Fnurban #9 Norfolk, and Good

Old Ironsides guards the road

 

With Covid restrictions lifting last week, we wound up our courage and managed to book a 'short break', 3 nights in a pleasant cottage in rural Norfolk.  Admittedly it rained every day, but we still had a thoroughly nice time, and there was some military history interest locally. For example, the above splendid Cromwell tank guarding our route, a memorial to the 7th Armoured Division ( 'The Desert Rats' ) who were stationed in Thetford Forest for some months in early 1944, in preparation for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. The damp and gloomy winter forest  will  have been quite a change from the Mediterranean theatre they had been accustomed to..

We stayed in the small  village of Foulsham - here is a not-very-impressive photo ( best view I could get from the footpath in the neighbouring field )   of Foulsham Old Hall, a rather rambling/tumbledown looking Tudor house just on the edge of the village. 

Old Foulsham Hall

 

In the 1630s/1640s this was home to Philip Skippon, commander of the City of London Trained Bands in 1642 ( "Come my boys, my brave boys, let us pray heartily and fight heartily. I will run the same hazards and fortunes with you. Remember the cause is for God, and for the defence of yourselves, your wives, your children. Come, my honest brave boys, pray heartily and fight heartily, and God will bless us" ),   Sergeant-Major General to the Earl of Essex, commander of the Parliamentary  left wing and reserves  at First Newbury, and of the New Model Army's  centre at Naseby, where he was badly wounded.  

About five miles away is the village of Melton Constable, where we stopped on a thoroughly wet morning to look at the church :
 

Melton Constable Church

and we discovered that this village was home to Sir Jacob Astley, Royalist commander, Major-General of King Charles' infantry at Edgehill  ( "O Lord, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not thou forget me"...."March on, boys!"  ) , leader of the Royalist infantry at First Newbury, and at Naseby - effectively Skippon and Astley were each others' opposite numbers, as well as near neighbours. Also, both had previously served Maurice of Nassau and the Elector Palatine in the Thirty Years' War on the continent  They must surely have met in local society, and I wonder if they had any interaction in the time after the war ( as Astley had said "Well, boys, you have done your work, now you may go and play—if you don't fall out among yourselves" ) - did they re-live the battles in amicable discussions later, or did old emnities live on? 

Foulsham was also the site of an R.A.F. airfield in the Second World War, and base for a couple of squadrons of 100 Group, Bomber Command, who carried out 'Electronic Intelligence'  - flying Halifixes   equipped with radar detection and jamming equipment   among the main  bomber stream , using 'Window' to create  false plots on German radar to confuse the defenses,  and also using radar-equipped  Mosquito night fighters to detect and shoot down German fighters, and lurk around their bases aiming to catch them on take-off and landing, causing 'Moskito Panik' among the defenders which it seems led to many crashes when worried Luftwaffe pilots attempted hurried landings. So it seems our sleepy village was home of some cutting-edge 1940s aerial warfare technology, and played a valuable part in the air offensive. 

Some of the above knowledge was gleaned from  a purchase at another place we visited - the nearby seaside resort of Cromer.  We paddled around in the rain,  but also vistied 'Much Binding' , a small and slightly eccentric, but well-stocked second-hand bookshop in the town centre. Quite a haul of books was the result -  some guiding spirit seems to lead me to  good bookshops on rainy days! 

                    

Rainy-day haul at 'Much Binding', Cromer

                         

As you see, a book about Norfolk airfields In WW2 was among them - I already have the Suffolk equivalent ( and R.A.F. Sudbury near home ).  We return to the Civil War theme with John Buchan's life of Cromwell, and more 'old-school' history in G.M. Trevelyan's history of Queen Anne's reign , part 3 'The Peace and the Protestant Succession'.  I have had parts 1 and 2 for maybe thirty years in the same edition, nice to finally have a set !  'The Defence of Duffers Drift'  I have already read in one evening,  and it's great - made me wonder how many wargamers would actually really know how to defend a small position with 50 men? I suspect many may be as ignorant ( myself included ) as the narrator professed himself, at the start of his Boer War 'Groundhog Day'.   Finally, back to the Western Desert with a nice old Penguin edition of  Cyril Joly's   'Take These Men : Tank Warfare with the Desert Rats'   first-hand account - I had not heard of this, and it looks pretty interesting.  Not a bad little collection, albeit another extension of my reading  backlog ! 

And so,  as  the Geordies might say : 

"- So, Davey boy, where did ye go on yer short break, and how was it?  

- Wye Aye canny lad, it was Norfolk an' Good..."

Keep well, and safe, everyone.