| Swaffham | |
|---|---|
 TheButtercross Swaffham market place | |
  Swaffham Location withinNorfolk | |
| Area | 29.6 km2 (11.4 sq mi) |
| Population | 8,434 (2021)[1] |
| • Density | 285/km2 (740/sq mi) |
| OS grid reference | TF815095 |
| Civil parish |
|
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | SWAFFHAM |
| Postcode district | PE37 |
| Dialling code | 01760 |
| Police | Norfolk |
| Fire | Norfolk |
| Ambulance | East of England |
| UK Parliament | |
| Website | Town council |
| 52°39′10″N0°41′03″E / 52.652893°N 0.684285°E /52.652893; 0.684285 | |
Swaffham (/ˈswɒfəm/) is amarket town andcivil parish in theBreckland District andEnglish county ofNorfolk. It is situated 12 miles (19 kilometres) east ofKing's Lynn and 31 miles (50 kilometres) west ofNorwich.
Thecivil parish has an area of 11.42 mi2 (29.6 km2) and in the2001 census had a population of 6,935 in 3,130 households, which increased to 7,258, in 3,258 households, at the2011 census. By the time the 2021 census took place, the population had jumped to 8434. For the purposes of local government, the parish falls within thedistrict ofBreckland.[3]
"Swoffum"[4]
The name of the town derives from theOld EnglishSwǣfa hām = "the homestead of theSwabians"; some of them presumably came with theAngles andSaxons.[5]
By the 14th and 15th centuries Swaffham had an emerging sheep andwool industry.[6] As a result of this prosperity, the town has a large market place. The market cross here was built by George Walpole, 3rdEarl of Orford and presented to the town in 1783.[7] On the top is the statue ofCeres, theRoman goddess of the harvest. The former Corn Hall, which was designed by Mathias Goggs, was completed in 1858.[8]
About8 km to the north of Swaffham can be found the ruins of the formerly importantCastle Acre Priory andCastle Acre Castle.
On the west side of Swaffham Market Place are several old buildings which for many years housed the historic Hamond'sGrammar School, as a plaque on the wall of the main building explains. The Hamond's Grammar School building latterly came to serve as thesixth form for theHamond's High School, but that use has since ceased. Harry Carter, the grammar school's art teacher of the 1960s, was responsible for a great number of the carvedvillage signs that are now found in many of Norfolk's towns and villages, including Swaffham's own sign commemorating the legendaryPedlar of Swaffham,[9][10][11] which is in the corner of the market place just opposite the old school's gates.[12] Carter was a distant cousin of thearchaeologist andegyptologistHoward Carter[13] who spent much of his childhood in the town.[14]
TheSwaffham Museum is a small, independent social history museum for Swaffham and the surrounding villages in Norfolk from theStone Age to the modern. It has five galleries exhibiting local history and local geology as well as anEgyptology room aboutHoward Carter and theAncient Egyptians, celebrating the centenary year of Howard Carter discovering theTomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.[15]
Swaffham was struck by a tornado measuring F1 on theFujita scale and T2 on theTORRO scale on 23 November 1981 during the1981 United Kingdom tornado outbreak.[16]
Swaffham is one of the many locations forThe Man Who Became Rich through a Dream folk tale (Aarne-Thompson type 1645). The tale tells of apedlar from Swaffham who dreamed for several consecutive nights that if he waited onLondon Bridge he would eventually hear good news. He travelled to London, and waited for several days on the bridge. Eventually ashopkeeper asked him why he was waiting, and the man told of his dream. The shopkeeper laughed, and replied that he often dreamed that if he went to a certainorchard in Swaffham and started digging, he would findburied treasure. The pedlar returned to Swaffham, and found the treasure.[17]
In medieval folklore, a black, hairy dog called theBlack Shuck was rumoured to have wandered the three settlements of Swaffham,Castle Acre, andGreat Cressingham, ambushing merchants who were on their way to large towns to sell their goods. There are still rumours of a puma-like black cat wandering aroundNorfolk[18] andCambridgeshire.[19]
The church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul is one of only a few churches that have angels carved in wood instead of stone around the top of the walls. The current building, dating from 1454, is built on the foundation of the original church.[20] A wood carving of the "Pedlar of Swaffham" is also in the church.
The nearest railway stations to Swaffham are atKing's Lynn andDownham Market, on theFen line. There are regular services toEly,Cambridge andLondon King's Cross, operated byGreat Northern.
Until 1968, the town was served bySwaffham railway station on theGreat Eastern Railway line from King's Lynn. Just after Swaffham, the line split into two: one branch headed south toThetford and the other east towardsDereham. The lines were all closed as part of theBeeching cuts, though the possibility of rebuilding a direct rail link from Norwich to King's Lynn, via Swaffham, is raised occasionally.
The east–westA47 Birmingham to Great Yarmouth road now bypasses the town, using a northerly bypass opened in 1981. TheA1065 Mildenhall to Fakenham road still passes through the centre of the town on its north–south route, intersecting with the A47 at agrade separated junction north of the town.[21]
First Eastern Counties'Excel bus routes provide a regular public transport link through Swaffham betweenDereham and King's Lynn.[22] Most services continue east to Norwich and west to Peterborough.
Local news and television programmes are provided byBBC East andITV Anglia. Television signals are received from either theTacolneston orSandy Heath TV transmitters[23][24]
Local radio stations areBBC Radio Norfolk on 104.4 FM,Heart East on 102.4 FM,Greatest Hits Radio Norfolk & North Suffolk on 96.7 FM, Amber Radio, Radio West Norfolk and KL1 Radio.
The town's local newspaper is theWatton and Swaffham Times.[25]
Swaffham has aNon-League football club,Swaffham Town, which plays at Shoemakers Lane.
Swaffham Raceway, a formergreyhound track, hostsstock car racing.
Today the town is known for the presence of two largeEnercon E-66wind turbines. The first of these began operation in 1999[26] and the second in 2003.[27] Together they generate more than threemegawatts.[28] The first of the wind turbines to be constructed was an Enercon E66/1500 with 1.5 MW generation capacity, 67 metresnacelle height and 66 metres rotor diameter.[29] It was also built with anobservation deck just below the nacelle which was open for the public to climb during the 2000s and 2010s, the only wind turbine in the world to have such a facility. These two turbines have since been joined by an independent development of a further eight turbines at the village ofNorth Pickenham, three miles (five kilometres) from Swaffham.
The turbines were originally associated with the EcoTech Centre, a visitor centre which was opened in 1999.[30] The centre hosted the 2008 BritishBASE jumping championships; contestants jumped from the roof of the observation deck.[31] In 2008 the energy companyEcotricity took over the management of the site[32] and in 2012 the visitor centre was renamed the Green Britain Centre. The centre provided a venue for school trips and event hire, and had educational displays focussing on sustainability in food, energy and transport.[30] The height of the attraction's popularity was in 2016, when 22,000 people visited the centre and 8,000 climbed the turbine.[33]
In June 2018 it was announced that the centre had closed for financial reasons and that Ecotricity intended to hand the building back toBreckland District Council (BDC).[30] The council subsequently put it up for rent or sale and discussed exchanging it with Swaffham Town Council in return for 5 acres (2.0 ha) of building land.[32] A proposal to convert the building into a leisure centre was considered by BDC but ultimately abandoned.[34] In 2021 the building was sold to manufacturer Flexion Global for use as their headquarters.[35] Shortly after the sale, Swaffham Town Council gave BCD a parcel of land next to the centre on which BDC intends to build a leisure centre.[33]
As with the rest of theBritish Isles and East Anglia, Swaffham experiences amaritime climate with cool summers and mild winters. The nearestMet Office weather station to provide local climate data isRAF Marham, about5+1⁄2 miles (9 km) west of the town centre. Temperature extremes in the Swaffham-Marham area range from 34.8 °C (94.6 °F) in August 1990, down to −16.7 °C (1.9 °F) during February 1956.[36] The highest and lowest temperatures reported in the past decade are 34.6 °C (94.3 °F) during August 2003,[37] and −10.3 °C (13.5 °F) during January 2010.[38]
| Climate data forRAF Marham (1991–2020) | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Mean daily maximum °C (°F) | 7.2 (45.0) | 8.0 (46.4) | 10.7 (51.3) | 13.9 (57.0) | 17.1 (62.8) | 19.9 (67.8) | 22.5 (72.5) | 22.3 (72.1) | 19.2 (66.6) | 14.9 (58.8) | 10.4 (50.7) | 7.5 (45.5) | 14.5 (58.1) |
| Mean daily minimum °C (°F) | 1.1 (34.0) | 1.1 (34.0) | 2.6 (36.7) | 4.5 (40.1) | 7.4 (45.3) | 10.4 (50.7) | 12.4 (54.3) | 12.3 (54.1) | 10.1 (50.2) | 7.3 (45.1) | 3.7 (38.7) | 1.4 (34.5) | 6.2 (43.2) |
| Average rainfall mm (inches) | 55.3 (2.18) | 43.2 (1.70) | 43.5 (1.71) | 43.5 (1.71) | 48.2 (1.90) | 62.4 (2.46) | 57.8 (2.28) | 62.1 (2.44) | 55.4 (2.18) | 66.4 (2.61) | 63.3 (2.49) | 59.3 (2.33) | 660.3 (26.00) |
| Average rainy days(≥ 1 mm) | 11.6 | 10.3 | 9.4 | 9.1 | 8.6 | 10.0 | 9.3 | 9.4 | 8.9 | 11.0 | 12.3 | 11.7 | 121.6 |
| Mean monthlysunshine hours | 56.9 | 78.2 | 112.0 | 169.1 | 209.4 | 194.0 | 211.3 | 192.2 | 145.2 | 107.6 | 68.9 | 51.5 | 1,596.1 |
| Source:Met Office[39] | |||||||||||||
In the summer of 2006, location filming was done in the town for theITV1 seriesKingdom, starringStephen Fry. InKingdom the town is called Market Shipborough. The pub theStartled Duck in the TV series is better known as theGreyhound Inn, in which theEarl of Orford created the firstcoursing club open to the public, in 1776.[40] Peter Kingdom's office is Oakleigh House, near the town square (formerly the house of the Head Master of Hamond's Grammar School), with the coastal scenes filmed atWells-next-the-Sea on the north Norfolk coast.
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