The situation of Attleborough, isolated on the lonely flats, surrounded by commons, must have been singularly aloof from the world in days of old. Up to the very doors of the townsfolk came the dangers of those far-off times, as we may perceive in the road that now leads to the railway station, but is marked on old maps as “Thieves’ Lane.” Where those thieves lurked, there now stand the respectable red-brick villas of modern times, with a “Peace Monument” of 1856 at the cross-roads, celebrating the close of the Crimean War, and at one and the same time recording the victories of that strife and acting as lamp-post, general gazetteer, and compendious milestone XLII To Wymondham is our next stage, a flat six miles. In midst of this level tract of country, where villages, and houses even, are few and far between, the wayfarer’s eye lights upon a stone pillar on the grassy selvedge of the road, a dilapidated object that looks like a milestone. But as it occurs only three-quarters of a mile after passing the sixteenth stone from Thetford, it is clearly something else, and inspection is rewarded by the discovery of this inscription:— “THIS PILLAR | was erected by | the order of the sessions of the | Peace of Norfolk | as a gratefull | remembrance of | the Charity of | Sir Edwin Rich Knt | who freely gave | y^e sume of Two hundred | povnds towards y^e | repaire of y^e highway betweene Wymondham | and Attleborough | A.D. 1675.” Who, then, was this Sir Edwin Rich, whose charity was so necessary to the upkeep of these six miles of road between Attleborough and Wymondham? He was a distinguished lawyer, a native of Thetford, born in 1594. His monument in the church of Mulbarton, three miles from Wymondham, rich in moral reflections, surmounted by a large hour-glass, and further adorned with eulogistic verse written by himself on himself, quaintly tells us the circumstances of his birth and breeding:— Our Lyef is like an Hower Glasse, and our Riches are like Sand in it, which runs with us but the time of our Continuance here, and then must be turned up by another.