I misread this farm’s name at first and it’s probably evident what I thought the sign said. It’s actually derived from Snail’s Pit, a local lake.
Category: Norfolk
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Shingham – St. Botolph’s Church
There isn’t much to Shingham and it has been a little subsumed into Beachemwell now, but its glorious church has remained. The above photo was taken from the main road (I say main road, but it’s not exactly the Las Vegas Strip) and I’ve no idea why the church is stuck back there. The land in the foreground wasn’t part of the church’s land even a century ago and was just part of the field.
It’s not known when the church was built, some histories suggests the thirteenth and others suggest the fourteenth centuries.
There’s something about this beautiful south door which to my very untrained eye just feels like the church is twelfth or thirteenth century. I hadn’t realised at the time that John Sell Cotman greatly appreciated this door and it’s pleasing to see the arch is still as he drew it nearly 200 years ago, with nothing dropped off.
The church was redundant by the mid-nineteenth century, as there simply weren’t enough people in the local area to support it. The thatched roof had mostly fallen in by the late nineteenth century and the walls were in a bad state of repair by this time. However, there was a saviour, money was raised at the beginning of the twentieth century to repair the church, to put an iron roof on, to re-plaster the walls and to fix the broken floor. All of the work was completed in just five weeks in early 1904, an impressive effort.
Despite the restoration in 1904, not much had ever really changed with the church. The interior had been modernised a bit, but it retained its seventeenth-century pulpit and communion rails, as well as having some medieval benches. Unfortunately, the church is nearly never open now, so it’s hard to see inside. But, very little was ever added to this church, so although the roof isn’t really entirely in keeping with the structure, it feels like little else has changed here over the last millennium.
A correspondent for the Illustrated London News visited the church in 1892, commenting that “in living memory, the parish clerk was a woman, who led the responses, gave out the hymns, knocked the boys on the head during the service when necessary, and in the absence of the rector, prepared the young parishioners for confirmation”. No wonder the boys stopped going…..
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Fakenham – The Old Fire Station (Heritage Trail 26)
Since I was back in Fakenham today, I thought I’d tick off a few more heritage trail sights. Not that I took much care in this, I meandered about until I had found a few, it’s more exciting that way to stumble across stuff.
Some care has gone into this fire station building at Hall Staithe, which was constructed out of brick in 1911 (the fire station, not the staithe). The cars parked in front make it a little harder to see the building clearly, but it was clearly a functional structure. Well, functional for the height of fire engines at the time, probably not quite so useful for the current ones.
The decorative effort that has gone into the building and the heritage trail sign is also visible, noting that both then and now, the fire station is manned by volunteers. The new replacement fire station is much larger and it’s now located on Norwich Road in the town.
The heritage trail’s web-site has some glorious photos of how it used to look when it was in use.
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Acle – St. Edmund’s Church (Robert Aldous Faulke)
This grave stands out in the churchyard because of its design, but it was the content that was the saddest, the death of a five-month old boy. Robert Aldous Faulke was baptised in the church on 13 September 1860 and he was the son of Robert Cooper Faulke and Anna Maria Faulke. Robert Cooper Faulke worked as a miller and farmer, employing three men and one boy, looking after 98 acres. There must have been some wealth, as the cost of such a headstone would have been relatively substantial.
Robert died on 20 February 1861 and was buried on 25 February 1861 and the bottom of his beautiful gravestone reads “he died for Adam sinned, he lives for Jesus died”. It must have made for a painful census for the family, as the 1861 national register was taken on 7 April, just a few weeks after the death of Robert. One notable thing is that the census lists 7-month old Fanny Elizabeth as the only child, which made me realise that Robert was a twin (I had otherwise missed that his sister was baptised on the same day).
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Dereham – Church of St. Nicholas (Overgrown Grave)
In a similar vein to the grave at Attleborough church that was overgrown, there’s something quite corporeal and spiritual (if something can be both these things) when graves get covered like this.
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Dereham – Town Sign
Dereham has a town sign which hangs over the High Street which was placed here in 1954, to mark the 1,300th birthday of when the town was founded. Realistically, this is probably a bit of a made-up date as there’s no historic evidence for this, but it’ll do as a best guess until someone can prove otherwise.
The story goes that the settlement of Dereham was founded by St. Withburga and there’s a tale that goes alongside this that the Virgin Mary guided her towards a stream where there were deer who provided milk to sustain her. Sounds about as likely as the more recent Castle Barnard story, but I won’t go there……
The next bit of the story, which explains the town sign, is that an evil local man didn’t like the deer being so generous to St. Withburga, so he tried to kill the lovely deer. Unfortunately, he was a bit inept and he fell off his horse and broke his neck. It’s not exactly a fairy tale story you’d tell to children, but that’s the imagery that Dereham wanted on its sign.
And here’s how it looked in 1960.
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Dereham – Former Guildhall
This is the former Dereham Guildhall and although heavily modernised, some sections from the sixteenth century remain in the wall and basement. It’s also been tidied up from when George Plunkett came to Dereham and took a photograph of it.
What is interesting from a heritage point of view is this, evidence of a separate property that is now joined with the main building. Those blocked up windows tell a story of their own, some are clearly evident, but there are a couple of harder to see blocked up windows on the first floor.
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Dereham – Name Origin
Since I had an afternoon in sunny Dereham, here’s what The Concise Oxford Dictionary Of English Placenames has to say about the history of the town name.
Dereham, Norfolk. Derham in Domesday Book, Estderham in 1428. Likely the Old English, Deorhamm, for an enclosure for deer.
There are two Derehams in Norfolk, the larger of the two is also known as East Dereham and West Dereham is around 25 miles away, nearer to Downham Market. A nice and simple town meaning, which has remained gloriously unchanged (well, nearly) for a millennium.
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Dereham – Church of St. Nicholas (Bell Tower)
When they wanted some new bells for Dereham Church they realised that their existing church tower wouldn’t be strong enough. So, they came up with a new plan in 1520, which involved building a separate tower within the churchyard. From the side, the tower looks as though it’s a church of its own, it’s a substantial affair.
The tower was built in the early sixteenth century, comprising of four layers and its height has made it useful as the location for the town’s public clock. The clock was added in 1902 and was designed by JB Joyce Clockmakers of Whitchurch, with their successor company restoring it in 2008 when they also added gold to the clockface. This separate bell tower set-up isn’t unique, but is rare in the UK, the most notable form is probably that at Chichester Cathedral, although Norwich Cathedral once had one.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the tower was used to house French prisoners of war. One such prisoner, Jean de Narde, tried to escape on 6 October 1799, managing to climb a tree and he refused to come down when requested. So they shot him out of the tree, which wasn’t ideal and it received some criticism from locals. He’s buried in the church’s graveyard, although he didn’t get a gravestone until 1858 when Anglo-French diplomatic relations had improved a bit.
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Dereham – Church of St. Nicholas
The Church of St. Nicholas in Dereham is quite a lumpy affair (this isn’t a proper architectural term and I imagine that Pevsner would be appalled at my language here) and there’s a separate bell tower arrangement (more on which in another post) because the previous one wasn’t strong enough to support the lovely new bells the church had acquired. There was a church here as early as the mid-seventh century (although the Danes destroyed that when they came to visit), although the current structure primarily dates from between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.
What is left of the lantern tower is visible in the above photo, it was reduced in height in 1539 following the completion of the bell tower. It has been done neatly, but it means that to me the church doesn’t feel like it has enough height.
The southern side of the church.
The south-west porch, the inner door here to the church is the earliest part of the building, dating to the twelfth century.
The west end of the church.
The east end of the church, which is also the chancel end.
The north side of the church.
I decided against going into much detail here, as the church is so complex I’ll need to break it up (the blog post I mean, not the church itself). Partly to ensure that I can understand what’s going on, but fortunately, there are some pretty complete histories available for this church.
I have visited the interior before, I’ll locate the photos, although hopefully I’ll get to see the interior again soon enough when things return to some sort of normality. I have though written about St. Withburga’s Well before, which is located in the churchyard.
