HETHERSETT, whose name means “Heather-heath,” and is pronounced “Hathersett” in the local speech, is heralded along the open road by a solitary roadside inn with the sign of the “Old Oak.” No ancient oak is within sight, but the accustomed pilgrim of the roads has not for years been exploring the highways and byways without having long ago arrived at the conclusion that there is a substantial reason for most things, even the names of inns, and so from that sign deduces an historic oak somewhere in the immediate neighbourhood. And surely enough, a short distance beyond the inn, on the left-hand side of the road, opposite the milestone that marks the twenty-second mile from Thetford and the seventh from Norwich, there stands the gnarled and weatherworn trunk of what the country folk call “Kett’s Oak,” one of the several ancient trees that own the name, and traditionally said to have been one of the meeting-places of Robert Kett and his followers, and one of the scenes of his rough-and-ready sylvan court. But although oaks grow slowly, and although the tradition is an old one, handed down, unbroken, through the centuries, many will find it difficult to believe that a tree which must have been a considerable one when Kett and his followers foregathered here would not now have a greater girth than this. The village green of Hethersett was enclosed, together with its large common, in 1800. The parish at that time claimed, and was allowed, a portion of the vast common of Wymondham, on the curious plea that it had buried, at the expense of the community, the body of a dead man found there and refused interment by the parish of Wymondham. A local jape, which we may be sure will not willingly be let die, makes a play upon the name of Hethersett. It dates from many years ago, when the railway through the village to Norwich was new, and the train service incredibly slow. “Hethersett,” cried the porters at the station when a train stopped on one of those weariful occasions. “Here they set,” indignantly rejoined an old woman in one of the third-class carriages; “yes, and here they’re likely to set!”