Fakenham

Yesterday was wet and blowy in the morning (as it had been the previous afternoon) so we didn’t decide to do anything until the afternoon. The National Trust choices weren’t good because most of the ones we hadn’t seen were quite a way away, so we finished up going to Fakenham (pronounced Fake-nam).
Whether it was the dull day that didn’t greatly encourage us about Fakenham or whether it was just the town itself was inspiring, we didn’t feel much enthused about the place. The church seemed untidy and dim, and there wasn’t much to write home about it in it (though we met a bellringer who was waiting for some other campanologists to arrive for a session on the bells), and the shops were okay. But everything had a down-at-heel feel about it, as though the town didn’t have much pride in itself. Even the secondhand bookshop, situated in the basement of a café, smelt mouldy and the books weren’t very exciting. This may all be a completely subjective impression, and there is a new mall in Fakenham that looks good - although two or three of the shops are untenanted.
However, the saving grace of Fakenham was a little teashop called the Tudor Tea Room - seating for about 25 at a pinch - which advertised tea for 60p and coffee for only a little more. In the end we actually had one cream tea and a coffee, which meant we got a scone with jam and mock cream as well as the drinks. We shared the scone and toppings (I had all the butter) which meant our points for the day were rapidly reduced. (Had vege soup and toast for tea to make up for it!)
The thirty-something bloke running the teashop kept all the orders in his head - I never forget an order, he claimed - and was working full bore to keep up with all the customers, because the place was nearly full when we arrived. Probably nobody actually bought a tea or coffee for the cheap prices, because the other items in the place were quite enticing!

Off to Oxburgh

Decided to tick Oxburgh Hall off our list today. It’s another National Trust place, so of course we can get in free. It was supposed to be near King’s Lynn, but when we put the post code in our trusty GPS it turned out to be a lot close to where we’re staying than we expected. Took only about half an hour all up.
On the way there we stopped off in a couple of places, Hingham and Watton. Hingham is a fairly small town (almost a village) which has the claim to fame that Abraham Lincoln’s ancestors came from there. It also has a couple of other interesting features: the largest parish church in the area, and a shopkeeper who sells ex-army and navy stores gear, and Russian Christmas decorations. Okay….! How he manages to get rid of either I don’t know, since he certainly wouldn’t make much money out of the local people. Buses pass through fairly regularly and presumably he makes money out of the tourists. But what an odd combination. The shop was full of these decorations: hand painted balls of various sizes, and a few other items. That was in one side, while in the other were all the army and navy clothes and boots and so on. Outside he has a sign in Russian. Strange.
The church was certainly large, and reasonably interesting. Lots of stained-glass, a bust of Abe, a marvellous memorial in carved stone to a number of leading lights in the village from way back.
Next stop was Watton, a much large place - with op shops. Investigating those took us a while, and then we found a secondhand bookshop. That took longer. Celia got a couple of books on making hassocks, something she’s been quite keen to investigate since we came across all these ones in churches, and I found one of the two Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael books we’ve been trying to track down.
We had lunch in the car park and then drove on to Oxburgh, which, as I said, turned out to be closer than we expected. More on that in the next post.

Some things I meant to mention

Policeman’s Loke. We’ve passed a sign with this on it twice now, and wondered what on earth a Loke is. Finally checked it out: it’s a private path or road; also, the wicket or hatch of a door. Presumably in this case it’s the former. The origin of the word seems to be a local dialect version of the word, lock.
Secondly, I keep meaning to say about the number of churches in Norfolk and Suffolk that have made their own hassocks. In some churches they commemorate occasions, in others they have all sorts of designs on them depending on who made them, in others they may be only a couple of designs spread throughout the church, and in others such as the one we were in today at Hingham, each hassock is a memorial for a person who’s been in the church, at some time over the last several centuries. And in Bury St Edmunds we came across a woman measuring out the correct distance between each hassock as it sat waiting for a user on the pew back and putting them closer or further apart as the need arose. There were at least thirty rows, with six or so hassocks in each. A time-consuming job! Those hassocks each had a different design on them, commemorating all the different parishes within the diocese.
Thirdly, in every National Trust place we’ve gone so far, they’ve had a secondhand bookshop. Very tempting, and I don’t think we’ve managed to get out of one yet without a purchase.

A long post divided into more than one section`

Today was a wandering day. We left our current abode and moved on, as we’re now babysitting a house near Wymondham. Celia wanted to go along the coast past Sheringham to look at some of the other seaside towns, so that’s what we did, spending the better part of the day at the job.
I’ve think I’ve lost track of most of them already, but we passed through Salthouse, Cley-Next-The-Sea, Blakeney, Morston, Stiffkey and Wells-Next-The-Sea, and later on went to Walsingham. I’ve now lost track of where the three bookshops were that we visited, although there was one where Celia bought a book on Norfolk dialect called Crab Books; another that sold a lot of original paintings and prints, had at least four rooms and also managed to fit in a café and lots of bric-a-brac. And then there was another which had rooms scattered around what might originally have been a house, including a chunk of books out in a shed out the back (a very tidy shed, that is) and which also had pottery for sale.
I watched a potter making a pot another place, and we discovered what appeared to be a small town that had a very large church, in very good condition, and full of interesting wood carvings. There was another church – in much worse condition, in Salthouse- where their annual art exhibition was going on. The few paintings and ‘works’ that were worth looking at had been snapped up early, and the rest of the stuff was being ignored (rightly so in my opinion). Someone had written in the visitors’ book: not as good as last year, and someone else had written: positively gloomy.
The bookshops were all worth visiting, each in their own way. Apart from the peculiarities of the one with the café (some shelves of books were around the sides of the café, but it was difficult to interrupt the people eating their meals), it had a great stock of stuff, including tons of sheet music, much of it for horn. I picked up a Bach piece that I can probably still play, and an autobiography of Eric Ambler.
Crab Books was very clean and tidy, to the extent I thought it was a new books shop at first. But there were no category headings anywhere, so that you had to work them out for yourself, and the books weren’t in any order within the categories. But the books themselves were a great mix.
The other bookshop was more typical of secondhand bookshops: books crammed into every available corner, and wonky shelves. But! Everything was categorised, and all the books throughout were in author order. What a difference that makes. They also had quantities of books by various authors such as Wodehouse, Kipling, Leslie Charteris, and dozens of others. I found a book of short stories by Dorothy Sayers which I don’t think I already have.