King’s Lynn
Straddling the canalized mouth of the River Great Ouse a mile or so before it slides into The Wash, King’s Lynn is an ancient port whose merchants grew rich importing fish from Scandinavia, timber from the Baltic and wine from France, while exporting wool, salt and corn. The good times came to an end when the focus of maritime trade moved to the Atlantic seaboard, but its port struggled on until it was reinvigorated in the 1970s by the burgeoning trade between the UK and the EU. Much of the old centre was demolished during the 1960s and as a result most of Lynn – as it’s known locally – is not especially enticing, but it does have a cluster of handsome old riverside buildings, and its lively, open-air markets attract large fenland crowds.
The north Norfolk coast
The first place of any note on the north Norfolk coast is Cromer, a seaside town whose steep and blustery cliffs have drawn tourists for over a century. A few miles to the west is another well-established resort, Sheringham, but thereafter the shoreline becomes a ragged patchwork of salt marshes, dunes and shingle spits which form a series of nature reserves, supporting a fascinating range of flora and fauna. It’s a lovely stretch of coast and the villages bordering it, principally Cley, Blakeney and Wells-next-the-Sea, are prime targets for an overnight stay.
Blakeney
A mile or so west of Cley, delightful BLAKENEY was once a bustling port exporting fish, corn and salt, and is now a lovely little place of pebble-covered cottages sloping up from a narrow harbour. Crab sandwiches are sold from stalls at the quayside, the meandering high street is flanked by family-run shops, and footpaths stretch out along the sea wall to east and west, allowing long, lingering looks over the salt marshes.
Blakeney harbour is linked to the sea by a narrow channel that wriggles its way through the salt marshes and is only navigable for a few hours at high tide. At low tide the harbour is no more than a muddy creek (ideal for a bit of quayside crabbing and mud sliding).
Blakeney boat trips
Depending on the tides, there are boat trips from either Blakeney or Morston quay, a mile or so to the west, to both Blakeney Point – where passengers have a couple of hours at the point before being ferried back – and to the seal colony just off the point. The main operators advertise departure times on blackboards by the quayside; you can reserve in advance with Beans Boats or Bishop’s Boats.
Cley
CLEY (more formally Cley-next-the-Sea), once a busy wool port, is now little more than a row of flint cottages and Georgian mansions set beside a narrow, marshy inlet that (just) gives access to the sea. The sea once dipped further inland, which explains why Cley’s fine medieval church of St Margaret is located half a mile to the south, at the very edge of the current village, overlooking the green. You’re near a couple of splendid nature reserves here, both excellent destinations for birdwatchers – and don’t miss the Cley Smoke House for superb locally smoked fish.
Cromer
Dramatically poised on a high bluff, CROMER should be the most memorable of the Norfolk coastal resorts, but its fine aspect has long been undermined by a certain shabbiness in its narrow streets and alleys. Things are at last on the mend, with new businesses arriving to add a touch of flair, while the town council keeps a string of cliff-top mini-parks and gardens in immaculate condition.
It’s no more than the place deserves: Cromer has a long history, first as a prosperous medieval port – witness the tower of St Peter and St Paul, at 160ft the tallest in Norfolk – and then as a fashionable watering hole after the advent of the railway in the 1880s. There are three things you must do here: take a walk on the beach, stroll out onto the pier, and, of course, grab a crab: Cromer crabs are famous right across England and several places sell them, reliably fresh, and cooked and stuffed every which way.
The Norfolk Broads
Three rivers – the Yare, Waveney and Bure – meander across the flatlands to the east of Norwich, converging on Breydon Water before flowing into the sea at Great Yarmouth. In places these rivers swell into wide expanses of water known as “broads”, which for years were thought to be natural lakes. In fact they’re the result of extensive peat cutting, several centuries of accumulated diggings made in a region where wood was scarce and peat a valuable source of energy. The pits flooded when sea levels rose in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries to create these Norfolk Broads, now one of the most important wetlands in Europe – a haven for many birds such as kingfishers, grebes and warblers – and one of the county’s major tourist attractions. Looking after the Broads, the Broads Authority maintains a series of information centres throughout the region.
The Norfolk Broads are crisscrossed by roads and rail lines, but the best – really the only – way to see them is by boat, and you could happily spend a week or so exploring the 125 miles of lock-free navigable waterways, visiting the various churches, pubs and windmills en route. Of the many boat rental companies, Blakes and Norfolk Broads Boating Holidays, are both well established and have rental outlets at Wroxham, seven miles northeast of Norwich – and easy to reach by train, bus and car. Prices for cruisers start at around £700 a week for four people in peak season, but less expensive, short-term rentals are widely available too. Houseboats are much cheaper than cruisers, but they are, of course, static.
Trying to explore the Broads by car is pretty much a waste of time, but cyclists and walkers can take advantage of the region’s network of footpaths and cycle trails. There are Broads Authority bike rental points dotted around the region and walkers might consider the 56-mile Weavers’ Way, a long-distance footpath that winds through the best parts of the Broads on its way from Cromer to Great Yarmouth. There are many shorter options too. As for specific sights for landlubbers and boaters alike, one prime target is Toad Hole Cottage, an old eel-catcher’s cottage holding a small exhibit on the history of the trade, which was common in the area until the 1940s. The cottage is at How Hill, close to the hamlet of Ludham, six miles east of Wroxham on the A1062. Behind the cottage is the narrow River Ant, where there are hour-long, wildlife-viewing boat trips in the Electric Eel.
Holkham Bay
The footpaths latticing Holkham Hall estate stretch as far as the A149, from where a half-mile byroad – Lady Anne’s Drive – leads north across the marshes from opposite the Victoria Hotel to Holkham Bay, which boasts one of the finest beaches on this stretch of coast, with golden sand and pine-studded sand dunes. Warblers, flycatchers and redstarts inhabit the drier coastal reaches, while waders paddle about the mud and salt flats.
Norwich
One of the five largest cities in Norman England, NORWICH once served a vast hinterland of East Anglian cloth producers, whose work was brought here by river and then exported elsewhere. Its isolated position beyond the Fens meant that it enjoyed closer links with the Low Countries than with the rest of England and, by 1700, Norwich was the second richest city in the country after London. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, however, Norwich lost ground to the northern manufacturing towns – the city’s famous mustard company, Colman’s, is one of its few industrial success stories – and this has helped preserve much of the ancient street plan and many of the city’s older buildings. Pride of place goes to the beautiful cathedral and the sterling castle, but the city’s hallmark is its medieval churches, thirty or so squat flintstone structures with sturdy towers and sinuous stone tracery round the windows. Many are no longer in regular use and are now in the care of the Norwich Historic Churches Trust, whose website describes each church in precise detail.
Norwich’s relative isolation has also meant that the population has never swelled to any great extent and today, with just 140,000 inhabitants, it remains an easy and enjoyable city. Yet Norwich is no provincial backwater. In the 1960s, the foundation of the University of East Anglia (UEA) made it more cosmopolitan and bolstered its arts scene, while in the 1980s it attracted new high-tech companies, who created something of a mini-boom, making the city one of England’s wealthiest. As East Anglia’s unofficial capital, Norwich also lies at the hub of the region’s transport network, serving as a useful base for visiting the Broads and as a springboard for the north Norfolk coast.
The Cathedral
Of all the medieval buildings in Norwich, it’s the Cathedral that fires the imagination: a mighty, sand-coloured structure finessed by its prickly octagonal spire, it rises to a height of 315ft, second only to Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire. Entered via the Hostry, a glassy, well-proportioned visitor centre, the interior is pleasantly light thanks to a creamy tint in the stone and the clear glass windows of much of the nave, where the thick pillars are a powerful legacy of the Norman builders who began the cathedral in 1096. The nave’s architectural highlight is the ceiling, a finely crafted affair whose delicate and geometrically precise fan vaulting is adorned by several dozen roof bosses. Pushing on down the south (right) side of the ambulatory, you soon reach St Luke’s Chapel and the cathedral’s finest work of art, the Despenser Reredos, a superb painted panel commissioned to celebrate the crushing of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Accessible from the south aisle of the nave are the cathedral’s unique cloisters. Built between 1297 and 1450, and the only two-storey cloisters left standing in England, they contain a remarkable set of sculpted bosses, similar to the ones in the main nave, but here they are close enough to be scrutinized without binoculars. The dominant theme of the fabulously intricate carving is the Apocalypse, but look out also for the bosses depicting green men, originally pagan fertility symbols.
The cathedral precincts
Outside, in front of the main entrance, stands the medieval Canary Chapel. This is the original building of Norwich School, whose blue-blazered pupils are often visible during term time – the rambling school buildings are adjacent. A statue of the school’s most famous boy, Horatio Nelson, faces the chapel, standing on the green of the Upper Close, which is guarded by two ornate and imposing medieval gates, Erpingham and, a few yards to the south, Ethelbert. Beside the Erpingham gate is a memorial to Edith Cavell, a local woman who was a nurse in occupied Brussels during World War I. She was shot by the Germans in 1915 for helping allied prisoners to escape, a fate that made her an instant folk hero; her grave is outside the cathedral ambulatory. Both gates lead onto the old Saxon marketplace, Tombland, a wide and busy thoroughfare whose name derives from the Saxon word for an open space.
The Market Place
From Blackfriars Hall, it’s a short walk through to the city’s Market Place, site of one of the country’s largest open-air markets (closed Sun), with stalls selling everything from bargain-basement clothes to local mussels and whelks. Four very different but equally distinctive buildings oversee the market’s stripy awnings, the oldest of them being the fifteenth-century Guildhall, a capacious flint and stone structure begun in 1407. Opposite, commanding the heights of the marketplace, are the austere City Hall, a lumbering brick pile with a landmark clocktower that was built in the 1930s in a Scandinavian style, and The Forum, a large and flashy, glassy structure completed in 2001. The latter is home to the city’s main library and the tourist office. On the south side of Market Place is the finest of the four buildings, St Peter Mancroft, whose long and graceful nave leads to a mighty stone tower, an intricately carved affair surmounted by a spiky little spire.
Back outside and just below the church is Gentlemen’s Walk, the town’s main promenade, which runs along the bottom of the marketplace and abuts the Royal Arcade, an Art Nouveau extravagance from 1899. The arcade has been beautifully restored to reveal the swirling tiling, ironwork and stained glass.
For more inspiration and practical information read our 15 reasons to visit Norfolk.
The Stour Valley
Six miles or so north of Colchester, the Stour River Valley forms the border between Essex and Suffolk, and signals the beginning of East Anglia proper. The valley is dotted with lovely little villages, where rickety, half-timbered Tudor houses and elegant Georgian dwellings cluster around medieval churches, proud buildings with square, self-confident towers. The Stour’s prettiest villages are concentrated along its lower reaches – to the east of the A134 – in Dedham Vale, with Dedham the most appealing of them all. The vale is also known as “Constable Country”, as it was the home of John Constable, one of England’s greatest artists, and the subject of his most famous paintings. Inevitably, there’s a Constable shrine – the much-visited complex of old buildings down by the river at Flatford Mill. Elsewhere, the best-preserved of the old south Suffolk wool towns is Lavenham; nearby Sudbury has a fine museum, devoted to the work of another talented English artist, Thomas Gainsborough.
Brief history
The villages along the River Stour and its tributaries were once busy little places at the heart of East Anglia’s medieval weaving trade. By the 1490s, the region produced more cloth than any other part of the country, but in Tudor times production shifted to Colchester, Ipswich and Norwich and, although most of the smaller settlements continued spinning cloth for the next three hundred years or so, their importance slowly dwindled. Bypassed by the Industrial Revolution, south Suffolk had, by the late nineteenth century, become a remote rural backwater, an impoverished area whose decline had one unforeseen consequence: with few exceptions, the towns and villages were never prosperous enough to modernize, and the architectural legacy of medieval and Tudor times survived.
Dedham
Constable went to school in DEDHAM, just upriver from Flatford Mill and one of the region’s prettiest villages, its wide and lazy main street graced by a handsome medley of old timber-framed houses and Georgian villas. Day-trippers arrive here by the coach load throughout the summer.
Flatford Mill
“I associate my careless boyhood with all that lies on the banks of the Stour,” wrote John Constable, who was born in East Bergholt, nine miles northeast of Colchester in 1776. The house in which he was born has long since disappeared, so it has been left to FLATFORD MILL, a mile or so to the south, to take up the painter’s cause. The mill was owned by his father and was where Constable painted his most celebrated canvas, The Hay Wain (now in London’s National Gallery), which created a sensation when it was exhibited in Paris in 1824. To the chagrin of many of his contemporaries, Constable turned away from the landscape painting conventions of the day, rendering his scenery with a realistic directness that harked back to the Dutch landscape painters of the seventeenth century.
The mill itself – not the one he painted, but a Victorian replacement – is not open to the public and neither is neighbouring Willy Lott’s Cottage, which does actually feature in The Hay Wain, but the National Trust has colonized several local buildings, principally Bridge Cottage.
Lavenham
LAVENHAM, eight miles northeast of Sudbury, was once a centre of the region’s wool trade and is now one of the most visited villages in Suffolk, thanks to its unrivalled ensemble of perfectly preserved half-timbered houses. In outward appearance at least, the whole place has changed little since the demise of the wool industry, owing in part to a zealous local preservation society, which has carefully maintained the village’s antique appearance. Lavenham is at its most beguiling in the triangular Market Place, an airy spot flanked by pastel-painted, medieval dwellings whose beams have been warped into all sorts of wonky angles by the passing of the years.
