Rectory Holidays

Travel west down the quiet road from Swaffham through gentle farmland and dark sinister forests, through remnants of scarlet poppy fields and twisted pines and on until you reach the quiet village of Beechamwell. There you find a large village green surrounded by cottages, a church and pub also a shady tree with a bench.

Beechamwell is an ancient place. In the Dark Ages an earthwork called Devil’s Dyke was built, which remained the parish boundary until 1879. Prehistoric tools, Roman coins and Saxon jewellery have all been found in the area.

The Domesday Book, however, mentions not one, but two villages, “Wella and Bitcham”. The remains of Wella have been found near the ruins of All Saints’ Church on the outskirts of the present village. The ghost of Diana and her dogs is said to haunt All Saints’ Church and certainly owls hoot eerily on moonlit nights.

Two further redundant churches point to a larger population in the past. St. John’s remains just as a tower standing in the middle of farmland, and at Shingham, woods and meadows surround St. Botolph’s with its beautiful Norman doorways and pretty green copper roof.

In those days Beechamwell must have been a meeting place, as the stumps of two medieval crosses show where regular markets took place, at the crossroads and on the village green.

Now as ever, the social life of the village centres around the green with its two rows of semi-detached cottages. One was once a shop in 1841, but sadly no longer. Another was made into a reading room at the end of the 19th century and provided books and newspapers - today the county mobile library calls. The Baker also lived close by in the “bake office” and each year he baked the Bread Charity for the poor. John Motteaux from the big house left money for these loaves.

At the west end of the green guarded by cherry trees, stands Beechamwell’s fourth and oldest church. St. Mary’s. The flint tower was built by the Saxons a thousand years ago. Later generations added the octagonal lantern and thatched roof. On one of the pillars in the nave is the “Beechamwell Demon” sticking out his tongue to the congregation. The Norfolk painter John Cotman visited Beechamwell in 1810-11 and an engraving of his view of St. Marys can be found at the back of the church.

At the far end of the green opposite St. Mary’s is the pub which was once known as “The Hole in the Wall”. Apparently when purchasing ale, drinkers would not go inside the building but would go to a hole in the wall to the side and drink in the open air.

Now whether this was just for the farmhands and whether the gentry went inside and sat to drink is not known.

The Village Hall is also next to the green and is used for village functions and clubs also for the W.I.

Working life was centred around and controlled by the “Big House” as almost everyone in Beechamwell worked for the estate until the 1960’s when it was sold. At the turn of the century Beechamwell narrowly missed becoming a royal estate when King Edward VII decided against Beechamwell in favour of Sandringham.

Neither the number of houses nor the size of the population has changed much since the 1920’s with the latter about 326 people. Now however, there is little employment within the village and people travel to neighbouring towns, returning in the evening to enjoy the Brecks.

Set deep in the Brecklands, the land is poor, the climate drier than the rest of England and winds can whip up the soil into dust storms without warning. Footpaths and bridleways criss-cross the parish allowing ramblers to discover the delights of nightingales singing in thickets and nightjars chucking in forest glades, wild deer wandering across lanes and hares racing over the fields. Spring is heralded by snowdrops in the hedgerows, summer by wild raspberries in the forests and autumn by blackberries along the byways. Isolation still has so many attractions.

Taken from The Norfolk Village Book & written by W. I. Members (Beechamwell old spelling for Beachamwell).