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February 25th 2021
Wymondham Walks
Georgette Vale
About 40 members enjoyed a visual presentation via zoom by Georgette Vale, who gave one of her popular talks entitled “Wymondham Walks”. It covered a wide range of historic aspects of the town and its surrounds.
There were people living in the area from early times with Bronze Age and Neolithic artefacts having been found at Browick Road, while an Iron Age iron foundry was discovered when the A11 was being built in the 1990s. A Roman villa, which came to light at Crownthorpe, had a temple but it seems not much habitation, the major settlement being at Caistor St Edmund.
It is possible that the name Wymondham means the home of a Saxon called Wigmund, “ham” meaning a settlement and of Anglo-Saxon origin. The “gate” in Damgate is the Viking word meaning street. The town’s logo of a spigot crossed with a spoon is indicative of the old wood-turning industry, which included the making of spoons and is featured in the name Spooner Row.
An aerial view from about 1930 showed just how much the town has expanded since then with many houses built in North Wymondham since the 1960s.
One of the earliest turnpikes in the country was that between Wymondham and Attleborough dating from 1695. It was secured by a bar at which travellers paid a penny a horse towards the mending of the road. A pillar by the A11 from Attleborough records that in 1675 Sir Edwin Rich gave £200 for repairs. Georgette also quoted from the famous diary of Celia Fiennes, who had recorded passing through Wymondham in 1698 and wrote: “Thence I went to Windham, a little market town mostly on a causey…. the road on the causey was in many places full of holes…”. Until 1958 when the first by-pass, which ran only from Bait Hill to The Fairland, was opened the A11 ran through the town and traffic jams were frequent in Damgate.
Georgette considered some of the town’s significant buildings, among them Becket’s Chapel and the Green Dragon pub, the third oldest building in town to survive the Great Fire of June 11 1615. She doubted the legend that there was a tunnel between the pub and the Priory, now Abbey. Becket’s Chapel served the town in many ways, which in chronological order were chantry chapel, guild chapel, grammar school, public hall, fire station, coal store, public library and arts centre, which it still is today. An interesting drawing of the chapel by architect Thomas Jeckyll in 1871 showed many other buildings around it. The Methodist Church was built on the site once occupied by a bombazine factory run by Cornelius Tipple in the 19th century when weaving was an important industry.
Halls like Ashwellthorpe’s, associated with the famous Knyvett family, and Stanfield, scene in 1848 of the infamous murders which made headlines all over the country, were also mentioned.
Georgette concluded with a brief look at the Market Cross, which had been built in 1617-18 to replace an earlier one lost in the Great Fire. Once used for meetings of the Market Court, it was a subscription library and reading room from c.1870 to 1912 and a public library for a time in the 1930s.
In her wide-ranging talk, which included much detail, Georgette referred to many other historical features and was thanked by Kevin Hurn, who was in the chair, for a well delivered presentation.
Report by Philip Yaxley
