Broads, Cripps, Roys

Don’t think I’ve mentioned that we went to Wroxham - by accident. We were intending to go to Riverside in Norwich, and put in Riverside Shopping Centre on our GPS only to discover that Malvina (as we’ve named her - after a famous NZ opera singer) thought we meant the RSC in Wroxham. That was okay, as Wroxham is on ‘The Broads’ as the many waterways around Norfolk are called, and Celia wanted to go back and check them out. She’d sailed on them as a schoolgirl. They are lovely: houses built right down to the water’s edge, and boats galore. We debated hiring a boat for a week and exploring them, but that’s still up in the air at this stage, as it’s quite costly.
Anyway, the other interesting thing about Wroxham is that in the distant past a small corner shop named Roy’s once existed. Roy must have made a great deal of money as his name is now on a dozen shops, all within spitting distance of each other. The Riverside Shopping Centre is part of it, and there’s a DIY, a garden centre, a food hall, and you name it. All of them have “Roy’s” plastered over them. Obviously Roy was pretty canny with his money - and his buying up of properties. Anyway it gives Wroxham a very prosperous feel.
Roade has had a similar thing. Sir Humphrey Cripps began his working life as a very much underpaid factory worker. Over the course of his career he was able to buy out the Pianoforte Supplies business, which was at the time a very large company in Roade, and later took to making metal car parts when the piano scene quietened down. He owned an island in the Caribbean; he bought up Waterford Crystal in Ireland, and he owned companies in Canada and elsewhere. All in all he was a very wealthy man, He was also a very generous man. He built an entire secondary school; funded umpteen things at universities, old churches and the like (including doing a good deal of restoration work at the Roade Anglican Church: St Mary Virgin). There’s an old people’s home with his name on it up the road from where we’re staying, and no doubt there are dozens of other things that he paid for. The great blessing of a truly wealthy man is that he can give most of his wealth away.

The photo was taken at Horning, along the road from Wroxham - we forgot to get our camera out in the latter town.