Tag Archives: Norfolk

The Rectory Mice by George MacBeth

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The Rectory Mice by the Scottish writer George MacBeth was published in 1982. He’s known mainly as a poet, but later in his life he wrote some novels and books for children, this one is aimed at 10 year olds I suspect but as always with good writing, it’s entertaining for any age. It’s illustrated by Douglas Hall. The setting is a rectory in Oby, Norfolk.

It’s 1914 and at least three generations of a family of mice are living very comfortably in an old rectory, the only thing that upsets them is the clanging of the bell which alerts the rectory servants. They are extremely clean mice (impossible) so their existence is unknown to the house inhabitants, including the cats. Everything is hunky dory until they hear of the beginning of the war. War always means a lack of food, they’re worried about their cheese rations.

But when one of the mice sees what turns out to be a zeppelin floating past they realise that there is more than just a lack of cheese to worry about. As time goes on a new man joins the staff of the rectory, he’s a German prisoner of war, and he brings with him something which is going to change everything for the mice.

This is a charming book although you have to suspend your disbelief as the mice can read and Grandfather Mouse often consults the dictionary in the library. It reminded me a bit of The Borrowers by Mary Norton which I loved.

 

 

 

 

Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk, England

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We stopped off at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk on our way to the ferry that was taking us to the Netherlands last month. It’s now owned by the National Trust but originally it was built for Sir Edmund Bedingfeld’s family in 1482, but over the years it has been reconfigured a lot with each generation wanting to pull bits down to add whatever was fashionable at the time. The moat is only about three feet deep so it wasn’t really ever meant to be for defensive purposes, but it adds to the grandeur of the place. We had a guided tour of the outside of the building before going inside. I recommend doing that if you visit as it’s very interesting. Although the front of the hall (below) has been changed over the years it is basically original.

Oxburgh Hall Entrance Gate, Norfolk

From the side you can see the quite elegant bridge to the doorway. There was a bit of consternation while we were there as there was a ‘drowning’ teddy bear at the other side of the bridge and two worried looking wee girls waiting for help to get it out.

Oxburgh Hall , Norfolk

The photo below is of the back of the hall. It has been demolished and rebuilt a lot over the years to suit the prevailing fashions, I don’t think it was ever an improvement.

Oxburgh Hall ,Norfolk

Oxburgh Hall , Norfolk

The Bedingfelds were a prominent Catholic family with links to Mary,Queen of Scots and the Oxburgh Hangings which were worked by Mary and Bess of Hardwick are on show too as you can see below. People can be rather scathing about the amount of needlework purported to have been done by Mary, Queen of Scots, but she didn’t have much else that she could do over the years she was imprisoned, and of course she had the help of her ladies in waiting too

Oxburgh Hall Tapestry , Norfolk

You can read more about the history of the hall here.

Thetford, Norfolk, East Anglia, England

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Another town we visited on our way back from our May trip to Holland and Belgium was Thetford in Norfolk. I wanted to go there because it was one of those places that I was always hearing about when we lived in East Anglia, but we never did get around to visiting it at that time. I must admit it seemed a lot smaller than I had imagined it to be. The main streets are pedestrianised as you can see.

Thomas Paine, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States was born in Thetford.

Thetford 4

I’m not kidding you we were in the high street for more than ten minutes before we actually heard an English voice. It was like a league of nations – guess the language the passers-by are speaking! It seemed to me that the smallish community must feel overwhelmed with the amount of people who had settled there from mainland Europe, probably to work in agriculture. What was very surprising to me was that there were what seemed to be Spanish people who were way past retirement age milling around and gossiping, completely at home in the place. I suppose that it makes up for all those Brits who go off to Spain to retire there for the better weather and cheaper cost of living. I can’t imagine why older Spanish people would want to settle in the freezing wastes of East Anglia, maybe they all go home for the winter! I feared that the amount of migrants around would not bode well for a Remain vote in the then up and coming European referendum. How the farmers are going to get their produce up out of the fields and packed for sale is going to be a problem if the foreign workers do have to leave the UK.

Anyway all we can do is cross our fingers and hope that Brexit doesn’t eventually lead to more war memorials in our towns in the future, such as the First World War memorial in the photo below.

Thetford

I took the photo below very close to the centre of Thetford where we parked the car. It’s a lovely river – called the Little Ouse and you can see more images of it here.

Thetford

Thetford is a very historic town, the area was the stamping ground of the Iceni tribe of Boudica fame.

King’s Lynn, Norfolk

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Many moons ago when I was a teenager we lived in East Anglia for a couple of years, Essex actually. One of the places that popped up a lot on the local TV and newspapers was King’s Lynn in Norfolk. It’s 97 miles north of London, we lived much closer to London in Braintree and I never did get to visit King’s Lynn back then. We rectified that on our last trip down to England on our way to Harwich and the ferry to Holland. Below is a photo of King’s Lynn Minster which is over 900 years old and stone built as you can see.

King's Lynn Minster

Somehow King’s Lynn wasn’t at all as I expected it to be. It’s a lovely place but I was surprised by the architecture of the town, it’s very old of course and I had expected it to be all white plaster and half-timbered buildings like most of the old buildings in Essex. But most of the old buildings are made of stone, sometimes small red Tudor bricks, but not nearly as much of that as I had expected.
King's Lynn

But as you can see King’s Lynn is mainly built of stone and some very interesting designs too. I was particularly impressed with The Guild Hall which has a chequered design using two different types of stone.

King's Lynn

You could be forgiven for thinking you were in Holland looking at the photo below, it’s a typical Dutch design. In fact the surrounding countryside is very like Holland, all flat fields with big ditches. There are even old windmills scattered around, the only difference is that they seem to grow daffodils commercially in Norfolk instead of tulips.

King's Lynn

I read The Crossing Place by Elly Griffiths recently and the setting was the King’s Lynn area, so I was really pleased we had gone there because I could imagine it all so much better. It’s an interesting place to visit and of course the locals just call it Lynn.