Hint of Secrecy

Hint of Secrecy

North Norfolk on a bike

Around North Norfolk on a bicycle looking at its monuments, mills, churches, pubs, poets, rood screens, history, hammer beams, fonts, folklore, ghosts, pulpits, priories, archaeology and more pubs and listing over 100 interesting websites.

By Mark Igoe

...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.'

Lilias Rider Haggard (Norfolk Notebook)

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

With thanks to Rum, Brian, Rupert and Mouse

To the past and present members of the

North Norfolk Wheelers

Smashbooks Edition 2015

MARCO BOOKS

Copyright Mark Igoe 2011

CONTENTS

Introduction

Smugglers Road (Hunstanton to the Burnhams)

Saxon Shore (Burnhams to Hunstanton)

Plotters & Martyrs (Wells to Barsham)

Holy Vale (Walsingham)

Bulldogs, Trolls & Dodmen (Walsingham to Blakneny)

Sailors, Rebels & Airmen (Blakeney to Binham)

Pocahontas & Three Sisters (Binham to Reepham)

God Speed the Plough (Reepham to Holt)

The Owl and the Pussycat (Holt)

The Glaven Valley (Holt to Cley)

Pubs, Puritains & Poets (Salthouse to Aylsham)

Lapping Bure (Aylsham to Horstead)

Following Faden (Aylsham to Sheringham)

A Ghost, An Elephant & Henry Blogg (Sheringham to Cromer)

Poppies, Pastons & Pin-men (Cromer to Happisburgh)

Glory of Norfolk (Happisburgh to North Walsham)

Worlzum (North Walsham)

August Domains (North Walsham – Felbrigg)

Felon’s Brook (Felbrigg – Holt)

Sword Wolf’s Way (Holt – Dereham)

Bishybarnybees & Dumplings ([East] Dereham)

Saxons, Saints & Bentley Boys (Dereham – Fakenham)

Spooks, Jets & Turnips (to Great Massingham)

Mary Bones & Honey Hills (Fakenham to Hunstanton)

Postscript (Alias Introduction)

Introduction

Nobody reads introductions. I don’t anyway, and if I do, it is after I’ve read the rest of the book. So I’m going to put most of this introduction at the end. If you want to know more about it, or who Paul, Ian or Geoff are, you will have to plough through the whole thing. Or, if you are inventive, turn to the end. But there are some things you really do need to know before you start. Who Simon Knott is, for instance. Simon runs a website about churches and it is superb. For technical reasons I can’t link all the churches I mention but they are nearly all on the index page of this site, and are excellently described. And you will have to know about the abbreviations. Rather than give list of facilities with address I have provided websites, which is probably how most people do their holiday research anyway. I have put in indication of the presence of some facilities though, bike/s for bike shops, bike/h for bike hire, café is a café, pub indicates a pub, but these are not all linked, bus is a bus route, and accom is an inn or hotel, not a B&B of which there are too many and are best found with a web search or by simply asking. For a good way to find accommodation go to the Norfolk Tourism site, below. Simon’s famous church site, to which I owe a lot, and also the Norfolk Heritage site. For those seriously into architecture, a copy of The Buildings of England – Norfolk, volumes 1&2 by Pevsner and Wilson, Yale University Press is useful and occasionally quoted here. I also often refer to Faden’s 1797 map, which is available at most local bookshops and also on line. The Norfolk Pub site is also fascinating but must not be understood as a pub guide; it is a wonderful piece of historical research. This book is presented as a single ride, but it isn’t meant to be stuck to unless you really want. Use a good map, something like the Ordinance Survey Landranger or Explorer series.

Smugglers Road (Hunstanton to the Burnhams)

Hunstanton (bus.bike/s.bike/h café.accom.pub) – Ringstread (bus.pub)– Burnham Market (bus.accom.café.pub) – Burnham Thorpe (pub.bus) 11.8 miles or 18.88 km

O.S. Landranger Map 132 or O.S. Explorer 251

When I first came to Norfolk I was told Hunstanton is pronounced Huns’ton, but I have never met anybody who actually does, not round where I live, anyway. I do suspect though, that the county has more places pronounced differently from the way they are spelled than any in England. Why? Tell me when we get to Happisburgh (pronounced Haysburrer).

Moost counties hev nearmes searm as Norfolk

Whot never sound quite loike they spell.

So, because I’m a trew Norfolk dumplin’

I fare ter know some onnem well. *

Meanwhile I must explain that Hunstanton is anyway misnamed because it should be New Hunstanton. It was built as a resort in Victorian times, while the original village became Old Hunstanton. And it was here that I rode out to view a murder scene. This murder, a double murder in fact, was in the form of a shoot-out. William Webb and William Green were shot in the street by William Kemball.; a triple bill. There is not much doubt of Kemball’s guilt but in the subsequent trial he was acquitted, largely on the perjured evidence of Thomas Cooper, landlord of the Cutter. I tried to find the Cutter, but it is gone. I did find the graves of Green and Webb in the churchyard. Their headstones were difficult to read because the events I describe took place on 26th September 1784. Webb was a trooper with the 15th Light Dragoons and Green was a Riding Officer with the Customs. William Kemball was the most notorious smuggler on the coast.

Can you imagine a time when gangs of up to 200 armed men roamed the county unchallenged, when both the army and navy were employed to assist the civil power and often came short, and when it was impossible to get a murder conviction because of intimidation and bribery? North Norfolk in those decades was something like Columbia in the 1990s, run by cartels of banditti, but instead of cocaine, the commodities at the bottom of it were brandy, gin, tea, tobacco and silks, anything indeed that there was a high duty on. To give you an idea of scale, in the mid 1780s, an average of 2 000 gallons of illegal liquor together with 1 000 lbs of tea was being landed weekly between Hunstanton and Thornham, which are 3.3 miles apart by road. If you find this bizarre read Neil Holmes’s The Lawless Coast and subtitled Smuggling, Anarchy and Murder in North Norfolk in the 1780s.

Kipling got the sense nicely:

If you see King George’s men, dressed in blue and red,

You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said,

If they call you Pretty Maid, and chuck you ‘neath your chin

Don’t you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one’s been.

Five and twenty ponies,

Trotting through the dark

Brandy for the Parson

‘Backy for the clerk:

Laces for a lady, letters for a spy

And watch the wall, my darling, as the Gentlemen go by!

It’s only about a couple of miles from Old Hunstanton to Ringstead. This was also a smuggling terminal in times past and now has a furtive if quaint feel to it. It’s a well known village yet somehow contrives to seem hidden. It plays hide-and-seek with the coast road and neighbouring resort. It has a lovely pub festooned with bucolic artefacts and dating back to the 16th century. Called The Gin Trap since 1975 it was originally known as The Compasses. Outside are stocks and a whipping post where they put the Chancellor of the Exchequer every time the price of beer goes up. I wish.

Iron Age people around here seemed to have liked treasure hunts but been bad at them, as there has been quite a concentration of finds, most notably the Snettisham Treasure from south of Hunstanton. The Romans were active here too, building a long military road from the south which ran through Ringstead and for which the smugglers were grateful because it provided the perfect metalled but hidden route for their pack-horses away from the coast. It is the famous Peddars Way and is now part of a hiking route that can take you all round the county.

There were once two churches here but all that remains of St Peter’s is a round tower. The parishes of Great and Little Ringstead were amalgamated in 1792. St Andrew’s has prompted an entertaining exchange on Simon Knott’s website. With uncharacteristic ire he implies that in keeping the church locked the parish council might be inhospitable, or unfriendly, or unhelpful, or disinterested, or suspicious, or unenthusiastic, or ungenerous, or thoughtless, or mean-spirited, or lacking in energy, or rude, or incompetent, or even downright lazy. But he does publish the response on the same page: Postscript: the parish webmaster for Ringstead has asked me to indicate that this article about Ringstead St Andrew is not in any way endorsed by the parish.

If you head east from Ringstead the road is almost as straight as if it were Roman too, and in fact there is a suggestion of a Roman camp to the left of the road at a place called Choseley, where there was once a medieval village. Be careful coming out of Ringstead because the Burnham road actually comes off the main road to the left. The eight odd miles to Burnham are pleasantly undulating. This is a long, high, lonely way, quite the opposite from the coast road that runs parallel to it. Instead of cafés, pubs and traffic you have long views of fields and woods and, of course, the wide Norfolk skies. I’d love to have a royalty on all the contraband that must have crossed this road. This is part of the National Cycle Network. On several occasions larger roads running North-South cross it and you have to watch the signposts or you’ll end up in Docking, although that’s nice too. Then you freewheel down the hill and you are in Burnham Market. To many people in London and the Home Counties it is perhaps the best-known Norfolk village, although it is, in fact, a town. It is very pretty. It has a luxury hotel and a good pub. It has lots of up-market shops, teashops and a stream running through it. It is set near the coast in some of the most charming countryside the region has to offer. Its high street is full of period houses, some dating back to the 1500s. It has lots of history and even a mention in Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong. A quintessential country village, you might say.

So it might come as a surprise to read an imperious TV historian complaining, no it’s not, it’s much worse than that! (Islington-sur-Mer). It is Notting Hill-plage! Many locals might applaud him. (Wiki calls it Chelsea-on-sea). To a certain extent the town is a victim of its own success. Like so many other places in rural Britain, indeed in rural Europe, it has become a colony for the great, the good and the wealthy. If there is a doctors’ surgery here, which there must be, I bet it has more titled folk on its books than anywhere else in Norfolk. There are winners and losers in this sort of scenario, and I’m neither. So I enjoy the charm, sip my pint and sit on the fence.

There were three parishes and their churches here once so I suppose the place coalesced when the market was set up in 1209. It certainly did when the railways came and it got a station in 1857. There was a St Ethelbert’s of Burnham Sutton and there is still Burnham Ulf. Then there is St Mary, Burnham Westgate, which is the current parish church. In the 18th century the young local rector, Edmund Nelson, demolished St Ethelbert’s and used the material to repair All Saints. Edmund had a son who did well in the navy; we’ll come across him in a moment.

But before we leave, be prepared for a lot more places called Burnham. The hotel I mentioned is the Hoste Arms in the main street and its building dates back to 1552 although I have no idea how long it was an inn. William Hoste was one of Admiral Nelson’s captains, and a Norfolk lad. But the place was know as the Pitt Arms before 1811 and seems to have been so again in the late 19th century. The famous Parson Woodforde – the diarist of Weston Longville – stayed there on 12th September 1787 and it is listed around that time as one of the places the government could billet troops. The Nelson connection is continued by the town’s other pub, The Nelson, lately The Jockey, lately the Admiral Lord Nelson, and before that, the Lord Nelson. Many pubs have come and gone here, but the best named I can find was Tumbledown Dick. Perhaps it did.

You will have noticed that we are getting near the vortex of the Nelson Cult. I must warn you that to say anything against the Norfolk Hero in these parts is a bit like disparaging Churchill at a Tory Party Conference or the Pope in a Celtic supporters’ pub. I have read quite a lot about the chap (Nelson, not His Holiness) and I’m not a paid up member of the fan club. I don’t go around north Norfolk saying that sort of thing though; certainly not in the pub in Burnham Thorpe, the village where he was born.

Its only a mile and a half’s ride from Burnham Market and is the epicentre of the Nelson industry. The church is famous for two things, a brass of William Calthorpe from the 1420s, and the fact that Nelson’s father was rector here (among other Burnhams) and the great man was born in the (now demolished) rectory. And guess what the pub is called? The Plough. No, I jest, but it was called the Plough (built in 1637) until its name was changed in 1807 (some say 1798 in honour of the Battle of the Nile) to Lord Nelson. Nelson is supposed to have given a farewell party here before taking command of the Agamemnon in 1793 and the last landlord of the pub held a breakfast for the village on the 200th anniversary of Trafalgar to commemorate it. There is a fine period house on the site of the old rectory on the back road to North Creake, almost in site of the Abbey. It is even marked on Faden 1797 map as Capt. Nelson’s house. Even as that was being compiled Nelson was about to be an Admiral and his wife was alone at Burnham, while the Norfolk Hero was in Naples being entertained by Emma Hamilton.

*www.norfolkdialect.com/miscellany

Saxon Shore (Burnhams to Hunstanton)

Burnham Thorpe (pub.bus) – Burnham Overy Town (bus) – Burnham Overy Staithe (accom. pub.bus) – Burnham Norton – Burnham Deepdale(bus) – Brancaster Staithe (bus.pub) – Brancaster (pub.bus.café) – Titchwell (café.pub.bus)– Thornham (bus.pub)– Holme (bus.pub)– Old Hunstanton (bus.pub) 10.7 miles or 17.12 km

O.S.Landranger Map 132 or O.S Explorer 251

Before we leave Burnham Thorpe, I must tell you a story I heard from my friend Jerry. Many years ago the Lord Nelson had a landlord who banned dogs and students and had a notice to that effect. One day a couple visited the church and, unable to take their Yorkshire terrier inside, the husband wandered off to the pub. Seeing the notice but anxious for a beer, he smuggled the dog in and hid it as best he could while ordering his pint. No use, the dog was detected.

No dogs! Cried the landlord.

It’s a guide dog, protested the visitor. The landlord, who was partly sighted himself, examined the offending animal.

Don’t be silly, he said. Guide dogs are Labradors and Alsatians.

My God! said the visitor. What did they give me?

You don’t have to be an expert on place names to work out that the since the river in this valley is called the Burn, that that is how the Burnhams got their name. Or is it? If you include the ancient parishes of Burnham Ulf, Burnham Sutton and Burnham Westgate that makes seven Burnhams, only three of which are actually on the Burn, and one, Deepdale is a good way off. I don’t have any alternative theory, unless it means an area of springs (burna), so þæm burnum would mean those springs. But then again burn has come to mean a stream. Some people say that the name has something to do with the amber trade – amber can still be found on the coast. The thing is the sea level has been doing odd things around this coast and its difficult to know where the coast was at any given period in history. Overy, means over the water. Staithe means a wharf. More of this later.

To get from Burnham Overy Town from Burnham Thorpe you can either turn left in the village and left again on the B1155, or you can ride back to Burnham Market and turn right. Burnham Overy is the only one of the Burnhams called a Town, which is ironic, because it is hardly even a village although it was granted a market in 1271, one that unfortunately didn’t survive. It is rather charming though, and is distinguished by a mill, or rather two mills at the same spot, one water and one wind, both of which powered the same machinery. They were built in 1737 and seem to me to be a marvel of rural engineering. There were also at least two pubs in town. For the first mention of The Ostrich we have to thank William Fodder, the appropriately named landlord who published the following advert on 22nd November 1783 that he had:

taken the Ostrich, near Holkham Hall, which he has fitted up in a Particular Manner for the Accommodation of Ladies and Gentlemen who shall take the Norfolk Tour… Laid in a Stock of Wines and Spirituous Liquors of that Quality which he hopes, together with his Attention to Oblige, will give Satisfaction to all those who will please to favour him with their Company, whose Favours will be very gratefully acknowledged.

Unfortunately there are no pubs in Town now so you will just have to pay Attention to Oblige yourself. The church at Overy (St Clement) is odd. It is cruciform with a square coaxial tower, that is to say, in the middle, not at an end. Simon Knott says that for much of its life the nave was used for worship while the chancel was a schoolroom, blocked off by the closed tower. The church had places in the pews for regular worshipers to keep their prayer books. Years ago the sexton stood up after one sermon and advised all them that leaves their books to take them away, because the church is going to be whitewashed yaller. It was presumably after this yellow wash that the St Christopher wall painting was discovered. Does this mean it was on the way to Walsingham, the site of the great medieval pilgrimage? Did pilgrims land at any of the Burnham, say in 1300? Where was the coast then? If you take the lane north by the church, a short ride brings you to Burnham Overy Staithe.

I suspect that Burnham Overy was the original harbour and that Burnham

Overy Staithe was created later when the estuary silted up. I won’t bore you with all my reasons for this, but one is that there is no church at Staithe, implying that it was not there in medieval times. It wasn’t short of pubs later though, and had two which are now long gone. Just as the pub name Ostrich is usually a genuflection towards the coat of arms of the Coke family of Holkham,