Through East Anglia in a Motor CarVincent, James Edmund
General
Through East Anglia in a Motor Car
Vincent, James Edmund
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; Suffolk (England) -- Description and travel
Leaving Elvedon behind we sped to Thetford, passing, a mile or so beyond
the gates of Elvedon, across the county boundary and out of Suffolk into
Norfolk. The character of the scenery remained unchanged. We were in a land
of heaths, barren and pleasing, and of rabbit warrens, some of them very
ancient and famed for the quality of the skins and fur of the rabbits
reared among them. Arthur Young found this country from Northwold to
Thetford, and again from Thetford to Ingham, "an uncultivated sheep-walk,"
and as he made no suggestion for its improvement generally (in spite of the
success achieved in the neighbourhood by "one of the best farmers in
England [Mr. Wright]," through the use of marl, which was not even "the fat
soapy kind)," it may be taken that the case is a fairly hopeless one. The
rabbits probably pay as well as anything else would, and we have to thank
them, and the sterility of the soil, for the preservation of a fine tract
of wild and open land, and for the sense of freedom in passing through it.
As for Thetford, its motto certainly ought to be "Ichabod." There are few
places in England, possessed in their time of a substantial reputation,
whose glory has departed more completely. It was the scene of a fierce
battle between Dane and Saxon; it was the second city in Norfolk in point
of importance; it had a mint so late as the days of Henry II; its priory
was founded by Roger Bigod, but is now an uninteresting ruin; it had twenty
churches, five market-places, and twenty-four main streets in the time of
Edward III; it was the diocesan centre of East Anglia for nineteen glorious
years, from 1075 to 1094. Also it has always had its vast earthwork,
commonly known as the "mound," commonly believed also to be of enormous
antiquity, Roman at the latest, and by virtue of it Thetford has been
identified with the Roman Sitomagus. It is a little hard that, when all the
rest of the glory of Thetford is gone, even the Mound, which without
excavation is totally devoid of interest, should have the glamour taken
away from it and that investigators on scientific principles have exploded
the Sitomagus bubble. Mr. Rye says:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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