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Norfolk House Downham Market  Norfolk United Kingdom

Thank you for visiting our family Web site. We've called it "Norfolk House", naming it after our family home.

Why not have a look round our site? [Note 1]  If you've got any comments or suggestions, please send us an e-mail using our on-line mail form. We would be very pleased to hear from you.

There is some information about our family below, followed by some details about our part of the United Kingdom and the town of Downham Market.  

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Our Family

We live in Norfolk House, a detached house with three bedrooms in the market town of Downham Market, in the county of Norfolk, United Kingdom.
 

The picture of our house on the right was taken in the Summer of 1999.  Prior to October 2000, Peter worked in Histon on the outskirts of the famous university city of Cambridge, in the county of Cambridgeshire, which is about 35 miles (approximately 50 kilometres) south of Downham Market. More recently, Peter worked in King's Lynn - featured in the maps below - in the county of Norfolk. King's Lynn is the port at the southernmost end of The Wash, and is about 12 miles (approximately 20 kilometres) north of Downham Market. Peter now works in March in Cambridgeshire, which is in Fenland (see Note 3) and where the headquarters of Fenland District Council are situated. Georgina works in Downham Market. Our older son is now also working in the town after successfully completing his vocational training, while our younger son attends Bournemouth University.

Norfolk House  Downham Market Summer 1999

We also regularly play a round of par-3 and 4 golf or practice on the driving range at the Denver Golf Club - there is no need to book, just pay and play!

If you are unfamiliar with our part of the United Kingdom, some information about the area follows:

The Borough Council of King's Lynn & West Norfolk has provided some very useful Web pages which include information about car parking, local maps, bus and train services for West Norfolk.

The link on the right will take you to the Web site of the Lynn News, our local newspaper, based in King's Lynn.
KLFM 96.7 "The Sound of West Norfolk" is our local radio station, based in King's Lynn. Click the link on the right to go to their Web site.
Use the link on the right to search using Norfolksearch, a Web directory dedicated to sites based in Norfolk UK only. Follow this link for Downham Market within Norfolksearch.

Here is some local information about the town of Downham Market and its surrounding area from:

1.    Downham Market Chamber of Trade Web site:

There are lots of links on the Downham Market Chamber of Trade's Web site, which is one of the most comprehensive sites on the Internet about Downham Market, its community and businesses:

• Information and links about the Downham Market Chamber of Trade and several pages of pictures of the "Swinging Sixties" and other events held in recent years.

• Photographs of Downham Market today, with a good commentary.

• Quiz page - "How well do you know Downham Market?". Here there are a number of images to identify - with answers. I wonder how many residents are familiar with all these sights in our town? We scored only nine out of twenty-one - and we have lived here for over fifteen years!

The Chamber of Trade's site also has information pages localised for Canadian, Welsh, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian and Swedish readers, written in their own language.

2.    The sponsored Downham Market Web site of Messrs. Mapus-Smith and Lemmon:

• Potted History of Downham Market by Councillor Royden Baker MBE (a former Mayor of Downham Market);

• Industry and Commerce in the Downham Market area;

• Sport and Leisure in the Downham Market area;

• Historical Buildings in Downham Market.

3.   Downham Market Town Council:

• Information about contacting our Town Councillors; full Town Council meeting dates and times; Sub-Committee details; and the most recent Downham Market Letter - the newsletter of the Town Council, distributed to all households in the town.

• The Town Council is working with local people to produce a Town Design Statement for Downham Market. This document will be a detailed guide to the character of our town. It will explain what is distinctive and special about Downham Market. It will draw attention to building styles in different parts of the town, to important buildings and to landscape features. Importantly, it will set out design guidelines that any new development must take into account. It could help to make sure that the town does not lose its distinctiveness as it grows and changes.

• Please follow this link for information about how you can help.

• Downham Market High School was formerly a Grant Maintained School and is now a Foundation School. Downham Market College is the Sixth Form Centre.

• Inspection Report for January 2004 - the most recent inspection - from Ofsted (the United Kingdom Government's Office for Standards in Education).

• A wide selection of old photographs of the town of Downham Market and its immediate surroundings - just click the "Norfolk" menu item on the left and choose a town or village.

• Fenprint also has a range of prints from other counties in Cambridgeshire, County Durham, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

• Most photographs are are available to buy as prints in three sizes: 6" x 4" (~15cm x ~10cm), 9" x 6" (~23cm x ~15cm), 12" x 8" (~30cm x ~20cm). 

• Built in 1835, Denver Windmill stopped work in 1941 when the sails were struck by lightning. Now it has been restored (with support from the Norfolk Windmills Trust) to full working order with lots of new facilities for visitors.

• Denver Golf Centre is home to a beautiful 12-hole par-3 to 4 golf course with views of Denver Windmill. The 10-acre range has twenty bays of which twelve are under cover. The Centre is set in mature landscaped grounds within a county wildlife site.

8.   Old-Maps.co.uk:

• This most interesting site provides access to Britain's most extensive digital historical map archive. You can find out where your ancestors used to live or check out what your neighbourhood looked like over a hundred years ago. The site holds the original series of county maps, which are available for searching by place name, modern postcode or by Ordnance Survey National Grid co-ordinates. Note that the county names used are those that were in use in the mid-19th century.
   
• To view the 1889 map of Downham Market, enter these co-ordinates into the 'search' box: 561026,303247. Then, choose the 'co-ordinate' option and and click the 'search' button.

• This link will open the Old-Maps Home page in a new window.

Jonathan Hipkiss has a wide selection of scanned old maps on his site at http://www.hipkiss.org/data/themaps.html

9.   Downham Market Union Workhouse:

• Here is a site which traces the history of the Workhouse in the history of the United Kingdom, touching on the Workhouse buildings, inmates, staff and administrators, even its poets. It is a wonderful historical document and I congratulate the author(s) for producing such a wonderful resource.

• Information about the Union Workhouse in Downham Market can be found here.

• You can view information about the Workhouse at Southwell, in Nottingham shire, by following this link.  If you want to visit the Southwell Workhouse you will need to make an appointment with the National Trust, the custodians of the building, by e-mailing them, telephoning them on +44 1636 817250 (01636 817250) or by faxing them on 01636 81725. If you visit this 19th-century institution for paupers:

• See the best-preserved workhouse in England;
• Explore the workshops and dormitories of this imposing early 'welfare' institution;
• Meet 19th-century inhabitants with our audio guide;
• Enjoy the interactive displays chart poverty through the ages;
• Play 'The Master's Punishment' game.

10. Downham Market and District Heritage Society

The Downham Market and District Heritage Society runs the Downham Market and District Heritage Centre .
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The Society operates as a ‘social enterprise’, in that it raises funds through donations, membership fees, admission fees to its talks and visits and through the sale of postcards and notelets depicting local scenes painted by one of its members.
 

Its primary aims and objects are:

• To promote interest in and awareness of the historical heritage of Downham Market and its surrounding villages that make up the ancient administration area of the Clackclose Hundred. (There are currently 34 villages and the town of Downham Market (the original administration centre) in the Hundred.)

• To collect and preserve artifacts and documents relating to the area.

• To provide an educational resource for the use of local people, schools and visitors. Education of the younger generation is in the forefront of our aims as well as keeping the not so young well-informed concerning the history of the area. (Downham Market has a large number of retired people living in it many of whom are from other parts of the country.)

• To promote the preservation of the natural, built and historical heritage of the area.

• To collect and publish information required by visitors and residents so they can gain access to all that is of interest in Downham Market and its surroundings.

 

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For a wide range of information of interest to visitors to Downham Market and the surrounding area, you can contact the Downham Market Tourist Information Office by e-mail, by telephone on Downham Market (01366) 387440 (international +44 1366 387 440) or by writing to Priory Centre, Priory Road, Downham Market, Norfolk, United Kingdom, PE38 9JT.

 

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Notes:
(1)	Our pages can be viewed best with Microsoft Internet Explorer with Java scripting enabled, with a monitor that can display a picture at a resolution of at least 800 x 600 using a 16-bit colour palette. [Return] to where you left the text on this page, or click your browser's back button.

(2)

All the street map files above are compressed. If you need to get a programme to decompress these files, you can download a copy of EnZip v.3.0 from here. EnZip is a freeware zip compression utility for MS Windows and is one of the most complete zip products available. [Return] to where you left the text on this page, or click your browser's back button.

(3)

Fenland is an area of East Anglia in the United Kingdom lying more or less between Peterborough, Wisbech, Ely and Huntingdon, in the northern part of the county of Cambridgeshire. East Anglia is the easternmost part of England, which includes the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex. [Return] to where you left the text on this page, or click your browser's BACK button.

 

 

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Page updated: 12 November 2007 22:13 Back to TOP

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