New Buckenham
New is definitely relative as regards New Buckenham in Norfolk’s Breckland, some 15 miles to the south west of Norwich. The town, now really a village, was founded in 1146 when William d’Albini gave his castle at Old Buckenham to Augustinian friars. Because the new settlement was consequently built to order (to house those building the new fortifications), it is a rare example of planned medieval construction, with a grid-iron street layout. As the village has shrunk from a town, some shops have disappeared and various buildings have changed function: the 12th century chapel of the long demolished castle is an out-building for a large house; what was once a coaching house and stables, and also a fire-station, is now a pretty B&B. New Buckenham was granted a town charter by Elizabeth I, and still holds May Day and Summer fairs in accordance with the rights given it. There are reminders of the medieval history of the village, particularly the extensive common, grazed for over 800 years, and the old vicarage, dating from pre-Tudor times, and the early 13th century St Mary’s chapel. The old market place is impressive and full of character, not least because of the Market House, originally a court or toll-house, whose Tuscan columns carved with harts, angels and heraldic devices support an upper storey above an open space used for commerce and in bygone days for the whipping of miscreants bound to its middle column. King Street in the village has Norfolk Georgian frontages aplenty, some redbrick, some pink- or yellow-washed and more reminiscent of nearby Suffolk than Norfolk. It also has buildings of greater antiquity, like the Old Swan, recently dated to 1573, and the pretty Tudor Rose Cottage.
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