Swaffham
We are staying at Breckland Meadows Touring Park with our friends, Jeeves and Michelle on the outskirts of the small town of Swaffham, Norfolk. This market town is a pleasant place with a fine church, which was rebuilt in 1454, and other interesting buildings.
Legend has it that a peddlar (John Chapman) and his wife (Cateryne), donated funds to build substantial parts of the church after a dream led him to find a “great treasure” (see plaque under the town sign).
The church has an oak hammer beam roof with 192 angels carved in chestnut:
All the pew-ends all have extraordinary carved ornamentation on top:
The First Workd War Memorial window by Morris and Co. has panels depicting the fighting at Zeebrugge, Jerusalem and Mons, as well as a scene inside a field hospital:
The old corn exchange has ben re-purposed:
The old post office has also been re-purposed. Now more appropriate for the “last post”.
One of the largest of the old buildings in the town, the school, is sadly all boarded-up after more than 800 years. Two of the building are listed, but there are proposals to redevelop part of the site as housing:
Oxbourgh Hall
Oxbourgh Hall is around 8 miles south west of Swaffham. It is owned by the National Trust, but members of the Bedingfeld family have lived there for over 500 years and still do so today.
This is how it looks today, towards completion of an extensive restoration which included a comlplete new roof and the replacement of timbers affected by deathwatch beetle:
The work is due to be completed during 2022. This is what the hall looked like before work started, from a similar viewpoint:
Although parts of th hall are still open to the public, unfortunately not on the day we visited. The grounds were open, but would have looked a lot better in the summer months. I think this is somewhere we might return to another day.
"See-u-Later" 