877 it had a railway connection and a decade later a second station was built to handle travellers from the Midlands. This was Cromer Beach station, and is the now the only one, and Cromer High, at the top of the hill is long gone, which is why the Norwich line now approaches the town from the west and the train leaves from the same direction it
arrives.
It was the Norwich merchant aristocracy and the well-healed tourists that followed who were responsible for that first Cromer persona, the huge mansions and hotels on the front and the pier. As the masses arrived from the south and the midlands one guesses that these gentry took themselves off to warmer seas – Bournemouth or perhaps Cannes. But Cromer had arrived and you could get there on direct rail services from London, Birmingham or Manchester and many other stations. Nowadays, its just Norwich and Sheringham., and those in between.That was the Cromer of a different age and its present incarnation is different but no less interesting. The parish church is the oldest building but there are lots of 18th and 19th century buildings clustered between there and the foreshore giving it its old world feeling. There is a very good little museum near the church, a cinema, lots of pubs, hotels and B&Bs and a bike sales and hire shop. There is a small zoo, a wide range of shopping and a supermarket. This is also where the District Council Offices are so it can be called the capital of North Norfolk.
Cromer’s second museum is at the lifeboat station and pays homage to the heroic contribution the folk of Cromer have made to sea rescue (John Taylor not withstanding). The most famous lifeboat man of all was Henry Blogg GC BEM (6 February 1876 – 13 June 1954), coxswain of the Cromer lifeboat, whose exploits were legendary.There is a tradition that Conan Doyle heard the East Anglian story of Black Shuck, the phantom dog, while staying at Cromer Hall in 1901 and turned it into his story of The Hound of the Baskervilles, set on Dartmoor. The trouble is that this tradition has attached itself to several other places on this coast! We must get back on the road again but before we leave Cromer I’ll leave you Edward Lear’s contribution to it. Like John Taylor, he has to mention the cliff…
There was an Old Person of Cromer,
Who stood on one leg to read Homer;
When he found he grew stiff,
He jumped over the cliff,
Which concluded that Person of Cromer.
Categories: Churches, Cycling, Norfolk, Pubs, Tourism | August 25th, 2010 | by mark | no comments
Aylsham (bus. bike/s. accom. pub. café.) – Banningham (pub)– Ingworth – Erpingham – Aldborough (pub) – Thurgaton – Bessingham – Gresham – Sheringham (bus.bike/s.bike/h.accom. pub. café ) 13 miles or 20.8 km (via Banningham + 3.25 or 5.2)
52” 56’ 31.56 N 1” 12’ 17.64 E O.S. Landranger 133 Google Maps Camping
Well, its time to go back to the seaside again. From the square in Aylsham do go down Red Lion Street this time and head north. There was a pub called the Red Lion, which was going by at least 1700, but it closed in 1972. The road is called the Cromer Road, by which it means the Old Cromer Road, as the quickest way of getting to Cromer now would be along the A140. But this way there less chance of being juiced under the wheels of a pantechnicon driven by some bloke who hasn’t slept for 36 hours. First you cross a bridge over the old track of the Midland & Great Northern Railway, which last ran in 1959, and then you cross the Bure.
Immediately you come across the riverside settlement of Ingworth, now barely more than a hamlet with an attractive little church and a handsome house opposite, which was once the mill. There is no pub now but in 1664 a John Gay was convicted of running an unlicensed one! But there is a curiosity about this place that nobody has been able to explain to me. The medieval ecclesiastical jurisdictions were divided into deaneries, which more or less reflected the borders of the old hundreds, an administrative area between 
a parish and county. The hundred here was called South Erpingham, yet the deanery was called Ingworth. Was Ingworth ever much more important? The little church does not reflect that. But there is a large area of track ways and enclosures to the east of the village, which show up as crop marks, so perhaps it was.
Well, that’s one way of getting to Ingworth. But if you want to stop at a nice pub on the way you will have to do a diversion. Quite a big one. Instead of following Red Lion Street into the Cromer Road, turn right into Millgate, which brings you onto Banningham Road and finally to the A140, then left and next right on the road signed for Banningham. If you have a map you will see that there is way on which you can take a bike that is the base line of this triangle and cuts out any riding on the A140. The little village of Banningham has a fine church and a very nice pub, The Crown.
Apart from all the normal delights of a Norfolk country pub the Crown has a fascinating shoemakers bill from the early 19th century, which reads:
1799
Mr Fearson
To John Larney, Shoemaker
Nov 15 Clogged up Miss 10d.
Dec 14 Mended up Miss 2d
Carried up 1/-
Brought up 1/-
1800
Jan 3 Toe tapped Master 3d
April 1 Turned up, clogged up and mended maid 1/6
May 1 Lined, bound and put a piece on Madam 4/6
May 10 Soleing the maid 10d
14 Tapping up Madam 6d
15 Putting a piece on Madam 3d
16 Stretching and easing little Master 3d
There is also a bible from the local church and, somewhere a preaching stone which has be been moved from the bottom of the hill on the Walsham road from a place now occupied by another monument. The church, St Botolph’s, itself is well worth a visit and has some faint medieval wall painting and a magnificent hammer-
beam roof, too lofty to admire properly but beautifully carved with bosses to which it would be good to see closer.
Keep going along the Cromer Road up the next hill and take the first left for Erpingham. It means the ham, or village, of Eorp’s people, the same who would gives us a famous gunfighter many centuries later. As you come down into the next shallow valley you see the parish church to the right standing alone. To understand the village you have to look at the 1790s map where you will see that the name is obstinately by the church of St Mary (see below), which is surrounded by a number of unexplained lanes, while even then, the buildings, and the pub, (The Eagle Ale House, now the Spreadeagle, temporarily closed) are clustered by a stream some distance away by the village of Calthorpe. This is what we call common edge migration, and it was obviously complete well before the 1790s. What happens is that the local magnate encloses the high common land, typically during the wool boom, to graze his sheep, and we peasants have to take our cow and goats, down to the river-side marshes, or low-common. Since our houses are only wattle and daub hovels, it makes sense to move them down too, so we can keep an eye on Daisy. Thus we have Erpingham/Cathorpe as a single entity while Erpingham church stands in splendid isolation about a mile east.
Erpingham i
s famous for its eponymous family, especially between 1327 and 1428 when three generations rose to wealth (perhaps because of those enclosures) and prominence, the last of whom, Thomas, commanded the archers at Agincourt and built the famous Erpingham Gate into the close at Norwich cathedral. There is a famous brass of John, his father, in the church. This, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary is rather special, it exudes a cheerful ambience of light, colour and most of all, activity, for it is very obviously much used and even the graveyard is busy. It is also very high-church, with holy water, a sacred heart, and statue of St Thomas and in fact there are only two items, which distinguish it from being Catholic. These are the royal arms, very unusually of the present monarch, and an oil of Charles I with the inscription King Charles the martyr…pray for us. I wonder what Messrs Cromwell and Fleetwood, who worshipped not far away, would have made of that! The font is lovely but originated in a Norwich church and has been re-cut. The statuary is colourful but not very good. The glass is pretty but mostly modern. And the Erpingham brass looks like many another, unless you are an expert. What are unique among all the churches we have looked at so far are the royal arms for they are of Elizabeth II and date from the 1950s.
I said at the beginning of all this that you could navigate your way around the county by maps 300 years old. I was thinking of Faden’s map of course, which was published in 1796 but probably collated over the previous decade or more. This is the link to the map. Lets try to follow it. We can follow it without taking an eye off the modern map as he marks all roads the same. First we head west. One obvious change is that the old map Erpingham is marked by the church while the villages has migrated. The old Eagle Ale House has now become the Spreadeagle pub but it’s closed as I write. We cross the stream into Calthorpe and turn right; the line of road is unchanged. In fact it is little altered to Aldborough, a quintessential country village around a green where cricket is played in summer. There are two pubs here, The Red Lion, which may have been going in Faden’s time, but of which there is no record before 1836 and The Black Boys, which is marked on his map. Mrs Hardy, who we came across in Letheringsett, records that her husband bought it in 1783, paying a hundred guineas, with 14 to the Lord of the Manor and three to his steward.
Travelling north out of the village not much has changed since 1797 except the Bull Ale House has gone. It’s an open ride to the church at Thurgaton made famous by George Barker’s poem, which is very long and melancholy and starts:
At Thurgarton Church the sun
burns the winter clouds over
the gaunt Danish stone
and thatched reeds that cover
the barest chapel I know.
Whether you are following Faden or the Ordinance Survey turn left at the church and in about a mile you come to Bessingham. Up on high ground behind some trees to the left of the road is the charming church of St Mary though, which is worth a visit. Like so many others country churches it honours gallantry with a window dedicated to Robert Spurrel who fought in the Great War. There was apparently a moated building here once. The round tower was made of carr stone, something you seldom see east of the Rudhams. Pevsner says it is Saxon and it looks like it – my picture shows the carr stone towards the top of the tower, which you don’t often see.
Down into a shallow valley then towards Gresham and on the left in the middle of a field is a copse that looks as though it could well be around a marl pit, as so many are around here. Yet if you have a map either Faden’s or the O.S., you will see that this is the site of Gresham Castle. Well, what is so special about it? We are back to the Pastons again in whose story it figures prominently. It was a Sir Edmund Bacon (see Baconthorpe) who seems to have built Gresham Castle in 1319 on the site of an earlier one built by the Stutevilles. Almost immediate the ownership of the place came into contention for after Bacon’s death the husbands of his two daughters fought over it. One of these was a William Moleyns who never owned more than half of it, but a complicated soap opera ensued until it was bought by a Thomas Chaucer, son of the author of The Canterbury Tales. Thomas married Maud Bacon, and s
old it to a William – you’ve guessed it – Paston. Now, I promise this is the last time I will write so much about the Pastons, but you can’t ramble about here without bumping into them.
John Heydon, who had taken over at Baconsthorpe, encouraged Moleyns to get Gresham back again. I guess at this time the two castles – or fortified manors – looked much the same, Baconsthorpe and Gresham, they are only a couple of miles apart and lie on almost the same latitude. On 17th February 1448, Moleyns laid siege to Gresham. Margaret Paston wrote to her husband John in London: The Lord Moleyns man gathereth up the rent at Gresham a great pace, and James Gresham shall tell you more plainly thereof at his coming. (James Gresham was a gentleman of Holt and ancestor of Sir John Gresham who would become mayor of London and founder of Gresham’s School at Holt.) Anyway, on 28th January 1449 Moleyns attacked Gresham (which was occupied by Margaret) with a thousand men (wrote John later) with armour, swords, bows, arrows, guns and hooks to pull down the walls. Mrs Paston was bundled out – she went to stay with the Dammes at Sustead – and Moleyns and Heydon had their wicked way with the castle. So wicked, in fact, that when the Pastons did get it back three years later it was uninhabitable. The estate remained in Paston hands until 1620, when it was sold to the Batt family. The site was cleared in the 19th century and a boat, the remains of a drawbridge and a secret passage were found. It is hard to access now being in private land often surrounded by a standing crop.
The road takes a dogleg to the left, after this bear right and climb the hill till you come to Gresham All Saints church. An imposing building externally the interior has been severely white washed. Its origins are Saxo-Norman with the round tower added in the early 12th century. There are medieval tomb slabs and in the chancel were a number of monuments to fallen Batts, whose significance is as follows. The story, recorded on Simon’s site and elsewhere, is that there was a major disagreement between the low-church lord of the manor, Colonel Batt, and the incumbent Anglo Catholic vicar in the 1940s, as to the church furnishings, and it ended up in a consistory court, where the colonel won. One source says that the poor man became unhinged by the loss of his three sons, a huge blow for one family. Anyway it explains the extreme simplicity of the church, which apparently had a much more conventional interior before the war.
Continue up to the left of the church and the road takes you through the hamlet of East Beckham that hasn’t changed much since Faden. Keep bearing right and a small and very steep lane takes you up to the main road, the A148, that has. Cross this and you are in woods that were there in the 18th century and go on until you hit the main road down into Sheringham. In those days you would cross a common before coming across the then tiny village. Now you enter it as soon as you leave the wood.
Categories: Churches, Cycling, Norfolk, Pubs, Tourism | August 2nd, 2010 | by mark | one comments
Aylsham (bus. bike/shop. accom.pub.café) – Burgh-next Aylsham – Brampton – Buxton-with Lammas (pub) – Horstead (pub) 8.3 miles or 13.28 km (nearest way)
52” 48’ 02 96 N 1” 14’ 08 57 E O.S. Landranger 133 Google Maps Camping
If you look at Faden’s map of Norfolk in the 1790s Aylsham looks small compared to the other market towns of the county. Yet even then it was old, with arguably its best days behind it but optimistic with the newly opened (1779) canal connecting it with the Broads, Norwich and the sea. The town’s first flowering had been in the wool and then weavin
g booms, when it shared with Walsham and Worstead primacy among the centres of north Norfolk. In the days when Worsted came from Worstead Aylsham Webb came from Aylsham. I expect the roads to town were flanked by weavers’cottages. When the industrial revolution came the trade died and the town fell back on traditional agriculture.
The magnificent parish church of St Michael stands just off the market square, which has 17th and 18th century buildings all around it. On o
ne corner, the Black Boys Hotel dates from the 1650s when the name of the first landlord, Richard Andrews is recorded. There has been a building here though since at least 1471. The town sign features John of Gaunt to whom it belonged, but the wiki site says he probably never visited. This may be so, but I’m sure I have read somewhere that ducal courts of Lancaster (John was the first duke) were held here. Certainly there is a house not too far away called John of Gaunt’s House, but it is 18th century – four hundred years too new! The canal, which was to solve the towns transport problems, came towards the end of the canal era but the railways were late reaching Norfolk too. It was never used after 1928 when a flood destroyed most of the locks. Aylsham is a good touring centre with bike shop (Aylsham Cycles in Red Lion Street 01263 731 731) hotels, pubs, cafes, shops and supermarket. It’s also on the railway! The Bure Valley Railway is a 15 inch gauge tourist line runs down the valley to Wroxham – check the website for the timetable.
So we’ll explore this valley too as its got a lot of interesting things in it. Go through the square, past Barclays Bank but don’t turn into Red Lion Street. Take the next left into Burgh Rd and continue out of town until you reach the A140. Cross the road, following directions for Burgh-next-Aylsham. St Mary’s Church at Burgh is not visible from the road so you have to watch f
or the signs, and it shouldn’t be missed. St Mary’s has a sunken chancel to which you descend from the nave, and this is arcaded with what George Gilbert Scott (in a letter copied on the wall) calls a unique transitional style of window representing something between the Norman and Early English. Pevsner calls it the finest Early English chancel in East Anglia. Its not so much that its unusual to see this Romanesque – Gothic hybrid but the effect it has on the church, with light flooding in though the now clear glass arcades. There is also a seven sacraments font. Pevsner (p. 417) dates the chancel between 1220 and 1230 and calls it one of the most ambitious in any Norfolk parish. Simon says that there is a good deal of Victorian restoration done but still the effect is breath taking.
When you can drag yourself away from St Mary’s, instead of going back on the road follow the path down to the river and take your bike across the foot bridge. This is a very pretty spot but its also one of potential historical significance. Climb up the other bank and you are soon in the village of Brampton, which once had two pubs but is now pretty sleepy although the little church of St Peter has some fine brasses, if its open. A short ride brings you back to the road. Here you are on the edge of the second biggest Roman town in Norfolk. This included a six hectare defended polygonal enclosure and 30 hectares of industrial activity including kilns, furnaces, wharfs, quarries and roads. Why was it all here?
The first thing to know is that the River Bure has only run along its present course to the east of Brampton since it was canalised in 1774. Before this it flowed much closer to the high ground on which the village sits. Now, in Roman times, an estuary came up to somewhere near Coltishall, so Brampton would only be a short river journey from the sea. Given the narrows between Burgh and Brampton, this may have been the highest navigable point. Also, this spot below St Mary’s church looks like it was a crossing point for a north-south road and there are Roman and Early Saxon finds there. We do know that the main Roman east-west road between Billingford and a probably lost east coast settlement, came through Brampton and there are remains of a road leading south, which you would expect, towards the main Roman settlement at Caister St Edmunds (Venta Icenorum). So Brampton – or whatever it was called – must have been quite a communications hub.
Having said all that, there is not much to see of Roman Bramton. You just have to use your imagination: a large sprawling industrial site, with the smoke rising from its fires and a hundred and forty kilns, the bosses gossiping in their bath house, stevedores loading the boats on the town wharf and somewhere an official dedicating an altar which re
ads, The vow to the goddess-nymph Brigantia which he made for the welfare and safety of Our Lord the unconquered Emperor Marcus Aurelius Severus Antonius Pius Felix Augustus (Caracalla) and his whole Divine House, Marcus Cocceius Nigrinus, Procurator of our Emperor and most devoted to his divine power and majesty, has gladly, willingly and deservedly fulfilled.
The modern crossing of the canalised Bure is just to the east of Brampton and looks down towards Oxnead Mill. There were mills at both Burgh and Oxnead by 1086. The Oxnead mill made paper between 1716 and 1822, then blankets and only finally flour. My photo is taken from a bridge built at the time of canalisation; the lock is to the right of the mill and its remains of it are still visible. In the 16th century Dutch engineers were employed to alter the river’s course at Burgh to increase the flow and the mill there was moved. When The Bure was canalised the whole river was realigned to the east of the valley and a cut chopped off the end of the loop.
A canoeist going downstream would now come to Oxnead, but a cyclist can’t without going back towards Burgh. In other words, from Brampton, cross the river and follow the road along the left bank of the river until you get to a turning to the right. This will take you to Oxnead Hall and the little church described below. The hall was once magnificent and known for its formal gardens stretching down to the river, but now only one wing of the original building stands and is in private hands. I touched on the Paston family when I was talking about the Heydons, but because of that and because we keep running into them in our ride around North Norfolk, I better recap. I can’t remember when I first heard about the Paston Letters, but it was a long time before I came to the county. And among those long gone gentry, how famous would the Pastons be without their letters? There was never a coward Heydon, nor a poor Paston, a saying goes. But would we even remember the saying, if the Pastons weren’t for the Paston Letters? If you want to know about the Letters themselves you better Google them before I get even more side tracked!
The Black Death was a pandemic that left up to 60% of Europe dead between 1348 and 1350. But the plague is remembered as a turning point in English social history, for it created a shortage of labour that produced an economic revolution, and was a death knell of the feudal system. Many of the families we have encountered on our travels became significant in the post-plague period, while other disappeared about then. And from a village that would not be remembered for anything else, came the Pastons of Paston, in the person of one Clement.
He had humble origins – although it’s not clear how humble – but had the foresight and resources to get his son William (born 1378) a good education. William became a lawyer and ended up a judge of Common Pleas, and perhaps just as importantly made an advantageous marriage to Agnes Berry. It was now that Oxnead came into the family, it being bought by William as a jointure, a property to be held in common and devolving upon the surviving partner of a marriage, and usually an insurance policy for the wife. It cost him 749 marks, a considerable sum. The manor was then moated, in those days a fashion statement as much as a defence, in a village with a small church but pleasantly situated on the banks of the Bure. It had a water mill that had been turning since at least Domesday.
William’s son John (born 1421), like his father, became a lawyer and made a good marriage to Margaret Maultby. Both became significant in the county endowing St Andrew’s Hall and St Peter Hungate in Norwich. One of his clients was Sir John Fastolff, a rich retired soldier who had served in the Hundred Years War and who would be maligned by Shakespeare as Falstaff, (his immense holding included a Boar’s Head Inn at Southwark). Commentators seem not to agree about exactly what happened on Sir John’s death, but the bottom line was that Paston and Fastolff’s heirs and the Pastons’ traditional enemies quarrelled over his legacy, which included Caister Castle. As the country descended in to civil war (of the Roses) this conflict turned violent and the Pastons had to defend Caister and several other manors by force.
(But even before lawlessness became general, things depended in those days more on whom you knew rather than legal title. A friar called Hauteyn tried to seize Oxnead from Agnes Paston in about 1448 with confidence of the backing of the Duke of Suffolk, one of the king’s favourites and one of the family’s perennial enemies. Edmund, her second son who was in residence, said plainly that if he persisted “I shall see thy heart’s blood, or thou mine“. Well, when you put it like that…and the friar backed off, and the matter ending when Suffolk was dead. B
ut if you wanted to hang on to property in those days you needed jacks – breastplates , sallets -helmets, poleaxes and crossbows with quarrels -bolts.)
John died in 1466 and his eldest sons, imaginatively both called John, were left to carry on the struggle, although from the Letters (which start in 1422), mother Margaret seems to be the power behind them, and seems to have written a lot from Oxnead. The letters are fascinating read in modern English – the originals are really too hard to follow. They include intriguing details, from a knife fight in Norwich to the defence of Caister, pleas by Mother to the elder John to take the siege of Caister seriously, and requests for almonds, sugar, dates, honey, spices and material to make the children’s clothes. The picture you get of contemporary Norfolk makes the Wild West look like Teddy Bears’ Picnic, and cattle raids and property seizure are an everyday occurrence. Personally I find my sympathy with the Pastons, not only because I have only read their side, but also because John Daubeny, one of their lieutenants, who died defending Caister in 1469, came from my village and is buried in the church. After the Wars, the Pastons, who had switched sides and ended up on the winning one, prospered, and Caister, which had been lost, was retrieved, and would remain in the family until 1659.
Although William had brought Oxnead into the family it seems that it was his grandson John (II) who moved there permanently around 1495. His mother, Margaret had been based there, of course but it was not the only Paston manor and the great house was to be built later by Clement. This is why the church, St Michael, is undistinguished and does not reflect the family’s medieval profile. During the early unsettled times that the Pastons prospered the Yelvetons of Bayfield and the Heydons of Baconsthorpe were their bitter enemies. But this didn’t become a blood feud. John Paston’s daughter Anne was to marry a William Yelverton in 1477 and then in the next generation John’s grandson William was to marry Bridget Heydon (1490). This was more a case of pecunia non olet than amor vincit omnia because the bride brought a dowry of 500 marks and William’s dad, also John, was short of cash. His uncle Edmund arranged the whole thing, and if he objected to the match William could probably have been bribed with an iced lolly – he was ten. Why Sir Henry Heydon, Bridget’s father and John’s son, was so keen to marry off the poor kid is a mystery. Perhaps she was learning the violin. The final alliance of Heydons and Pastons was not unusual for its time and the union went on to produced the later Pastons, who ended up as Earls of Yarmouth. Although one of them was to marry into the Boleyns, the Heydons couldn’t match that.
Anyway, the younger John begat William and William begat Clement, whose monument lies to the left of the altar of the church at Oxnead. Now, here is a curious reflection on how history is written and remembered. The first collection of the Paston Letters was published in 1798 but it was only partial and the manuscripts disappeared until 1889 and it was only subsequently that their significance was realised. Thus, until the 20th century, the name Paston used to be associated with the later family members, who were ennobled for steadfast adherence to the king during the Commonwealth. So in White’s Directory, for Oxnead in the mid 19th century we get this:
S. Bignold, Esq., purchased this manor in 1828, of Viscount Anson, now Earl of Lichfield. From 1423 till 1732, it was held by the Paston family, two of whom were Earls of Yarmout
h, and one of them was the famous Clement Paston, whom Henry VIII called his champion; Protector Somerset, his soldier; Queen Mary, her seaman; and Queen Elizabeth, her father. He erected the once splendid mansion of Oxnead Hall, in the reign of Elizabeth, to which additions were made by the first Earl of Yarmouth, who built the banqueting room to receive Charles II and his royal and noble attendants, in 1676. The building was in the form of a letter H, but the whole was taken down many years since, except one wing occupied by a farmer. William Paston, the second Earl of Yarmouth, died without male issue, in 1732.
There is no mention of the earlier Pastons, or their Letters. Now back to the church. It is originally 13th century and because it has, according to Pevsner, work done in the 15th, 16th and 17th, it looks as though it has been in the wars. It is small, set among trees and although quaint, would be unremarkable were it not for its Pastons memorials. There is also 19th century restoration, which includes the stained glass and some reordering done again in the 1950s. The monuments comprise a number of brass inscriptions, presumably taken from the tombs when the church was renovated then. Then there is the marble. Most splendid is that of Clement Paston who White’s eulogises. Then there is that of Katherine Paston who died in 1637. Simon Knott doesn’t like it but it inspired Michael Riviere to write On Lady Katherine Paston’s Tomb at Oxnead:
Sun set three hundred years,
These marble shadows on the wall still stand,
Fixed by her husband’s grief, and Stone’s hand,
Long vanished skill, and wealth, and tears.
Outside her dilapidated
Church the usual June again transposes
The graveyard offals into grass and roses,
Beauty and corruption equated,
Balanced principles,
Whereby this white memento-mori is
Now mere memoria pulchritudinis,
New summer dappling her walls.
We’re not the tomorrow, alas,
Of this lady’s wish; her treasures scattered for ever,
Her mansion now green mounds beside the river,
Not a Paston left to wear her flesh…
And since we put the resurrection
Even of annual crops to chance,
Eternity of blood’s no longer, as once,
Any man’s confident possession.
We do with less than that:
The uncertain hope that someone not yet born
May saunter here on a remote June morning
To find the key under the mat.
I didn’t have to. The church was open and had several visitors on the May morning I saw it. But the hall is something else. Now rebuilt with formal gardens only one wing of Clement’s house remains, which I show . And pubs? Like Cockthorpe, there is no record, although there must have once been an alehouse.
OK, I’ll promises not to mention the Pastons, again, not till we get to Gresham anyway. So it’s back across the Bure, past Brampton and on to join the main road (B1354) for Buxton, where there is a pub and an historic mill, which was operating until 1953. A mill was recoded here in the Domesday Book and the present building dates from 1745, although it was largely rebuilt after a fire in 1991, and has since been converted into flats. Buxton boasts a huge millstone in the village centre. From here to the much bigger waterside settlements of Horstead-Coltihsall you can either cross the bridge and go through Lamas or continue on the road to Horstead which veers away from the river. Via Lamas, the next village is Hautbois, pronounced Hobbis, not because the peasants couldn’t speak French, but because some scribe with delusions of grandeur decided the Saxon name for a hummocky field wasn’t good enough, and Frenchified it. Not far from the left bank of the river are the rather spooky remains of St Theobalds church which was abandoned in the 19th century, is of pre-conquest origin and has a Saxo-Norman round tower. There are some telltale Roman tiles in the walls. This must have been the, now migrated, nuclear centre of the village as the remains of a castle are nearby.
Coltishall is really the beginning of the Norfolk Broads and has the feeling of a resort. More demure Horstead on the right bank has the excellent Recruiting Sergeant pub. From here you can head off into the Broads, northwards back into the countryside, head south for Norwich – although there is a station at nearby Wroxham – or return up the Bure to Aylsham. For kids the Bure Valley Railway offers another way of seeing the valley and for walkers you can hike down the railways route. Its hard to imagine, but fun to speculate, that this was the edge of sea going trade when Brampton was a booming industrial town…back in the days of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Severus Antonius Pius Felix Augustus.
Categories: Churches, Cycling, Norfolk, Pubs, Tourism | July 20th, 2010 | by mark | no comments
Cley (bus.pub.accom.café.) – Salthouse (bus.pub) – Baconsthorpe (pub) – Plumstead – Itteringham (pub) – Oulton – Blickling (pub) – Aylsham (bus. bike/s. accom.pub.café) 20,8 miles or 33.28 kms
52’ 56” 47.10 N 1’ 02” 56 09 E O.S. Landranger 133 Google Maps Camping
We now head east along the past road (A149). It’s a busy road in the holiday season and open to the coastal winds, which can, of course, be to you advantage. In a couple of miles you come around a bend and the little village of Salthouse lies before you, its church perched above at a small distance. But if you had arrived at this spot 300 years ago you would find yourself in a port. Salthouse was once one of the ports of the Blakeney Haven complex, the facts that it is some distance from Blakeney and is not on the sea notwithstanding. It was once, and lay at the head of what was called the Salthouse Main Channel, as a map made in 1649 by John Hunt, clearly shows. By Faden’s time all that was left was a Ditch and perennially flooding marshes.
Cromer crabs, Runton dabs,
Beeston babies, Sheringham ladies,
Weybour
ne witches, Salthouse ditches.
Saint Nic
holas overlooks the village and can be seen from a distance. Its present incarnation apparently dates from the high days of the Glaven Estuary trade in the sixteenth century and was financed by the Heydons, who we shall come across later and Baconsthorpe, not so far away. Indeed Simon says that the rood screen, which is badly defaced, may include images of Sir Henry and Lady Heydon among the saints. It may have been Robert Jermy, the infamous puritan of Bayfield Hall, who encouraged the iconoclasm of the screen, bearing in mind that the Heydons were staunchly Royalist.
Two particularly charming aspects of the church are the lions on the Tudor font – Simon calls them cuddly and they do look like teddy bears, and some graffiti of ships scratched on the back of the screens which reminds one of Cockthorpe, but these are better. My picture does not do the lions justice so look at the link.
Back down on what use to be the shore line and harbour is the pub, which is the first building you come pass coming from Cley. The Dun Cow, is large and well patronised with beams, views and a flood warning siren. They told me that it had been dated to 1647, which does not surprise me in the least although it is not listed and externally looks as though it’s a hundred years later. The last time I was there I heard an interesting tale. Somebody’s grandfather had been in the pub in the 1920s when in came a German who started examining the furniture. When asked to explain what he was doing he said that he had been there during the war. Further questioning revealed he had been a U-boat skipper, who had decided to come ashore and have a drink! So he would be believed later he carved his initials on the back of one of the chairs!
You would not be surprised to hear the furniture has been replaced since then and the property much changed. I guess they have been rebuilding on that site for much longer. Just outside there is a stretch of water, now home to diverse and happy ducks. This is all that is left of the waterway that once linked Salthouse with Blak
eney Haven and the Hansa cities so our U-boat skipper was probably not the first German in the pub. Perhaps it was those ships that inspired the young artists who scratched their likeness on the b
ack of the church rood screen during some tedious and long forgotten sermon.
If you come out of the pub and turn right, Purdy St takes you through the heart of the old village and eventually up the first climb we have encountered on this ride, which is called Bard Hill. Its not very long but I am told about 1/10. It’s a little exercise for the fit cyclist and the tourist can always get off and push! Turn left at the second cross roads and the road dips before climbing less steeply up to the Holt -Weybourne road. Here it gets a pit complicated. Turn right; enter a wood, first left, straight across the next road and climb gently out of the wood. Soon you come to a left hand bend and a railway bridge where you may hear the whistle and chuff of a steam train, for this is the Poppy Line (see Holt). Continue southward, past the Holt Rugby Club on the left, until you meet the main road (A149).
It’s still complicated. Cross over (carefully) onto Selbrigg Rd and you are back in the woods again. After a few hundred yards take the first right and you soon pass a little lake on the left, continue straight for about a mile and you come to an intersection with the Baconthope – Holt road. You have been here before, because this itinerary took you from Hempstead to Holt. But only for an instant, for here you turn left and in a few minutes are in Baconsthorpe.
There is more to this village than meets the eye, but the first thing to meet it is the pub, The Hare & Hounds, on the right as you arrive. Curiously this is listed for neighbouring Hemptsead yet it is marked on Bryants 1826 map as being where it is. The name of the village comes from the Norman name Bacun and it was this family who produced the Carmelite friar and scholar John Bacon, or John de Baconsthorpe. He seems to have been a nephew of Francis Bacon (1214-1294, who came from Somerset) and studied at Blakeney Priory, before moving to Cambridge, Paris and Padua. He arrived in Padua about 1320 and they say he was read there for three hundred years gaining the nickname of prince of the Averroeists. And if you want to know who they were you’ll have to Google it yourself!
The Heydons, who figure prominently in the Paston Letters, replaced the Bacons. The Letters are a collection of family correspondence written between 1422 and 1509, which are rich sources of information about the period. We’ll come across this family again and again as we travel around here and if you read the letters you find that for a period the Heydons are their number one enemies. And it was the Heydons who built Baconthorpe Castle. This is an ideal place for a picnic and just outside the village, well signposted.
There is a story that the Heydons, like the Pastons, were parvenus, peasants who became wealthy lawyers after the Black Death. But that is not the official story, which has them descended from the Heydons of Heydon Hall who had fought with the Black Prince and lost one of their number in France in 1370. Being self-made was not fashionable in the fifteenth century as the Pastons (who also invented aristocratic ancestors) discovered to their cost. In fact, the Heydons’ rise to prominence seems to have mirrored that of the Pastons – the law, the sheep and the politics. But whether he was a parfit knight or was a pickled mouse salesman from Downham Market, John Heydon appears at Baconsthorpe and builds the castle in about 1460. It was a fortified manor really, just what was needed at that date, as he would have known well because he was behind the a
ssault on the Pastons’ manor at Gresham. He was a member of a faction led by the Dukes of Suffolk – the de la Poles – themselves parvenus who had originally been Yorkshire grocers. The Castle is in picturesque ruins beside a mere that once provided water for a mote. The second gatehouse, behind the first in my picture, was built after the main building by Henry Heydon and was inhabited until the 1920s, when a tower fell down, fortunately without killing anybody.
But for 200 years this was the centre of the Heydon Empire and must have felt triumphant as the grass grew over the Pastons’ own fortified residence at Gresham. The later Pastons, though, would entertain Charles II at Oxnead, which we will visit later, as sheep grazed on the ruins of Baconsthorpe. The castle was turned into a wool processing and fulling plant when its defensive role became obsolete. Sir William Heydon seemed to have inherited the family aggression and nearly fought a duel with John Townshend that was only avoided the intervention of the Privy Council. He and his wife have a fine monument, which dominates the south side of Baconsthorpe church. Sir Christopher was an adventurer, astrologer and remembered for quarrelling disastrously with his father. Much of the castle went to build Felbrigg (again, see later) and to pay his debts. After him the family lapses back into obscurity.
But before we leave Baconsthorpe Castle there is one other character to introduce you to. He is Zurishaddai Girdlestone, who according to Faden 1790s map, was still living in the castle in the 18th century. The Girdlestons were related to the Heydons so it makes sense. The quotation below comes from a book published by a Colonel Hamilton in 1860 about a visit in 1804, by which time Zurishaddai had moved to Kelling Hall. (Zurishaddai was the father of Shelumiel, in case you are interested – Numbers 1.6 and 2.12).
I was not a little surprised to see him with a single-barrelled gun, apparently the size of a soldier’s firelock of that period, and a barrel at least a foot longer than those of my own gun, the bore as large as one for shooting wild fowl. The stock had been made by a London gunmaker, and the lock, which was particularly well finished, by the same. Mr. Girdlestone told me that the barrel came from Berlin. In the first field we came to the dogs pointed, a strong covey rose, I shot a bird, but my companion did not fire; he said the birds were too near. Shortly after, a single bird rose at about thirty yards; I fired both barrels and missed. Then the old squire coolly put up the great gun to his shoulder, and brought the bird down as dead as a stone. The distance from where we stood to where it fell must have been at least seventy yards. He gave me a triumphant look and said, ‘This is my system of partridge shooting.’ Mr. Girdlestone had been brought up to the bar, was an active magistrate, but was considered an eccentric character, living in a very retired way. The magisterial room of my friend might be considered as the model of a sportsman’s apartment. On the walls were wooden racks containing single and double-barrelled guns, in other parts, rods for trolling and fly-fishing, with all their appendages; in the corners of the room, landing nets, a small casting net, and fishing krails. On a table might be seen a stuffed martin cat and a variety of foreign birds. The Squire’s library was not large, but displayed his predominant passion for field sports, with some law books and works on agriculture. This sanctum sanctorum looked into a small but well-arranged flower garden.
Well, its ti
me we left Baconthorpe and its eccentric ghosts. Ride back to the village and follow the road through it, perhaps stopping to see Baconthorpe Church, where monuments to the Heydons and old Zurishaddai are to be found. Then carry straight on for Plumstead. At this pretty village the road turns east and meets the Saxthorpe-Matlaske road. Turn right here, as if for Saxthorpe. Soon you pass the village of Little Barningham, just off the road to the left. If the church is open (it isn’t often) there is a rather grisly carving on one of the pews of a skeleton in its shroud with an exhortation to bear death in mind. The message was apparently aimed at newlyweds, which must have been a bit depressing. Back on the main road and a little further on take the turning left sign posted for Mannington Hall. An avenue takes down to one of the two great houses owned by Lord Walpole around here. Follow the avenue and on your right is the site of the now long gone Saxon village of Mannington, ruins of its little church are in the trees near the hall. This was built about 1460, altered in the 1500s and again in the 1800s, the final makeover giving it a medieval look as it sits behind its moat. It was bought in the 1700s by Horatio, brother of Robert Walpole and has been in the family ever since. The gardens are open (see link) and well worth a visit.
The avenue road runs between the Hall and the ruins of the church and up onto the next hill where it meets the road between Matlask and Itteringham. Turn right for Itteringham. There is now a pleasant shallow descent to this village which on the north bank of the River Bure.
Itteringham is a surviving nuclear village with shop and pub, a watermill on the Bure and a Saxon provenance. The church, St Mary is remarkable for its box pews, its Jacobean pulpit, a ruined fifteenth century guild chapel and the unusual arms of William IV. The present building originated with a bequest of Aymer de Valence in the 13th century and was apparently dedicated to St Agnes before the Reformation. It seems that by the 1460s it was acting as the parish church for neighbouring Mannington as a Margaret (yet another) Paston left 10/- for the upkeep of Mannington church while insisting on being buried at Itteringham. Of course Mannington church is tiny and in ruins, but at Domesday the village recorded 22 inhabitants against Itteringham’s 26 – but I digress. St Mary’s should also be remembered for one of the occupants of the churchyard, poet George Barker, not well known today but once thought of as the equal of Dylan Thomas. Some people know At Thurgaton Church, which I find a bit depressing and prefer this from Morning in Norfolk :
As it has for so long
come wind and all weather
the house glimmers among
the mists of a little
river that splinters, it
seems, a landscape of
winter dreams. In the far
fields stand a few
bare trees decorating
those mists like the fanned
patterns of Georgian
skylights. The home land
of any heart persists
there, suffused with
memories and mists not
quite concealing the
identities and lost
lives of those loved once
but loved most. They haunt it
still. To the watermeadows
that lie by the heart they
return as do flocks of swallows
to the fields they have known
and flickered and flown so
often and so unforgettably over.
What fish
play in the bright wishing
wells of your painted
stretches, O secret
untainted little Bure,
I could easily tell,
for would they not be
those flashing dashers
the sometimes glittering
presentiments, images
and idealizations
of what had to be?
The dawn has brightened the
shallows and shadows and
the Bure sidles and idles
through weed isles and fallen
willows, and under
Itteringham Mill, and
there is a kind of rain-
drenched flittering in the
air, the night swan still
sleeps in her wings and over it all
the dawn heaps up the hanging
fire of the day.
Holy the heart in
its proper occupation
praising and appraising this
godsend, the dawn.
Will you lift up your eyes
my blind spirit and see
such evidence of
forgiveness in the heavens
morning after golden
morning than even
the blind can see?
(I’m afraid I have taken out the second verse to avoid this turning into a poetry book!) Whatever about home lands of the heart, the coupling of the Bure and water meadows is apposite as I reckon Itteringham is only situated where it is because of the low common grazing of the valley floor, where generations of the villagers’ stock must have munched. There was a real common once on the south side of the valley, which reached from the river to what used to be the main Norwich-Holt road at the hilltop. It was still there in the 1790s but 
is now enclosed. Also lost is the manor and chapel of the Nowers family which stood almost opposite in a field on the north bank, vanished in the 14th century, and was recently re-identified by crop marks.
Now, a word about pubs. Gone are the days when pubs served beer and spirits and if you were hungry the best you could hope for was a packet of chips and a pickled egg. And as a local judge says, gone are the old men with pipes, their pockets stuffed with poached rabbits and their dogs keeping everybody away from the fire; it all brioche with frogs legs now. Around here the change has probably been faster than on average and most pubs serve food. Where they differ is in aspiration and cost. At one end there are those who employ seriously expensive chefs, at the other are those that use a catering service. Yet from the outside it is impossible to tell the difference. I characterise these as, at one end, beer and peanuts, and at the other, sun dried tomatoes. But of course there are lots of shades in between. The Walpole Arms at Itteringham is very definitely in the sun dried tomatoes camp. But even if you are not going to have a gourmet meal it is worth going in to see the lovely old parlour bar with its beams and great fireplace.
We carry on up the hill now, the Walpole Arms on our left until we get to junction of the Holt-Aylsham road. We might turn left here. But there is a little diversion I shall offer that may or may not interest you. For there is a place that interested me not far from here, but you must make up your own mind. First I have to tell a story.
Sometime during the Protectorate, Oliver Cromwell stayed with his daughter Bridget and her second husband, General Charles Fleetwood, at Irmingland Hall, near Itteringham. Cromwell asked his son-in-law where he worshipped. Fleetwood replied that there were the local parish churches. Cromwell said that this was intolerable for the army, who were largely Independents and that they should have their own chapel, and so an Independent (now Congregationalist) chapel was built at the bottom of the hill at Oulton. That was the story as I first heard it, anyway. Trouble is, Oulton Chapel was built in 1728, long after Cromwell and Fleetwood were dead.
I have always – hasn’t everybody – been fascinated by Cromwell, the Protectorate and the New Model Army, even if the specific theology of the Independents never really appeared on my radar. But I suppose that is why: they were independent, self determining assembles which in a way looked back to the Saxon moot and forward to democratic local assemblies. And this is what is astonishing about the whole phenomenon of the Puritan revolution, the great fountain of modern concepts that came with it. The mom
ent for me it showed this most clearly was at the Putney Debates of 1647 when Thomas Rainsborough argued: For really I think that the poorest he that is in England have a life to live, as the greatest he: and therefore truly, sir, I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government.
This is the first proposal for universal suffrage that I know. Participating in the debate itself were the Levellers, a school of leftist thought in the tradition of the medieval peasant movements and anticipating socialism, and the New Model Army, that extraordinary mixture of battle-field discipline, democratic sentiment and religious fanaticism. They had just wrested London from the Presbyterians, and were proving a handful for Cromwell (who actually looks like a moderate at this point) and Ireton, (whose widow would marry Fleetwood). Ireton replied: no man hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom… that hath not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom. Or, we can’t be ruled by any Tom, Dick or Harry. This, mark you, at a time when the rest of the world, apart from a handful of tiny European bourgeois republics, was ruled by ancient blood lines, aristocrats and princes of the Church.
So you see why I wanted to see Oulton Chapel. The first Independent chapel in the county had been established at Guestwick in 1652 but that has been converted. I wanted to see what sort of place these psalm-singing soldiers would worship in. True, it was built a generation after the war, but the war was still a fresh memory, separated by a time span no greater than separates us from World War II, and there must have been people around who remembered or had taken part in it. At the Restoration the sect became illegal and the congregation worshipped in private at Irmingland Hall even after the Toleration Act of 1689. After that, the first Ind
ependent establishment in the county was Norwich’s Old Meeting House, opened in 1692.
In 1725 work started at Oulton and the first pastor was Abraham Coveney who had married Charles Fleetwood’s granddaughter. The Independents/Congregationalists flourished during the rest of the century, together with an ever-increasing number of other dissenter groups. By the 19th century the Methodists had started making inroads into Norfolk with spectacular success, at the expense of both the established church and other non-conformists. The 20th century proved to one of secularisation, and all suffered. By the 1960s the Oulton congregation was too small to support it and by the 1970s the chapel was moribund.
But it has been restored. The galleries, panelling and box pews you see today are original and to stand in it is to feel something of the ethos that drove the Puritan 17th century. The building itself is grade II listed and the Norfolk Historic Building Trust, with the aid of grants, began to restore, completing it exactly 260 years after it officially opened in 1731. But why the precise site, one wonders? There is the hint of a suggestion of an earlier chapel. So perhaps there is some truth in the story I first heard, and that Cromwell, and Major-General Fleetwood did ride down the steep road together from Irmingland Hall.
Today it is available for meetings and weddings but otherwise only open to the general public one Sunday afternoon a month in the summer. So I had to wait a long time to see it. But eventually I got there. The other visitors seemed to me to be elderly locals who knew the place and each other, presumably the survivors of the last congregation. After I had taken my pictures I left them mardling inside while I ate my ham sandwich in the sun. And it occurred to me that they were the cultural descendants of those steadfast folk who had built the place. In fact, they might even be the direct descendants. Indeed, some of their ancestors, wearing buff coats, breast plates, bucket-top boots and lobster-tail helmets, may have clattered down the road from Irmingland, all those years ago, in the days of Oliver, Protector, when England was the crucible of revolutionary thought.
So if it is the last Sunday of the month in summer time you may want to have a look. If it’s not you can still look through the window. I hope my pictures give you an idea of what the interior is like. Even if you don’t stop, this route will take you off the main road for a bit. So turn right at the junction, down the hill, follow the road round to the left but instead of crossing the bridge go straight on towards Oulton (Hall Road). The first turning on the left brings you to the chapel. Afterward proceed on along Hall Rd past Spa Lane on the right, until you come to a crossroad; turn left here in to Church Lane, up past the church of SS Peter & Paul which is worth a visit if you have time. Then on to the next crossroad and straight over. Here Church Lane becomes the Aylsham Road and there is a memorial to those who served in nearby RAF Oulton. At the next rather complicated intersection about a mile on, bear left for Silverton and then bear right until you hit the main road at Blickling Hall. If you had decided not to do the little detour via Oulton Chapel and you turned left at the junction between the B1354 and the Itteringham road you will already have come to Blickling, which is only a cople of miles on.
Blickling is probably the most famous Jacobean mansion in Norfolk, not least because it occupies the site where Anne Boleyn was supposed to have been born. It is said to be haunted by her and her father, not to mention a headless coachman who drives her, also headless, back to the Hall on the anniversary of her executio
n. My problem with ghosts is that they always seem to be too clever. How do they know, for instance, when it is the anniversary of Anne’ death? And are they using the Gregorian or Julian calendars? And, you observe, they work out these complicated things without a head! My wife and I have forgotten anniversaries and we have two heads between us, both securely attached to our necks, I’m pleased to say. But these apparitions go charging around the countryside at break-neck (whoops) speed, calculating anniversaries on defunct calendars, and all without heads! Grizzly things should be witless
However the house and gardens, run by the National Trust, are well worth a visit. You can find the details about opening and charges on the website. The Boleyns were an old Norfolk family whom we came across before at Salle. But, of course, the present house is not the one that Anne would have known, and was built sometime after 1616 when bought by Sir Henry Hobart. In fact there had been some interesting owners of the property previously. Harold, Earl of East Anglia and King of England for a while before that memorable punch-up at Hastings, held it before the conquest. Sir Thomas Erpingham, whom we will meet at Erpingham, and Sir John Fasolff, benefactor of the Pastons of Oxnead (and maligned by Shakespeare as Falstaff) both held it for a time. The pub and church are also worth a visit. On leaving Blickiling turn left along the main road to Aylsham.
Categories: Churches, Cycling, Norfolk, Pubs, Tourism | July 9th, 2010 | by mark | no comments
Holt (bus.bike/h.café.pub.accom) –Letheringsett (pub) – Glandford – Wiveton (pub) – Cley (bus.pub.accom.café.) 4.7 miles or 7.52 kms
Holt 52” 54’ 21.27 N 1” 05’ 24.50 E O.S. Landranger Map 133 Google Maps Camping
The River Glaven rises a little to the east of Holt and then flows south, through the pretty village of Hunworth and turns west and north towards the North Sea. It then flows into a glacial valley with quite steep sides (for Norfolk) giving the landscape the feel of one of England’s more western counties of wooded hills and sloping meadows. In the middle is the village of Glanford, whose name may come from the words for festivity and the river’s name is a back-formation, that is to say, it gets its name from the village, not the other way around. The main (A148) road crosses the river at the top of this valley at the village of Letheringsett. It is not far from here to the sea at Cley but there is so much to tell of this Glaven Valley, it might be a hundred miles.
From Holt you take the A148 in the direction of Fakenham and immediately go down a steep hill. Be careful here, as your bike can get up quite a speed and the traffic often gives you little room.
If you are in a car you could almost miss Letheringsett, supposing it to be a satellite of Holt. A row of houses, those big walls, the clocks, the bridge and the pub sign…and you are through. Yet it has its own story, for it grew up independently from Holt. It is a river village, a valley village, a village that grazed its stock on the low pasture and looked down the Glaven to Glanford and the sea. It had neither market nor monastic site, although I suspect the road from Blakeney southward once carried much more traffic than it does today, and here it met the road from Holt to Fakenham. Yet for the last thousand years it has prospered because of the river Glaven and the mill wheels it has powered.
And it was undoubtedly settled long before that. Neolithic and earlier flint tools have been found in the parish and there is a Bronze Age ring ditch on the east side of th
e ford. The church was originally built before the Conquest because the round tower is one of the few that is actually Saxon. Domesday notes: During the Confessor’s time it was held by Oslac, a freeman, and consisted of one carucate of land, always seven bordars, and in the demesne one plough-team and one half, and one amongst the tenants; two acres of meadow, one mill, then two cart-horses, always two cows and twenty hogs and eighty sheep; now (the Survey) two hives of bees; and one socman held one acre, then valued at 20s., now 25s.; and the whole was eight furlongs long and five broad, and paid 12d. to the Gelt, whoever held it.
It was called Leringaseta. This might have come from the Old English for Leohere’s people of perhaps from the sound of the river, hleoþre. It is today supposed to be pronounced Larnsett in dialect, but I only know one person who does. We have lots of names of lords and rectors but for the mill we have fewer. There is of Thomas de Saxlingham who was the miller in 1383. Then there was a John Brytwiss in 1550 and by 1660 we have Vincent Buckenham. In 1714 the miller was Thomas Bately but it was owned by John Brereton who also had the house (later the hall) and the brewery. In 1744 the mill burned down.
That year what was left was bought by John Priest, an Old Greshamian, which I am sure wasn’t the reason he went bankrupt in 1756 and William Colls, a local Quaker merchant bought it fr
om the estate. I assume he was the father of John of whom I found this: Letheringsett was the birth-place of John Henry Colls, poet and dramatist, born in 1764, and educated at Holt Free Grammar School. He wrote a farce called “The World as it goes” in 1792, and also ” The Poet,” ” The Moralist,” besides other works. William Colls died in 1772 and left the mill to his son Solomon who let it to Richard Rouse in 1780 so he could become a schoolmaster. He should have stuck with the mill because by 1783 he was bankrupt too. In 1786 the River Glaven burst its banks and flooded a field owned by Burrell, the parson. Rouse tried to mend it and Burrell tried to stop him. I don’t understand the cause of this queer quarrel but it went on for ages and was recorded by Mrs Hardy, of whom, more below. A range war erupted between the two, which didn’t stop even after Burrell died and was eventually decided in court in favour of Rouse.
In 1780 the brewery, then known as Hagan’s was sold to a William Hardy who also bought the house and 50 acres and moved in. His wife Mary, (nee Raven) who he had married at Whissonnsett in 1765 kept a diary, which I shall quote later, and which is an excellent historical source. William, who was a maltster, built a maltings and incorporated a wheat mill in competition to the Rouse’s up stream. William’s son, William inherited the brewery, pub, and ever-expanding chain of pubs. This phenomenon of tied pubs was new; one much assisted by the transport improvements of the era, and heralded the exponential rise of the larger brewery, which continued until the 1960s, when God sent CAMRA to save us. In 1802, Richard Rouse’s mill burned down again and he built the structure that stands there now. It is fully working and open to the public.
When Rouse died in 1816 William bought that mill as well and by 1838 had a little empire of 9 pubs. On his death in 1842 his nephew William Cozens inherited the whole estate, so long as he changed his name to Cozens-Hardy, which he did. When he died in 1896 Morgan’s bought the company. It was William Hardy Cozens-Hardy’s second son Herbert who was to be the most famous of Letheringsett’s sons. He had a highly successful legal career and was knighted in 1898, becoming the 1st Baron Cozens-Hardy in 1918, two years before his death.
Yet if Lord Cozens Hardy was the most high profile of Letheringsett’s famous sons, probably the most interesting was one of its blacksmiths. If you go into the church you will find his death mask and the transcribed inscription on his headstone, composed by Cozens-Hardy. It reads
This stone is erected
To mark the burial place of
JOHNSON JEX
Who died January 5th 1852 aged 73 years
Born in obscurity
He passed his days at Letheringsett as
A village blacksmith.
By the force of an original and inventive genius
Combined with indomitable perseverance
He mastered some of the greatest difficulties of science
Advancing from the forge to the crucible
And from the horse-shoe to the chronometer:
Acquiring by mental labour and philosophic research
A vast and varied amount of
Mechanical skill and general knowledge.
He was a man of scrupulous integrity and moral worth:
But regardless of wealth
And sensible to the voice of fame
He lived and died a scientific anchorite
He was also born in Billingford, the son of the blacksmith William Jex and exhibited an extraordinary mechanical mind from childhood, when he is reported as taking locks and watches to pieces and reassembling them. By early manhood he had become something of a celebrity. The famous Agriculturalist Arthur Young wrote: I 
cannot conclude without mentioning a person of extraordinary mechanical talent. He is Mr Jex the young blacksmith of Billingford. Young goes on to list all the agricultural machines Jex had invented or improved and says…Jex makes everything himself. He models and cast them in Iron and brass having a powerful furnace of his own invention. He took over the Letheringsett forge from his grandfather. Given the period, it was unlikely he had much formal education, yet among other things, he taught himself French so he could read books on horology – the French presumably dominated the subject then – and went on to build the predecessors of the clocks that are mounted on the walls of the old brewery/maltings as you pass through the village. At the time these had the greatest distance between two faces working from the same mechanism in the country. Jex made his first watch for Rev. T. Munnings and I have since come across an inscription that Munnings had engraved on it:
I, Johnson Jex, a blacksmith bred
With some strange crankums in my head
And tools on which I could depend
By me invented for a friend
This timepiece made from end to end
If this your mind should still perplex
Behold my name ‘tis Johnson Jex
Letheringsett church has been the parish church for the Bayfield Estate, which takes up much of the Glaven valley, and many of the owners are buried there. St Andrew, although Victorianised, has some lovely glass and some interesting monuments, including the one to the remarkable Jex, which includes his death mask. Poor Simon Knott was terrorised by two local ladies during his visit and says he didn’t get a good look, but he got his revenge on the ladies by publishing the story on line.
But before we leave the village I must mention that the King’s Head, has been taken over, and is now a quintessential gastro pub with all that implies. It is in the Flying Kiwi group, which also runs the Crowns at Wells and East Rudham and has just taken over the Ship at Brancaster. I imagine the building is about the same date at the maltings, 1800, but it is old enough to have attracted poltergeist stories. It has lots of interesting things in it among which is a WWII gas attack warning, appropriately displayed in the Gent’s cubicle.
The house that William Hardy I bought in 1780 was given a classical makeover by his successors and became the Hall. It is now a care home. One source says it was once owned by Roy and Wilhelmine Harrod, although her obituaries state they lived at the Old Rectory, Holt. Billa Harrod was famous for her work founding the Churchs’ Trust and co-writing the first Shell guide to Norfolk. John Betjeman had once proposed to her. It is said that it was at the Hall in 1955 with the Harrods that Betjeman was inspired to write the lines below.
Oh Lord Cozens Hardy
Your mausoleum is cold,
The dry brown grass is brittle
And frozen hard the mould
And where those Grecian columns rise
So white among the dark
Of yew trees and of hollies in
That corner of the park
By Norfolk oaks surrounded
Whose branches seem to talk,
I know, Lord Cozens Hardy,
I would not like to walk.
And even in the summer,
On a bright East-Anglian day
When round your Doric portico
Your children’s children play
There’s a something in the stillness
And our waiting eyes are drawn
From the butler and the footman
Bringing tea out on the lawn,
From the little silver spirit lamp
That burns so blue and still,
To the half-seen mausoleum
In the oak trees on the hill.
But when, Lord Cozens Hardy,
November stars are bright,
And the King’s Head Inn at Letheringsett
Is shutting for the night,
The villagers have told me
That they do not like to pass
Near your curious mausoleum
Moon-shadowed on the grass
For fear of seeing walking
In the season of All Souls
That first Lord Cozens Hardy,
The Master of the Rolls.
A signed copy used to hang in the main bar of the King’s Head. They are certainly creepy but in no way reflect the character of this village which strikes me as having a practical, enterprising, energetic and self-reliant persona as seen in the likes of William Hardy and Johnson Jex.
If you want to have a picnic, there is a nice spot a couple of hundred yards up-river where the old ford crosses the Glaven at Little Thornage and you can reach it on either bank. But our route now goes down river, so take the second turning to the right signposted for Blakney, past Jex’s old forge and on to the gates of the Bayfield Estate.
Bayfield must have been a village once, perhaps around a mill and a ford for the old road once came up the valley between the hall and the church. Before the conquest it was divided between the royal manor of Holt and a chap called Godric, who must have known Oslac up river. The de Repps got it then, followed by the de Vauxs, and then the Rooses. In the 1300 it was the property of the Yelvertons, who figure so much in the Paston Letters (more later) and who would keep it for 250 years. In Elizabeth I’s time sea trout could be caught in Bayfield water, which means the water mill at Glandford, could not have existed. Even in the 1700s there are records of it running backward because of high tides. In the 1600s came the Jermys, a family of Huguenot extraction. Their fanatically Parliamentarian Robert was remembered for throwing a parson out of his living because he said that a particular Christmas pudding looked like a Roundhead. It was during the civil war, which Robert served in with distinction, that both the churches of Bayfield and Glandford fell into disuse, the former to become a picturesque ruin on the estate. You can shoot and stay at Bayfield Hall but most visitors will go to the stable where there are several popular antique shops. Glandford is the next village down the river and the only one you pass through between Letheringsett and Wiveton. It will always be associated with the Jodrell family who took over Bayfield in the 1700s and particularly Sir Alfred Jodrell who inherited it in 1882 and the first thing he did was to rebuild Glanford as a model village. I can find no record of a pub ever existing there, but I suppose there must have been once. Sir Alfred was attentive to the well being of his tenants and used to supply the patients at the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital with a Christmas dinner. In 1928, ten weeks before his death, the usual 20 turkey and 20 chickens were sent from the estate. But Sir Alfred’s most striking con
tribution the Glaven Valley is undoubtedly St Martins, Glanford, which had, like Bayfield, been in ruins but had been partially restored in the 1850s. He completely rebuilt it and magnificently furnished it in memory of his mother, Adele Monkton.
This can only be a high Anglican church and conforms perfectly to the Victorian concept of what a pre-Reformation church would have looked like. Adele’s mo
nument is a white marble angel by Pietro Bazzanti of Florence. There is an East Anglian Seven Sacraments Font, copied from the one at Walsoken. The windows are by Kempe and his pupil Bryans and one contains a picture of the church as it was before restoration. It is full of oak and cedar furnishings and had has a richly painted rood screen. The layout is original and the arcading is 15th century. Simon calls it a jewel. And the icing on the cake is a peel of bells that ring the quarters.
The uniform cottages of Glandford are very obviously estate built, in this case by Sir Alfred. There is a footbridge over the river and a ford, unsuitable for cars. Providing its not being over run by holidaymakers, this is another good spot to stop and take stock or have a picnic. It’s also a good point to say a word about what’s happened to this valley. Down stream you can see a mill, which, as I mentioned, had the tide reverse its wheels in the 1700s. Look upstream and you could be a hundred miles from the sea, but a
s I also mentioned, sea trout were once caught at Bayfield. So where you are now standing would once have been tidal. Down stream, between the two churches of Cley and Wiveton, was a still a deep-water port in Elizabethan times. What happened? Basically, over the centuries man encroached on the river, inhibiting the ability of the tide to scour it out. When it was far too late and the lives of the Glaven ports of Cley, Wiveton, Blakeney and Salthouse were already doomed, a young engineer was employed to advise what should be done. He wrote For all the experience I have had with tidal rivers connected with drainage and navigation I am convinces that the problems are materially concerned with the flux and reflux of tidal waters into the country. Did the local landowners pay any attention? No, the report was rejected and the Glaven died as a navigable river. The engineer’s name was Thomas Telford.
The easiest way down river from here is to cross the footbridge and ride to Cley, but then you miss Wiveton, so better get back on the main road and confront the little hill that separates it from Glandford. Wiveton has a nice pub, The Bell, but like many around here, it is primarily a restaurant. I suspect there is a lot more to Wiveton than has yet been discovered but its exciting enough to know that if you look across to Cley, what is now marsh, was once full of shipping. The church of St Mary’s is, as usual well described in Simon site. Just as the church at Stiffkey will always be associated with a vicar who was killed by a lion, the one here will be so with one who was hanged for murder at Tyburn. To be fair, James Hackman hadn’t been in the business long. He had been a young army officer who had fallen for one Martha Ray, but she didn’t fancy a soldier so he joined the church, becoming Wiveton’s vicar in 1779. However this still didn’t impress Martha and when she refused his final offer he went off to London with a pair of pistols, shot her and tried to shoot himself. You can guess the rest.Subsequent incumbents proved equally eccentric. One was given to wearing his wife’s clothes to save money while another rushed out in the middle of a sermon shouting that he had left the cage to his ferret pen open. But odd stories don’t stop at the church. Outside the front is a cannon stuck in the ground, quite obviously burst while firing. I was told the story that there was a custom of firing this cannon at marriages and that one day it burst and killed the bride! However, the Norfolk Heritage site has the much more believable tale that it fell off the back of a transport (you heard that one before?) and the locals tried to see if it worked, presumably using too much powder. Either way it’s there on Wiveton Green, either to be a warning about playing with guns, or an example of how to spoil a good story.Before leaving Wiveton I have to record a poem written by Grace Jelf before the 1953 flood destroyed the last vestiges of Wiveton quays. I found it one of the booklets by Derrick Mellor in Cley church from which I have taken much for this piece on the Glaven.
On light old ashen walls, against the trees,
The crest of Wiveton, blue green and gold,
While shadowed northern flint reflects the cold
Storm indigo of sky, the sun will seize
On Gothic detail. Now the tidal breeze
Shivers the poplars, stirs each snowy fold
Festooned on twisted hawthorns, taken hold
In stone and timber of the sunken quays.
Here was the sound of hammering, the whip
Of flying ropes, the creak of wood on wood,
Where now the petals strew the straggling bank,
Here, long ago they built a little ship
That sailed from Wiveton and northward stood
And in the raging seas of Norway, sank.
We now cross the bridge to Cley, a bridge that was once the lowest crossing point of the Glaven. The part of the village we enter is what was originally the centre, where you find the green, the church and an inn. This is where the old port was in the medieval period before development followed the receding deep water but as late as 1620 a high tide stranded a porpoise on the green. The local website, otherwise very informative, mentions the plague as a reason for the port’s decline, which I think they got from Simon’s site about the church, and by which they mean the Black Death. This is misleading because it occurred in 1348, before the greatest days of the Glaven ports, and as have I said, it was messing with reclamation over centuries that did for navigation. Indeed the “plague” gets blamed for many things in Norfolk for which it was probably not responsible.
The church, St Margaret’s is both huge and full of interesting features. Built partially by the aforementioned de Vauxs of Bayfield, the master mason, William Ramsey was carried off by the Bla
ck Death, so in that sense the plague did leave a visible effect. The church has a famous collection of bench ends and brasses but you really should read Simon Knott’s appreciation, which is, as always, so much better informed than mine. What I will remark on, with my regrettably Rabelaisian humour is that it is the only church I know to exhibit three buttocks, items that are usually found in pairs and seldom in churches! One pair is on a boss in t
he porch where a man and a woman are belabouring an unfortunate third party. The third is on a carving in the south aisle where a man in medieval dress just seems to be being very rude. What is the purpose of all this? Vita brevis – ars longa?
In 1612 a fire destroyed the village around the green and of the 117 houses that were destroyed none were rebuilt, and the remaining 17th and 18th century buildings are all further north. By 1740 only small craft could get up to near what is now the High Street so a bridge and barrier was put across the estuary to connect it with Blakeney, which was washed away four times before 1820. When people crossed by boat accidents were inevitable as in 1816 when five young people drowned returning from church. Eventually Lord Calthorpe, the local landlord, put up a sea wall and sluice, much to the chagrin of local fishermen, and it was this that finally killed Cley as a port. In 1840 they could still load 10,000 sacks of flour but in 1876, the last ship to leave Cley, cast off.
Happily the villages as reinvented itself as a tourist destination and art and artisnal centre, particularly orientated toward the famous Cley marshes and their bird life. Indeed, just outside on the coast road to the east is the RSPB Visitors’ Centre with a great viewing base, café and bookshop, all in a new eco-friendly construction. There is lots of accomodation including the two inns, The Three Swallows and The George and the old windmill that dominates the high street offers B&B. But the population of Cley is probably less than half what it was when it was a port and if it has a spirit, I wonder if it pines for those less twee and more brutal incarnations of the past.
Categories: Cycling, Norfolk, Pubs, Tourism | June 16th, 2010 | by mark | no comments
Holt (bus.bike/h.café.pub.accom)
Holt 52” 54’ 21.27 N 1” 05’ 24.50 E O.S. Landranger Map 133 Google Maps Local Camping
Click on images for full picture
I was once in a Holt pub, not an unheard of event, and I got talking to an ancient local. I must have lost track of the conversation because he startled me at one point by saying fervently “I hate ‘em!” I asked what it was he hated? “Shannocks!” says he. Well, I had been in the district long enough to know that Shannocks were inhabitants of Sheringham, but I couldn’t understand his very obvious distaste. Nor would he elaborate. So a few weeks later I asked Geoff, himself a septuagenarian Shannock, and he smiled wryly and explained. Many years ago, when these men were very young Holt was a depressed agricultural backwater. Its children would travel on the train down to school in Sheringham, then as now, a thriving coastal resort. The Holt kids were despised and mocked for their unsophistication and poverty. For one old chap at least, Sheringham had never been forgiven! The breath-taking irony of all this is that now Holt is a byword for wealth and refinement. Its quaint Georgian streets offer art galleries and choclatiers and you wouldn’t be surprised to bump into royalty in its elegant shops.
So what caused this remarkable metamorphosis? It can’t be the presence of the county’s premier public school, because Gresham’s has been here since 1555. Unlike Burnham Market, which relies heavily on second homeowners, Holt has got serious commercial activity and a light industrial site. But tourism dominates the high street with 
antique shops, cafés, pubs and a department store that has acquired the nickname of Norfolk’s Harrods. What small town these days has more than one fishmonger or bookshop? It is not inherently different from the other Georgian towns of Norfolk, so why this upmarket persona? Why did not the same thing happen to Reepham or Cawston or Aylsham? My guess is its geographical position; on the way to the up-market end of the Norfolk Riviera.
Holt is the Saxon for a wood and it was an established village and manor by the Norman Conquest. The town as we know it was largely rebuilt after a fire in 1708 destroyed most of it, hence its period look. By 1829 it had occasional assemblies, coach services to Norwich and London three days a week, several inns, the famous school and until recently, a racecourse, which was where Holt Country Park now is. Heavy goods – and some passengers – came from London by sea to Blakeney. A charming letter written by 14-year-old Edmund Savoury, one of a local milling family, writing in 1842 records,
We had a very hot ride, were almost baked when we got to Holt where we stopped to bait the Horse and ourselves also. I enjoyed myself much. We had Tea, I had a f
amous good tuck out, I devoured three plates of Bread & Butter, two Crabs, half a plate of Shrimps, two plates of neat’s tongue and washed them all down with three dishes of tea which made me confoundedly hot afterwards. We met with an old acquaintance of Pa’s, Mr Thompson of the Bank at Fakenham. Old Joe Gurney and Mrs Fry are here likewise. Uncle took off his hat to them and they made him a most condescending bow in return.
Now what did Lord Reith, Stephen Spender, Benjamin Britten, Sir James Dyson and Christopher Cockerell (the inventor of the hovercraft) have in common? They all attended Greshams School at Holt. This is a private school, founded in 1555, just about the time when people realised that with the dissolution of the religious houses (1537-1540), England had abolished its only free education system. Other alumni were John Bradburne of whom I have already written and Erskine Childers, who was to become president of Ireland, although he is seldom included with the others, probably because his father was not a good example to patriotic English schoolboys! (Robert Erskine Childers, served in the Boer War and became famous for a novel about a German naval ambitions called The Riddle of the Sands (1903), a book that Churchill was to credit with arousing British awareness of the German threat and resulting in British naval rearmament. However he went on to become a rabid Irish republican and was executed by the Free State Government during the Irish Civil War). Until the early 20th century the school was situated in the town, in a large building that overlooks the Market Place and war memorial, and is now the school pre-prep. The prep school is a bit out on t
he Cromer Road and the main senior school buildings beyond that again, among playing fields and woodland.
Holt’s em
blem is an owl. The story is that two men once found an owl and put it in the village pound, whereupon it flew away. This may have been a funny story in the 17th century, but unless I have missed something, it has not worn well over the years. However an owl is a good symbol, with its connotations of wisdom and is still a common sight in the adjoining countryside. The town has churches at both the east and west ends of the High Street, St Andrew, a medieval building with a Victorian interior and the Methodist church, a Victorian building in gothic style. In the lane that goes up to St Andrews beside the Old School House is the public library in a building that used to be a livery stables. I was told that a retired soldier who had been in the Charge of the Light Brigade once owned this. I asked a local retired actor, Peter Whitbread, about it and he told me that as a child he had met the old man. In fact the veteran had not taken part in the charge but had been a boy soldier during the Crimean War. Still, it’s amazing to think that I knew someone who had met someone who had fought in the 1850s.
Holt boasts an impressive hospitality sector. The oldest inn is The Feathers; the building dates from the 17th century (1650 says the website), which implies that it survived the Great Fire of 1708. The first recorded landlady was Elizabeth Shepherd in 1783. In 1830 it was the terminus for the Norfolk Regulator coach service to London every Monday, Wednesday and Friday starting at 5.45 a.m. and the trip took 14 hours. It seems to have been called the Three Feathers until 1910 and its long survival is probably owed to the existence of the cattle market that used to exist at the back.
The Kings He
ad, which is further up the High Street probably dates from the 18th century although the first recorded landlord was Richard Johnson in 1830. It was damaged by enemy action in 1941, as were several country pubs, which seems strange, and has to be attributed to Hitler being teetotal! The other proper pub is The Railway, which probably predates 1820 when it was called The New Inn and run by John Withers. Over the years publicans included a horse trainer and a horse breaker and, of course, its not so long since the horse-drawn Holt Flyer, which picked up visitors from the Poppy Line station, used to start from there. In 1884 the railway arrived in Holt and in 1892 the New Inn changed its name to The Railway Hotel. And so it remained until 1976 when it changed again to The Fighting Henry, presumably in acknowledgement of Henry Cooper’s retirement after his loss of his heavy weight title in 1971. This lasted for a decade before it became the Railway Tavern again.
But there are three other interesting watering holes in Holt. These are the Balthazar wine bar, Byfords and Butlers. The first is hidden in an alley off Shire Hall Plain, not far from Byfords. It is quaint, cosy and specialises in tapas. Byfords, which is teashop, restaurant, delicatessen, bar and posh (sic) B&B. Then there is Butlers, a wine bar restaurant in the trendy Applyard. There are also several excellent tearooms and cafés.
About a mile out on the Cromer Road is Holt Station, not the original station when the town was on a real branch line, but the terminus for the Poppy Line, run by the voluntary North Norfolk Railway. This is nostalgic st
eam railway with a full size rolling stock that uses the original stations at Weybourne and Sheringham. It is seasonal but you can check activities on its website. There is a bike hire business on the Norwich Road run by Mr John Overland.
The question for the cyclist is whether Holt would make a good base for touring? It has the advantages of having all facilities, a variety of accommodation and bike hire. (Byfords even offers bike hire as a service). Also Holt is about 150 ft above the coastal towns so most places are down hill. The downside is cost. Being so up-market means it is not the cheapest place in the county although on the coast the pubs are often even dearer. The nearest bike repair and sales are Sheringham, Fakenham and Cromer. A lot depends on what you want to see and do; another advantage of Holt is that is midway between the wildlife attractions of the coast and the deep countryside that we are exploring here. So you just have to weigh it all up, with special consideration to your wallet! .
Well, you see where the owl in the title comes from; how about the pussycat? The dominant building in Holt High Street and Market Place is the Gresham’s pre-prep, mentioned and pictured above. This used to be known as the Old School House, and was once the only school building. It was rebuilt in its present form in the mid 19th century on a manor used for the same purpose, which looked quite similar. This manor had been the property of the school’s founder, Sir John Gresham, but had originally been the property of the Perrers family. Although some modern historians dispute her identity, it was an Alice Perrers who was the notorious mistress of Edward III. Certainly there was the tradition that Alice came from Holt and if true, it would be another little irony, that for generations Norfolk youth was educated in the house of the county’s most famous courtesan! So Alice Perrers is my pussycat.
Categories: Churches, Cycling, Norfolk, Pubs, Tourism | June 10th, 2010 | by mark | no comments
Reepham (bus.pub.café.accom) – Cawston (bus.pub.café.accom) – Heydon (pub.café) – Corpusty (bus.pub) – Edgefield (pub) – Hempstead – Holt ( bus bike/h.pub.café.accom) 15.2 miles or 24.32 km
Reepham 52” 45’ 50.61 N 1” 6’ 36.48 E O.S. Landranger Maps 133 Google Maps
Local Camping
Next suggestion, take the B1145 for Cawston, eastwards, in other words. In two and a half miles you reach this village, which is smaller that Reepham but has a much bigger and more famous church. It also has a pub, The Bell, and an excellent café and delicatessen that is a great favourite of cyclists. Here is a picture of some of my club members there although I won’t pretend they are the youngest, or I the most photogenic. Its called All Things Nice, and like the pub, its in the main 
street. There is also a well know gastro pub at Eastgate, a bit to the south, called The Ratcatchers. Suitably refreshed you really ought to see the church.
St Agnes is one of those great churches that has everything, a splendid angel roof, one of the best rood screens in the county and many other little features which are as usual, admirably described on Simon Knott’s site. The screen is particularly fine and in case you don’t visit Simon, features, on the north side, St Agnes and her lamb, St Helena and her cross, St Thomas, St John the Evangelist, St James, St Andrew, St Paul, St Peter, St Gregory, St Jerome, St Ambrose and St Augustine. On the south side are St James the Less, St Bartholomew, St Philip, St Jude, St Simon, St Matthew famously in his spectacles (!), St Matthias, and Sir John Schorn conjuring the devil into a boot. Sir John was the rector of North Marston, in Buckinghamshire, in about 1290. He was regarded by many as a saint. A well in North Marston, said to have been blessed by him, became a pilgrimage site for those suffering from the ague or gout. Sir John’s biggest achievement, however, was the conjuring of the devil into a boot. Or, since he cured gout, perhaps he was getting the devil out of a boot! The interesting fact is that this was what gave rise to the Jack in the Box. (Well, I’m not sure I believe that either, but it’s a good story). Although considered very holy he was never canonised but his remains are now at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.
Another curiosity is a pub sign hanging above the north doorway because the Lord and the landlord don’t often come that close. There was a tradition that the ploughmen of Cawston assembled annually at The Plough pub and proceeded in procession to the church for a service. When the pub was closed in 1950 the sign was deposited in the church, t
ogether with a plough and the sign and these words hangs near it. Sygate, pronounced Sigat, is an area of the village:
God speed the plough And send us ale corn enow
Our purpose for to make at crow of cok,
Of the plolete of Sygate;
Be marry and glade
War good ale yis work mad.
There is yet another story connected to this church but you won’t find it on Simon’s site. In 1979 guerrillas of Rober Mugabe’s insurgent army gunned down a Franciscan working in a leper colony in what was then Rhodesia. After his death a cult grew up around him, and a movement was started towards his elevation to sainthood. His name was John Bradburne, and although born in Cumbria, he grew up here in Cawston where his father was the vicar and attended Greshams School in Holt. He was an extraordinary man with a fascinating career and you can find more by following the link.
On now to one of the most picturesque villages in Norfolk. To get there, go back towards Reepham and just as you leave the village, take the first right after the 
bridge. The road runs straight for a mile until it hits a T-junction, where you turn left for another mile or so. Then turn right for Heydon, which you reach in a few hundred yards. I was cycling this road one day when I saw a disturbance, which I took for blowing leaves, in the road. When I arrived, I found it was a young rabbit fighting for its life with a weasel. Seeing me, the weasel let go and disappeared into a hole in the bank and the rabbit hared off in the other direction. The weasel returned to give me a vindictive look. When I got back I checked on the Internet to confirm it was a weasel and not a stoat and came across this very scientific help. A Weasel is weasily wecognised and a stoat is stoataly different. Not stoataly. But a stoat has a black tip to its tail. There is one in my garden at the moment trying to rob a blackbird’s nest.
Heydon is one of the most picturesque and well know small villages in Norfolk. Set in woodland around a village green it has a lovely Elizabethan hall, a medieval church full of interest and a classic pub. No building has been added for a century and it is so quaint that it is often used for film & TV sets, The Go Between, Ladies in White, Vanity Fair for instance, and a whole heap more. Once a stone and timber Saxon manor nestled here among the open fields 
of a hay-hill (or high-down, depending on which authority you choose) but its fires died after 1066 when the thegn was expelled the land granted to the de Warennes, the new owners taking the name of the village. Whether the later Heydon family was connected to them or not seems doubtful.
The Heydons sold the property to the Dynnes in 1567 and it was Henry Dynne who built the hall in 1582. He is buried in the church and I found his grave by accident while photographing the famous murals. The Dynnes sold to the Earles in 1640, both families having made their money from the law. The Earles married into the Bulwers in 1776 and it is this family in its incarnation as Bulwer-Long who still own the whole village today, making it one of only 12 privately owned villages in England
The famous novelist and poet Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873) was in fact a Bulwer, son of General William Earle Bulwer, but added his mother’s name to his own. He was very popular in his day and coined expressions such as the great unwashed; the pen is mightier than the sword, and the pursuit of the almighty dollar. Unfortunately for his reputation, literary tastes in the 20th century moved away from his rather florid style and he isn’t much read, apart from The Last Days of Pompeii, perhaps, which has survived better. He had a successful political career and a disastrous marriage to his Irish w
ife Rosina, who also wrote two successful novels. General Bulwer gave his name to a town in South Africa (Bulwer) and his son to a town in Canada (Lytton).
The imposing church has some fascinating medieval murals, discovered in 1970, depicting the three living and three dead kings, the theme captured in the motto, As you are now so once were we, as we are now, so you will be. This morbid sentiment probably dates them to the 14th century, the one of the Black Death, climate change, large scale flooding, famine and a decline in population. Because these paintings were lost for so long other wall monuments and a window have compromised them, the dead having had the worst of it. The living kings, eerily seem to be mocking a much later Bulwer monument. On the other side of the church is another mural that the experts think is probably the Magi. There is also an unidentified saint. She has a crown, which probably makes her St. Mary. Pevsner (p.548) seems to date the church and the paintings to the 14th century but the font to the 13th, so we must assume there was an earlier church on the same site.
The village pub, the Earle Arms, is all you would wish for, and has a strange wooden carving set in an exterior wall. Nobody has been able to explain this to me, not even Pevsner. The Arms has horsy prints and a good reputation for food, although I have never had more than a sandwich there. The Hall has been restored to its original Elizabethan appearance and is definitely worth a look; go through the gates and the drive takes you past the front. (If Boscobel Wood has its Royal Oak, Heydon Park has Cromwell’s Oak, but he climbed it, not to escape 
the Royalists, but to avoid an angry bull). Then if you continue you come out on the main Norwich – Holt road, the B1149. Holt is where we are going so you could turn left here. But it is a busy route, so I am going to propose an alternative. If the gate is open you can leave the park by west gate which means turning left at the main gate. If it isn’t, and its safer to avoid disappointment, retrace your ride back through the village, out the way you came in, right at the cross roads and right again for Corpusty.
The road runs straight and north for a couple of miles. Note there is a firing range on the left. Then you arrive at the twin village of Corpusty-Saxthorpe. I fondly imagined that Saxthorpe might mean something to do with Saxons and that Corpusty came from Corpus Christi. No suc
h luck. It’s Saxi’s village and Corp’s pigsty, or something. A shame, because they make a charming duo with a 17th century mill, 16th and 17th century cottages and a pub, the Duke’s Head and the well kept Church of St Andrew. Now, once again you have a chance to take the main road to Holt, which is 6 miles away, or follow a route through the countryside that avoids the traffic. If you want to do the second, turn left at the pub and follow the road out of the village, keeping the river on your right. Presently you come to a bridge over the Bure, a charming spot and the site of an old fulling mill. Cross the bridge, go up the lane, left at the main road and immediately right again and you are back among rolling fields, following the way to Edgefield.
This is a pleasant meander on a fine day and soon you come to the ancient hamlet of Edgefield Street. Then its up the hill to a cross road which used to have a windmill, a pub and a cross, all sadly gone, and turn right into Edgefield village which has the gastro-pub, The Pigs. The Pigs in its long life has variously been the Three Pigs, Piggs Inn, The Frere Arms and the Bacon Arms. It is marked on Faden map as Pigs, so was going at least by the late 18th century and is mentioned in a smuggling case in the early 19th. If you are in a hurry to get to Holt, you still have the option of the main road, but if not, take the Holt road until you are out of the village, then take the first right instead, and you climbing through fields up a gentle hill. Take the first left and you descend into a thick and quite dark wood. You eventually exit this at the village of Hempstead, which has a pretty little church of All Saints. Simon says that it is an aisle of a larger church, which has now disappeared. Its distinguishing mark is a thatched apse, which makes you think that it would be at home in Tolkien’s Shire. It has always been locked when I have been there.
Ride north through Hemptesad and in a couple of miles you are in the Georgian market town of Holt, about which quite a lot may be said.
Categories: Churches, Cycling, Norfolk, Pubs, Tourism | May 31st, 2010 | by mark | no comments
Blakeney (bus.accom.pub.café) – Langham (pub) – Binham (bus.pub) – Sharrington – Hunworth (bus.pub) – Briston (bus.pub.) – Thurning – Reepham (bus.accom.café.pub) 21 miles or 33.6 km (Excluding Salle)
Blakeney 52″ 57′ 04 56 N 1″ 1′ 20.99 E O.S. Landranger Maps 133 Google Maps. Camping in region
The Blakeney people
Stand on the steeple
And crack hazelnuts
With a five-farthing beetle.
The rhyme does pose questions. The easiest one to answer is that a beetle is a hammer or mallet. But to which steeple does it refer? Blakeney church has two. But first an introduction: Blakeney is, together with Burnham Market and Brancaster Staithe, one of the best known spots of our Norfolk Riviera among visitors. The name apparently comes from black island or Blacca’s Island and since it is first recorded as Snitterly, has prompted theories about there once having been a village to seaward, as Shipden was to Cromer. There is little evidence for this except the ruins of a two-cell building out on the marshes, called the chapel, but its use is unknown. So there were probably two villages side by side, which coalesced. (William Camden, writing in 1607 says Blakeney, our country man Bale calleth it Nigeria. Presumably this was Mr Bale struggling to get Blake into Latin!)
The present one – which has sometimes been something more – has had three incarnations. The first was that of a trading port; the second was as a smug
gling and fishing town and the third was as a tourist destination. The same goes for many towns, of course, but in Blakeney it doesn’t need much imagination to step back and see those other times, the bustling wharves, the Dutch merchants, the smuggling bruisers, the bearded fishermen or the flappers arriving at Blakeney Hotel.
It was in the 13th century that Blakeney first established a name for itself. With neighbouring Wiveton and Cley it formed the Blakeney Haven complex, which was to become the third largest port in the county. The Glaven estuary looked completely different in those days. All three settlements were approached from the sea by navigable channels so the quays of their ports were open to deep water. In 1204 it didn’t even have a customs officer but by 1301 it was large enough to be ordered to send ships to Berwick where Edward I was fighting the Scots.
It had customs officials from the 14th to the 16th century, the only other ports in Norfolk to do so being Lynn and Yarmouth. In the Elizabethan times it may have actually been more important than Lynn, as it listed 36 large ships to Lynn’s 32. Its fishing fleet sailed to Iceland for cod. Its main exports were corn and fish and the main imports coal, salt…and fish. It was this trade that made the Hansa cities feel nearer than some English ones, that had brought the round church tower and would bring the Dutch gable and that made this coast feel part of the North Sea community.
It is said that there was a German chapel in the church for the benefit of foreign sailors. A Carmelite priory existed to the east but there is little left of medieval Blakeney except the ruined undercroft of a building called the guildhall, but most of the village is much later. The end came slowly, partly because of general trading patterns and partly because the local landowners didn’t understand the working of long shore drift, and accelerated the silting up of the harbours with ill advised drainage schemes. Nowadays Blakeney is the only one resembling a port.
Between the great days 
of deep-sea trade and the birth of the Norfolk tourist industry the town relied on fishing and smuggling. Indeed architecturally it mostly dates from this period, which is part of its charm. The White Horse is the oldest of the town’s hostelries and a smugglers’ tunnel was recently discovered running to the Blakeney Hotel, which was built in 1920 on the site of the Crown and Anchor. The Horse is a fine, small hotel with a famous table and a good selection of real ales in its handsome bar. Then there is The Kings Arms. Going by at least 1830 this pub was originally three fishermens’ cottages and the roof clearly claims building in 1760. Since 1972 it has been owned by the musical thespians Marjory and Howard Davies and it is full of their memorabilia and a collection of stopped clocks. Good beer and rugby talk with son Nic, the manager, are also on offer.
Blakeney Hotel opened at the beginning of that era and the Manor Hotel (which has a 400 year old Mulberry tree in the garden) twenty-six years later. Blakeney was reinventing itself. What’s the attraction in this third age? For the sportsman its the huge natural harbour, for nature lovers the boat trips or walks to see the seal colony at Blakeney Point or the old world charm of the village itself. Or the vast Cley Marshes and their wildlife, one of the greatest bird-watching venues in the country. For the artist, it is all that, and the famous wide skies.
The hospitality landscape charts Blakeney’s decline as a fishing village and rise as a tourist destination. It was later than some of Norfolk for this, and the railway completely passed it by. With its steep streets there was something West Country about it, completely unlike Cromer and Sheringham where the tourist boom began. I suppose Blakeney was waiting for the motorcar. The Bentley Boys era replaced the dragoons and the smugglers they chased, and thoroughly modern gels in cloche hats ordered martinis feet away from cellars which once rumbled with rolling tuns of brandy and rum. The Blakeney Hotel still caters for the descendents of the flappers.
Above it all – 100 feet in fact – St Nicholas’s parish church which is one of Simon’s ships of the north as he calls the huge parish churches of this coast. It dates from about the time Blakeney’s prosperity began and doubtless replaced a more humble predecessor. It is an active and well-patronised church with largely Victorian furnishings in the nave and a mass of 19th century glass on the south side. A fine collection of saints are on show including St Catherine of Sienna and Bridget of Sweden, and several
windows of British ones including Alban, Edmund, Ninnian, Patrick and Ethelreda.
But what makes this church unique is the second tower, a strange looking thing at the east end of the 13th century chancel. Agreement seems general that this was an early lighthouse and sailors out in the German Ocean, as it was once called, could make safe landfall at Blakeney if they steered for it. Its construction is of a time when there was a symbiosis between church and society. The people supported one church and endowed it and the church built a light to guide sailors home and a chapel for the foreigners to thank God for their safe arrival.
Leave Blakeney by the B1156 signed for Langham. Two and a half miles brings you into this small village with its 17th century pub, imposing church and long connection with the airfield that lies between here and Cockthorpe. Langham was also the home of, and is the last resting place for, Fredrick Marryat, the Victorian author, best known for his Midshipman Easy, and Children of the New Forest. The pub, despite a growing reputation for evening meals, still retains a very local flavour. It would have been in the predecessors of places like this that one Norfolk’s less well know rebellions were plotted.
The year was 1537 and the people who plotted in Langham were the rector, John Grigby, Thomas Mann, the carpenter, John Sellers, the tailor, and gang from the neighbouring towns, such as Andrew Pax, the Wells town clerk, Thomas Penne, a husbandman form Houghton, Richard Malyot, a sailor from Wells, and a large Walsingham contingent that seems to have included the butcher Robert Hawker, Richard Henley, a plumber, Howse, husbandman, Semble, a mason and a couple of Carmelite friars called John Peckock and William Gibson.
What they got up to has to be seen in the context of what else was happening that year. And what was happening was the biggest rebellion against the Tudor monarchy to occur. It is difficult to gauge how widespread anti-government feeling had become in the countryside except where it rebelled, principally in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. But the causes were reflected by the rebels’ demands. They thought there were going to be taxes on sheep (Henry VIII was always broke), they hated his minister Cromwell, and they knew he wanted to sieze the monasteries. 
Now, these religious houses, corrupt though some undoubtedly were, were the only access the common folk had to health care and education. Their seizure by the government and the enrichment of the local gentry, not to mention the unemployment such a move entailed, was deemed, and indeed was, grossly unjust. And, of course, there was the on-going irritant of enclosures, basically the privatisation of common land. This conflict is not often recognised as a symptom of class war, but that’s what it was.
The rebellion broke out in Lincolnshire and was led by a barrister called Aske. Soon 40 000 men from Lincoln and York were matching on London. This was the largest army England would see between the Wars of the Roses and the Civil War. In panic, Henry sent the Duke of Norfolk who could only muster 8 000, to stop them. Had it come to it, there is little doubt that Norfolk would have been overwhelmed, but the rebels didn’t want a civil war, or a change of dynasty. They just wanted to be left alone and keep their traditional religion. They didn’t even call themselves an army, but The Pilgrimage of Grace. They negotiated, and Norfolk, who could see the way things were, agreed to all their demands. They returned peacefully to their homes and dispersed. Then in a move worthy of Stalin, the government waited till it was quite, and then executed all the ringleaders for high treason.
It was against this background that our local friends met. It started with a singing-man from Walsingham called Rogerson, whose job obviously depended on the survival of the priory. He recruited another songster, William Gisborough, who lived in Wells and was a yeoman-merchant. From the start their motivation seems to have been social and political rather than religious, for Gisborough spoke of the misdeeds of the gentry who had all the farms and all the cattle in the country in their hands, so that poor men could have no living from them.
A shooting match at Binham was to be the catalyst for the whole affair. The plan was to raise the country, march into Suffolk, redistribute all the livestock on a more equitable basis and behead any of the gentry who saw fit to stand in their way. Unfortunately making plans proved easier than recruiting and one, perhaps inappropr
iately named chap called John Galant, reported the plot to Sir John Heydon, who contacted Sir Roger Townsend and very soon the matter was known to Master Secretary Cromwell himself.
In all 27 people were arrested including the sub-prior of Walsingham and were tried at Norwich assizes, the jury being packed with knights and squires, i.e. exactly the sort of people who the rebels intended to dispossess. In the circumstances it is quite a surprise that there were many acquittals but the chaps I mentioned above were all convicted. All were to die, save two, Grigby and someone called Punt, who remained in gaol. That was almost the end of the affair, but resentment lingered, and Elizabeth Wood, from Aylsham would later be arrested for saying: It was a pity the Walsingham men were discovered, for we shall never have good world till we fall together by the ears: and with clubs and clouted shoon shall the deed be done, for we have never good world since this king reigned.
The road to Binham, would have been well known to the conspirators and we shall now take it, a couple of miles of down and up, with a nice fast free-wheel into Binham itself. This village has an elephant in the front room, its priory, although the only bit that remains intact is the church that now doubles as the parish church of St Mary but the chancel, aisles, and transepts have all become ruinous as has the rest of this once great building. But what remains should be seen, and has recently had a makeover. The unusual mixture of Norman and Early English arcading is the first thing that strikes you when you enter.
Other points of interest are surviving parts of the rood screen, originally brightly decorated and over-painted in the 16th century with stern Gothic script. The font, an octagonal East Anglian Seven Sacraments font, by the way, is also worth admiring. We owe the survival of the church to the death of a workman when the local lord, Edward Paston, tried to demolish it f
or stone for a new manor. This was taken as a bad omen and the church was spared. Or perhaps the intervention of the resident ghost was responsible. A spectral Benedictine is said have been seen during evening services. Most of the priory was destroyed during the Reformation and bits inevitably found their way into the village . Pevsner is excited by the West Front which, if built prior to 1244, as asserted by Mathew Paris, has the earliest tracery of its type in England, earlier even than Westminster Abbey. The rest of the buildings date from the 12th to the 15th centuries, although the priory was founded in 1091.
Binham also has an elephant in the front street for The Chequers is not only a great pub and eatery but a brewery, Front Street, by name. The brewery itself is in such a small room, that it gives the term micro-brewery a whole new meaning and since the brewer and landlord, Steve, is a very big man, how he does it is as big a mystery as who the spectral Benedictine is. You can sample his products in the pub, the regular ones like Binham Cheer, of 3.9%, an oak coloured session ale using or Callum’s Ale at 4.3%, a reddish/copper ale with a bitter hop finish. Or try his seasonal ones like Swoopy’s Song, a spring beer for the swallow time, or Tsar, an Imperial Russian Stout for Christmas, which would have cyclist of my ilk seeing two spectral Benedictines at once. Steve is also into Belgian fruit beers that he both brews himself and carries in bottles and draught.
When we can drag ourselves away, head southeast along the road to Field Dalling. We are slowly leaving behind the coast, about which so much has been written and entering a quieter land of pheasants and hedgerows, where between the points of interest there is a cast of barn owls and hares, rabbits, weasels and deer to entertain you although I find that these last are better seen from a car, perhaps because they have better eyesight than I do. Follow the undulating road for about a mile past a farm. There is a colony of semi-wild peacock around here that you 
may see or hear. At the next junction turn right and in half a mile take the by-road left and you will shortly arrive at the A149 in a clump of trees. Be careful crossing the road, traffic speeds here, and you come lazily into the scattered village of Sharrington. You should find the parish church of All Saints on the right, best known for its corbelled animal heads that include, Simon Knott maintains, the friendliest sheep in Norfolk. I suspect this church was on a pilgrimage route to Walsingham and was once much bigger – you can still see the outline of arcading to disappeared aisles. Navigate carefully now, straight past the stump-cross a few yards along the lane, left and right by the phone box, and right at the next intersection. You should be on the road to Thornage. Turn left for Holt and immediately you’ve left the village turn right for Hunworth.
At the bottom of a shallow valley you come to a ford over a stream called the Hunnybeck. You are now in an enchanting little land of bluebell woods and a brook of swans. This is the Glaven on whose banks lies the chocolate box village of Hunworth. It has all the ingredients for a picture post card, church, green, manor and a Norman ring ditch on steep, wooded, Castle Hill.
The origin of the name seems to be Huna’s homestead and nothing to do with Huns or honey. There is a water mill on the Glaven dating from 1750, but a mill has been on the site since the days of Edward the Confessor. The parish church is of Norman origin but largely otherwise 13th – 15th century, made over by the Victorians. The pub, formerly The Blue Bell, has recently been taken over and renamed the Hunnybell, which is what it was often called locally. The new landlords proudly proclaim it dates from 1826, a common mistake, as that is when licensing reco
rds began. Yet it’s marked quite clearly on Faden’s Map of 1798. And there is a record of one Ambrose Mills being prosecuted for selling short measures in 1662. Since the building dates from the 1600s and there is no record of another pub, I would guess it was going from at least that time. Anyway it is now a well-known and popular bar-restaurant.
From Hunworth we head south, either by turning right after the Hunnybell, or going back to the church and turning left for Stody. The only advantage in the second is that you avoid a mile of busy road, and you pass Stody church, whose round tower is illuminated after dark. We can talk about round towers later as this is a long ride, and anyway, although imposing, the round tower here was rebuilt in the 19th century, so its not a good example. If you do go via Stody, turn left at the top of the hill and a straight road takes you down the edge of Stody Estate, where there is often wildlife to be seen. This stretch was on
ce part of the main road from Norwich to Blakeney. Turn left at the main road and we are in Briston.
Even its residents would not claim Briston to be the most attractive Norfolk village but it does have too surviving pubs, both quite old and in the case of one, The Stacey, originally the Horse Shoes, possibly 16th century. It is on the Norwich (B1364) Road. If you don’t want to pay it a visit, continue across the Norwich Road following the sign for Reepham. Before you leave Briston you will pass the other pub, The Green Man, which has long opening hours but doesn’t serve food. Keep going and you are soon in deep countryside again. In just over a mile you cross a stream, face a tight right hand bend on a rise and on your right is a church and rectory.
This is all that is left of the village of Thurning, which, believe it or not, had a market charter granted in 1276. It figures in history in a rather bizarre and little known way. One of its squires was Peter Elwin (1623-1695) and he married Anne Rolfe who was the daughter of Thomas Rolfe who students of early American history may know, was the son of John Rolfe of Heacham who married Rebecca, otherwise known as Pocahontas. Unfortunately the old lady died some 42 years before the marriage; otherwise we could imagine her visiting Thurning church.
This is St Andrews and a ruined flint wall seems to suggest it had a larger chancel at one stage but it is still nicely proportioned; what makes it very unusual are the stall or box pews. These in themselves are not rare in Norfolk but the signs of allocation are still in place at Thurning, allotting them to the different farms, the Hall’s servants, even the squire’s coachman! It is a delightful little glimpse into a bygone age and one wonders if the allocation of a box still goes with the deeds of the local farms. Pevsner dates the church to the early 14th century and notes that the rector was excused from rebuilding the chancel in 1715. He adds that the panelling, altar rail and box pews came from Kings College Chapel, Cambridge in 1825. I was shown these intriguing pews by members of my cycling club the first time we ever passed along here and they are certainly worth the stop. Then its on south, through a wood, down a hill, across a bridge by the ornamental lake of Thurning Hall and up a long hill to the Wood Dalling another church dedicated to St Andrew and a farmhouse part of which is early 17th century. In those days there was a hall on the other side of the church. Then on again down an incline to another stream and west into Reepham. Just before the road turns right towards Reepham there is a sign pointing left to Salle.
If you want to see one of the most famous churches in Norfolk make the small detour by turning left here. Salle (the name comes from sallow tree) was once a village of course. It is detailed in Domesday, there is a moated site on an adjacent farm and a deserted village site in Salle Park. From the Park, The Street runs up to the church and has a house or two, all that remains. Perhaps one of these was the pub, because despite the absence of a village there was a pub here, The White Horse, until 1972. But Salle means a church to most people, a huge, 15th century (around 1440) church full of period treasures. Its size is the result of having several prosperous families involved in the building according to Simon. He lists them as the Boleyns, the Brewes, the Mautebys, the Briggs, the Morleys, the Luces and the Kerdistons. Perhaps unsurprisingly three of those families figure in the Paston story. The font is the first thing you see, a beautiful Seven Sacraments font, much damaged by those nasty little men in black hats. The donors’ name, the Luces, is inscribed. The font cover is so huge it needs a pulley and arm attached to the tower to lift it, and is carved wood and perpendicular like the rest of the church.
There is a painted rood screen but it is badly degraded and doesn’t match some of the neighbouring ones like Cawston. There are, however, some fantasti
c wooden carved bosses on the chancel roof, which would make the place important, even without its other glories. Indeed to keep this entry at reasonable length I shall just have to name only the ones that impressed me most. A number of interesting brasses survive. There are some fine poppy-head bench ends in the nave but these look commonplace compared to the carvings of the misericords on the chancel. There is an angel roof, but not hammer beam and the angels are at the intersecti
on of painted and decorated beams. Then a little way up the church tower is a small room with more bosses, which have been repainted, of angels playing a variety of musical instruments.
I could go on but will defer to Pevsner and Simon Knott. To have all these wonders in one place is strange enough, but to have them effectively in the middle of open countryside is very odd. To some extent it was ever thus as Simon states there were seven priests here when the population was only 200. I first visited it with a member of my cycling club who had served on the Atlantic convoys, so he was nearly as young as I. We met a man putting flowers on his sister’s grave who during the war used to climb the tower and count the bombers out and back. That’s the sort of place it is, a huge sentinel over Norfolk fields. The quickest way back to Reepham is by the way we came, which is about a mile and half.
The centre of Reepham is one of those places that if you took the cars away, could almost be a set for a Jane Austen film. Yet some of the buildings are older, dating back to the 1500s. There are two pubs in the centre facing each other in the market square, The King’s Arms dating from 1712 and the Old Brewery House from 1729. The Kings Arms has been my choice recently although I first visited Reepham in search of the local ale which was only sold across the road. The Arms is an old coaching inn, has good food and beer, an old well, nice fires in winter and a local map from the 19th century.
Reepham also has two churches in the same churchyard, and once had three. It seems that a settlement grew up where three parishes met and as they coalesced into one village, had kept their own chu
rches. Legend says three sisters endowed the three churches and these siblings are acknowledged on the town sign. Perhaps that was always meant to be a metaphor. Anyway, Whitwell, Hackford and Reepham (the reeve’s manor or meadow) are now one. It is Reepham’s St Mary’s that has survived, St Michael of Whitwell, which has been joined since the 1930s, is not used for worship. The third church was destroyed in a fire in 1547. There is an interesting tomb, a Jacobean pulpit and Norman font all worth looking at.
Reepham was once on the railway and the old station (which is just where we came into town) has a nice teashop and other artisan emporia. From here you can follow the old track bed into Norwich, along a path known as Marriott’s Way
. This is fine for MTBs but if you have vulnerable tyres, be aware that it does not become tar until you are near the city.
In a way we have come more than 21 miles from Blakeney. We are in a quintessential English market town (since 1240), which has thrived on its own hinterland, rather than look to sea as Blakeney does. More and more Reepham also looks towards Norwich, as it gradually becomes a dependant of that fine city.
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ment on where they thought his brains were. Richard I’s ransom was paid in wool. The Lincolnshire wolds, the Cotswolds, Salisbury Plain and East Anglia provided grazing for vast flocks of sheep and the prosperous cities of the Low Countries and northern Italy were a ready market for their wool. The Hundred Years War was paid for largely by tax on this trade but this encouraged the producers to export less and think about added value. Then the Black Death arrived and halved the labour force, indigenous incomes rose and all these factors militated towards the birth of a local spinning, dying and weaving industry. These in turn produced new classes of people and a lot more local wealth, much of which pored into church building.
oss. St Mary was built in two stages; first in the early 14th century with the clerestory and hammer beam roof added a century later. It is a lovely church with all sorts of interesting things to see, most of all the rood screen. Although this has been badly restored it does feature some interesting folk, among them St.Wilgefortis, who may be here as a compliment to the Flemish, as she was popular over there, and St William of Norwich, who the guide book coyly says was a saintly boy who was murdered in Thorpe wood in 1144. In fact the story is more sinister. The murder was blamed on the local Jews and riots followed. 
how many pubs were in town at its heyday. By the early 19th century there were two malt houses, a brewery and four pubs, The Swan, The Kings Head, The White Horse (at Brigate) and the Sign of the Lemon. The brewery, which had once been a merchant’s house, was situated in a fine 17th century building next to the church (a drawing remains). The weavers would send their wares to Norwich on a Saturday and on Sunday their agent would return with the cash, at which point, they would repair there and have such a party that the worshippers next door complained of the noise. There is a story that, one New Year, the church bell began to toll at midnight. One of the revellers, full of Dutch courage went to investigate and was found later stone dead, his features contorted in terror! The building was demolished in 1842 and The New Inn replaced it. Even that had closed during my last visit so I just hope there will be a pub when you visit Worstead.
