76 - North West Norfolk : Description

Physical and functional links to other National Character Areas

North West Norfolk National Character Area (NCA) is a gently-sloping plateau which briefly touches the coastline around Hunstanton and also shares boundaries with five other NCAs: Central North Norfolk, North Norfolk Coast, Mid Norfolk, The Brecks and The Fens. This NCA includes 20 per cent of the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) along its northern and western sides, and borders the North Norfolk Heritage Coast. The broad transitional zone at the east of this NCA has characteristics of both north-west and central Norfolk but lacks the distinctive open character of the former. The transition zone to the south is relatively narrow where the area abuts The Fens and The Brecks NCAs.

The Chalk which forms the plateau extends out eastwards and southwards under the surrounding NCAs where it plays a major part in shaping their character, while the sandstones and clays that form the ridge at the west of the area continue southwards.

While the coastal strip to the north of the coast road – the North Norfolk Coast NCA – is very different in character, North West Norfolk NCA does briefly meet the sea at Hunstanton Cliffs where excellent views across The Wash and to Skegness in the Lincolnshire Coast and Marshes NCA are afforded and from where reciprocal views are offered. Its rivers and watercourses provide further linkages with the surrounding NCAs: the River Burn rises in the North West Norfolk NCA and, along with the River Stiffkey, flows through the North Norfolk Coast NCA before discharging into the North Sea. Several tributaries, large and small, rise and flow through this NCA to join with the Babingley River and the Nar and the Ouse close to King’s Lynn. Important chalk and sandstone aquifers underlie the NCA and extend well beyond its boundaries.

The busy A149, the main road into and out of the NCA, curves around the west and northerly extent of the area, with the A148 running through east-west. The A47, running from Norwich to King’s Lynn, also cuts through the south of the area.

The Peddars Way and Norfolk Coast Path National Trail route runs through the NCA from Castle Acre to the sea at Hunstanton and along the north Norfolk coast where it weaves along and between the North Norfolk Coast NCA and the North West Norfolk NCA.

The area is adjacent to the internationally important Special Protection Area (SPA)/Special Area of Conservation (SAC)/Ramsar sites of The Wash and the North Norfolk Coast.

The North West Norfolk today

Shaped physically and economically by its underlying geology and its soils, North West Norfolk is a big, rolling landscape with frequent long views. It is very open, relatively high and remote, dipping to the east and offering long views, with a contrasting smaller-scale and more intimate landscape within the river valleys.

The area bounding the north Norfolk coast and the area between Castle Rising and Dersingham are designated AONB because of their outstanding beauty, diversity, cultural heritage and scientific importance, with Dersingham Bog and Wolferton and Castle Rising villages inland being highlights. Sunsets over The Wash are spectacular; Hunstanton and the surrounding area are the only places in the east of England where the sun can be seen setting over the sea.

The ridge on the western edge of the area is marked by the villages of Heacham, Snettisham and Dersingham which, inter alia, provide a focus for visitor accommodation. The landscape rises above the Fens in the west due to the underlying erosion-resistant Cretaceous sandstones which are backed to the east by a higher scarp of Chalk rock. This gives rise to a rolling topography, where arable cultivation with some grassland dominates. The ‘Good Sands’ – light, sandy soils – in the east support important commercial agriculture, with more than two-thirds of the farmed area used for arable farming. Pig farming is very important locally, with smaller numbers of sheep and cattle.

The cultivated land, with its large rectangular fields bounded by trimmed hawthorn hedges, is interspersed with large belts of mixed woodland. There are several large – and important – historic estates with extensive woodlands, plantations and shelterbelts of Scots pine; these are particularly characteristic along the western fringe on the Greensand ‘uplands’. The settings of the great houses generally remain well wooded, although parkland has seen significant arable conversion (a loss of about 24 per cent) since the First World War. A major issue is the proliferation of rhododendron.

Other than Hunstanton, there are no large towns within the NCA. Villages are widely spaced (4-5 miles apart), and often set around large village greens or ponds. In an East Anglian context this is ‘upland’, with a high, remote quality, a dispersed settlement pattern, straight roads with wide verges and welltrimmed hawthorn hedges bounding large, rectangular fields. Sandringham and Holkham are major visitor attractions and Walsingham an important pilgrimage centre.

The River Nar, which rises in the Mid Norfolk NCA, runs into the Great Ouse with the Babingley River draining into The Wash to the north of King’s Lynn; the River Stiffkey runs out to the North Norfolk Coast NCA at Morston near Blakeney. Regionally important chalk and sandstone aquifers underlie the NCA and extend well beyond its boundaries.

In terms of terrestrial priority habitats, there are large belts of mixed woodland, including small areas of ancient woodland north-west of King’s Lynn, and there is some remnant heath and mire mainly on the western side of the NCA. Dersingham Bog is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) of major importance for its lowland heath, and it supports a nationally important population of nightjar. There are small areas of flood plain grazing marsh along the River Nar and the (minor) River Tat. One of the UK’s last inland heath colonies of the natterjack toad can be found at Syderstone Common, west of Fakenham. North West Norfolk NCA is bounded by coastal/marine sites of international importance: The Wash and North Norfolk Coast are designated as SPAs, SAC and Ramsar sites. Dersingham Bog and Roydon Common share these last two designations. The NCA has very important assemblages of farmland birds including grey partridge and turtle dove.

Several important elements and ruins contribute to a sense of deep history, including barrows, Roman villas and the Roman fort at Brancaster, and medieval moated sites. There is a Norman ‘bastide’ at Castle Rising and the remains of a significant number of priories with scheduled examples at Pentney, Shouldham, Marham, Flitcham, Coxford, Binham, Wormgay, Creake and Blackborough. The Snettisham Hoard, or Snettisham Torc, is a series of finds of gold jewellery with more than 70 complete torcs (metal collars or armbands). The Roman Peddars Way is now part of a National Trail, and very popular with walkers. A sense of the more recent history of the area comes from the remodelled and reused railway stations at Wolferton and Walsingham – the latter is now a Russian Orthodox church, one of the more exotic elements of the shrine complex in the village.

Buildings of brick and flint with clay-tiled roofs form the majority of the built environment, creating a unity and a strong vernacular style. Many buildings in the west, along the scarp, are richly textured with orange carstone and sometimes chalk, giving a vibrant colour range to the most ordinary walls. Clunch – an impure chalk – is used in addition to the dominant flint and red brick in more eastern parts.

This area is one of the largest producers of silica sand (a highly specialised mineral present in only a handful of localities in England), used for glass-making, in the country; it is quarried from sites in the Leziate-Bawsey-Middleton-East Winch area.

This NCA has comparatively few but very straight roads, especially in the northern part of the area. The busy A149 (the ‘coast road’) forms the northern boundary between this area and the North Norfolk Coast NCA, with the A148 and the A47 running through east-west. Rail routes through North West Norfolk were lost following the Beeching report in the early 1960s.

There is major development pressure along the route of the A149 in particular as the north Norfolk coast is a ‘honeypot’ tourist area, and there is much development pressure around the fringes of King’s Lynn.

There are several large caravan and camping sites around Dersingham and Hunstanton and other income comes from sport shooting which is locally very important.

The landscape through time

The geological history of the North West Norfolk NCA derives from complex tectonic events and changing environments and sea level. During the Cretaceous, deposits of iron-rich sandstone and mudstone were laid down in a shallow marine environment. These now form a ridge along the western side of the NCA and regionally important deposits are conserved at various SSSI such as Blackborough End Pit and Heacham Brick Pit. As the climate changed, terrestrial conditions prevailed before the sea rose again and the orangecoloured, iron-rich carstone (a variety of sandstone) – now exposed at Hunstanton Cliffs SSSI – was laid down. A warm, shallow sea gave rise to the fossiliferous red chalk which may have gained its colour from salt diapirs bringing up earlier, Triassic, sediments. This was followed by the deposition of what is now white chalk. These strata, shown spectacularly in the cliffs at Hunstanton, all dip gently to the east.

The area is covered by superficial deposits of varying depths of gravels, sand and mixed soft, clayey sediments as well as till deposits resulting from glacial and fluvial activity. In the east of the area light glacial soils of a sandy or loamy texture – the ‘Good Sands’ – make this one of the most productive arable regions in the country. North West Norfolk NCA contains important terrestrial archives of Pleistocene glaciations, including Old Hunstanton Esker and the important pingos – shallow periglacial depressions – at East Walton and Adcock’s Common SSSI, the glacial deposits at Bawsey SSSI and Tottenhill still being very much the focus of research. These archives constitute a nationally important record of climate and environmental change.

There is a long history of settlement within the NCA. There is evidence, in the form of Palaeolithic stone tools found within the deposits of this NCA, that early humans would have been present from about 500,000 years ago, if not earlier and there are remains of prehistoric barrows.

The light and comparatively fertile chalk soils have long supported settlement, with identified cultivation patterns dating back to the Bronze and Iron ages; there are remains of iron-age forts at Bloodhill and Warham Camp – an Iceni fort.

Roman settlement of the area, evidenced by the remains of Roman villas and known from aerial photography and excavation, was extensive. The Peddars Way, now a National Trail, was a Roman military route which ran north from near Thetford to Brancaster and Holme and there is a Roman fort at Brancaster.

Anglo-Saxon settlement is also well attested from archaeological evidence such as the major cemetery at Walsingham.

Settlement in the medieval period was scattered with isolated farmsteads and hamlets and widely spaced villages, the latter often irregular in plan and clustered around commons and greens.

The larger and more orderly settlements were planned around military and commercial cores, as at Castle Rising, or ecclesiastical centres such as the pilgrimage centre at Walsingham.

In 1061 Richeldis de Faverches, a local noblewoman, had a vision of the Virgin Mary during which she was instructed to build a replica of the house of the Holy Family. Walsingham (‘England’s Nazareth’) subsequently became a major centre for pilgrimages, eventually rivalling Rome and Canterbury in importance. The abbey that had been established was destroyed during the Reformation in 1538; there has been a subsequent revival with Roman Catholic pilgrimages restarting at the Slipper Chapel in 1898 and a prominent Anglican shrine, forming the heart of a complex, being built in 1931. The Russian Orthodox church has converted the former Little Walsingham railway station into a church. Walsingham is now again a major pilgrimage centre, receiving approximately 350,000 pilgrims of all ages every year.

As a result of the Black Death in the 14th century, there was widespread desertion and shrinkage of settlements. The village of Egmere has been deserted since the 16th century – all that remains is the ruin of the church tower. As the population recovered, the area was largely cleared of tree cover by the 17th century. Subsequent rebuilding removed much of the evidence of timber-frame construction and led to widespread use of flint from the chalk and locally produced brick, with carstone used more extensively nearer to its source in the Greensand ridge to the west.

It is on the upland areas that the large estates for which this area became so well known were established. Houghton Hall, built by Robert Walpole, was the first, with Holkham, Raynham and Sandringham following. The area’s historic field patterns date back to the time of the18th-century work of Viscount Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend of Raynham Hall who had a major role in the agricultural revolution: he made the ‘Good Sands’ the most famous farming area in the country as he pioneered the four-field crop rotation and the large-scale cultivation of turnips. As these farming techniques evolved dramatically, so did the landscape. Other new techniques, including manuring by sheep folding on farmed land, produced further improvement – the typical wide verges which complement the field patterns probably mark former sheep drives.

In terms of structure, farmsteads in these areas typically dated from the late 18th to mid-19th centuries and were placed at the centre of their fields, equipped with often extravagantly large, brick barns; they were worked by men of capital. Their buildings are of brick and flint with clay-tiled roofs, although locally carstone and chalk are used, creating a rich texture and colour range in even the most ordinary walls.

The development of these enormous landholdings in the 18th and 19th centuries influenced the entire pattern of settlement, removing some villages and rebuilding others in a variety of controlled styles. The houses of the landowners themselves exhibit a range of styles including strict Palladian (Holkham, Houghton) and Neo-Jacobean (Sandringham) and introduce a variety of stone, brick and stucco rarely seen elsewhere in the area. Sandringham, still a country retreat for royalty, was bought by Queen Victoria in 1862 but was shortly afterwards demolished and a larger edifice built. Although the houses are largely concealed from view, the presence of the estates is made evident by extensive boundary walls in brick and flint, lodge buildings and parkland plantations.

Recent changes to the landscape have been far less radical than has been the case for other parts of the country, so the area has retained its strongly rural character. The main pressures for change come from housing development and tourism during the 20th century, which has resulted in large caravan and camping sites along the western boundary and heavy traffic at peak seasons along the A149 boundary with the North Norfolk Coast NCA.