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Mystery: Albert and the returning troops 1916

A mystery photo. Last week Bethan Holdridge who works for the Museums service in Norwich invited me to have a look through her Great Grandfather Oliver Isaac Brown’s collection of photos. He was a Suffolk man but lived in Great Yarmouth, a sapper in the Royal...

Lost in a Landscape: Pudding Norton

Lost in a landscape

There’s a lot to be intrigued about in towns like Fakenham. Not unlike North Walsham, it sits on a small winding road that makes it’s a much less direct but more interesting journey than somewhere like Attleborough or Wymondham. The drive is less...

Lost in a landscape: Wretham Circles

Dead cities & forgotten outposts, Lost in a landscape

There’s a lightness about Breckland, A dryness and pallor to the soils that make it feel somehow different from the rest of Norfolk. It’s in the earth, the thin sand with it’s luggage of chalk and flint, the exhausted soldierly lines of Scots pine...

Forgotten outposts: The Bure line at Oxnead

Dead cities & forgotten outposts

You will, as you drive around north and east Norfolk, pass these all over the place. In fact you’ll find them all over the county as you will tank blocks and mortar spigots, even the odd trench line still exists all still protecting us from a long dead, now...

Lost in a Landscape: Oxnead

Lost in a landscape

A pasture for the oxen, that’s what it means so say various sources. Others indicate that the Ox- may come from the word Ouse (Udso), which is an older form from our ginger forefathers possibly of Celt or proto-Celtic origin probably meaning River. It maybe a...