Oxburgh Hall, 2010

The History Group has been busy during the past month. 

A coach trip to Oxburgh Hall, then the first of our evening exploratory walks and now we’ve even set up a website!  We have proved our lack of skill at weather forecasting by selecting a rainy day for both trip and walk, carefully chosen from a succession of glorious summer days.

The trip to Oxburgh Hall was our first ever and was a resounding success.  The coach was full and there was a small waiting list - unfortunately not enough to allow us to hire the larger coach available.  A full report by one of the party is on our website (below), and here are some extracts.

We stopped in the lovely market town of Swaffham for coffee and a little retail therapy.  Lots of stalls - cheese stalls, plant stalls, and you can get Cromer crabs, too. Chris suggested that we take a look at the church where we could also have coffee.

Like all large houses Oxburgh is steeped in history and has something of interest for everyone: furniture, porcelain, books, and for those brave and slim enough, the priest’s secret hiding hole.  And there are dressing-up clothes for the children, too.  Outside, the Victorian parterre, kitchen garden and woodland walks are worth a visit - if it isn’t raining, but by this time it was,  which was such a pity as I could have sat there in the sun for hours.

This trip was subsidised by the Great Yarmouth Borough Council Participatory Scheme, supported by Martham Parish Council.  As a result of the good turnout we are now able to provide Free Entry to our Annual General Meeting on September 25th, when, in addition to a small amount of business, there will be a talk by popular local historian Bob Warnes entitled The Tollhouse at Great Yarmouth.

...and an evening walk...

Walk around Old Martham

Our first evening walk was around some of the oldest parts of Martham - not so well supported, but seven people braved the uncertain and rainy weather.  In a way the damp, misty environment helped to paint a picture of the Martham of two hundred to five hundred years ago.  We saw many of the old buildings including some that have stood since the first Queen Elizabeth was on the throne.  There were barns from three hundred years ago and the homes of the prosperous yeoman farmers of the day.  Of the ordinary people there is nothing - their poor cottages have melted into the mist that sometimes surrounded us.  We stopped at the old rectory (right).