A Norfolk Village

A few years ago we were cutting across Norfolk, making our way from Swaffham to Hunstanton, while showing my cousin and her husband some of the English countryside. At some point we sped through an attractive village with a large village pond but didn't stop. I'd always wondered where it was and recently I figured out it could well have been Great Massingham. Lets go and find out.

Like many East Anglian villages it has a very smart sign to welcome you. It depicts the importance of agriculture and commemorates the wartime airfield. It also shows the church tower and the village pond. There's a monk to remind you that long ago there was an Augustinian priory here. And that gent in the middle? That's Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), Britain's first Prime Minister, who was born at nearby Houghton Hall and received his early education in Massingham, before going on to Eton and Cambridge. But even he looks like he's got his farming boots on!

The imposing 15th century church tower is reflected in one of the village ponds. There are two large ponds in the centre of the village and several more around the outskirts. While it was not unusual to have more than one pond in a village, there are few places which have such large ponds, or where so many have survived.

These ponds may well have been connected to the priory, possibly as fishponds, though they undoubtedly would have had ducks and geese too, as they still do.

Ducks are so much a part of village life that even the pub has been renamed "The Dabbling Duck". The primary school just down the road has a duck on its badge, and the pre-school is charmingly named "Ducklings"!

There are geese too. These are Egyptian Geese and were originally imported here as colourful additions to wildfowl collections, but have since escaped into the wild where they have flourished and become part of the Norfolk countryside. 

Great Massingham has numerous fine examples of rural domestic dwellings. Part of England's charm is that each area has developed its own style of cottage architecture, not just as a matter of taste, but depending on what materials were available locally. Although the finest building stone might be transported long distances for major churches or great houses, the common people relied on what could be found in the surrounding countryside.

What was available in great quantities in the fields here was flint. These very hard but oddly-shaped rocks could be made (if you had sufficient skill) into a wall, but you needed bricks to make corners or to fit windows and doors. And happily the bricks which could be made in the area were an attractive russet tone.

Occasionally the builders became very ambitious and creative, combining flint and brick in a chequerboard pattern.

Rounded field-stones or beach-stones were also used for walling, but again were pretty useless for making corners. The immediate visual effect is much the same as flint-and-brick.

You will also have noticed that tiles are used for roofing here rather than thatch. Experts in vernacular architecture can tell you exactly where the tiles were made from the slight variations in local styles, though you can depend that none of them would have been transported any further than was strictly necessary.

The red tile roofs give the buildings a sense of unity even when the walls have been rendered rather than showing the underlying brick or stone. The church has also made use of local materials, but it's been thought worthwhile here to bring in stone for the corners.

One of the smaller ponds away from the centre of the village.

There are some delightful little corners to explore all over the village and, though you may stop here intending to have a quick look around, you could easily linger much longer.

Summer visitors probably help to keep the shop/post office in business and the sign in the foreground is for the Cartshed, a small tea room. But the overall impression here is that this is a self-contained settlement that would get by quite nicely on its own, thank you.

I'm still not completely convinced that this is the place I saw before, but I can't find anywhere else that fits the bill despite close examination of detailed maps. Anyway I'm glad we made a stop here in Great Massingham.

Take care.