Norfolk

Norfolk was new to me. Things I noticed in particular include…

The farming. Whereas for most of our driving through Wales, Scotland and north England we saw sheep and cattle, Norfolk was more about barley, market gardening (including yesterday lots of potatoes) and, surprisingly PIGS. On the drive yesterday from Well-next-the-Sea to London we passed a whole host of large, free-range pig farms, the animals in tip-top condition as far as I could see.

The coastline. We only saw a little bit of the Norfolk coast, around Wells, but, coming from a place where steep Port Hills hills drop down to Lyttelton Harbour, the flat, marshiness intrigued me. The vistas were huge, the clouds monstrous and the light, at least when we were there, incandescent. There was an other-worldly feel to it.

The houses. This is the land of flint houses. I don’t recall when we first moved from ochre-coloured sandstone cottages to flint but sometime before Wells we were seeing small and grand houses built and decorated with cut and uncut stone.

Early flint buildings are generally built of the unprepared cobbles mortared together. Later brick or stone details for corners or door and window dressings are introduced. Flint was not knapped until the 14th century. Knapping involves the chipping of the flint to reveal the interior black surface.

Squared knapping involved the squaring of the block of flint as well as the preparation of the face of the block. This was costly and consequently was generally used for churches and high status buildings

Galeting, the use of small flakes of flint or other material pushed into the mortar between the larger blocks, was introduced in the early 15th century and is used to good effect in the Norwich Guildhall

Another decorative technique was the combination of flint with another material to produce flushwork. Panels of stone were cut to shape and then spaces between these stones were filled with knapped and squared flints. These could be used to produce intricate light and dark chequerboard and other designs.