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LYNG Heritage - lots of it HERE
++++++ Did St Edmund lie right here? ++++++ Old (and new) LYNG in pictures HERE ++++++ |
Lyng – a village with history
Our village probably gets it name from the heathlands that are found along the valley of the River Wensum. So Ling is heather and Lyng is a variation. Or not, since the origins of place names is open to a raft of interpretations. Whichever it is however the name is not shared with many other villages in England. (Try this one) This description of the village from the 1883 is interesting reading: LYNG, a village on the south side of the river Wensum, 6 miles N.E. by E. of East Dereham, and 5 miles S.W. of Reepham, is in Mitford and Launditch union, East Dereham county court district, Norwich bankruptcy district, Eynsford hundred and petty sessional division, Reepham polling district of North Norfolk, Sparham rural deanery, and Norwich archdeaconry. The rateable value is £2914, and the parish had 499 inhabitants in 1881, living on 1899 acres of fertile land. The parish includes EASTHAUGH, a small hamlet on an eminence, one mile south of the village. The owners are the Rev. H.E. Lombe, Sir Hambleton Custance, K.C.B., and Messrs. William Cadywold and William Wright. The Rev. H.E. Lombe is patron of the living and lord of the manor. In 1343, Sir John de Norwich had license to make a castle of the manor house, some traces of which are still extant on the crown of an aclivity east of the village. A fair used to be held here on November 20, for stock and pleasure. The CHURCH (St. Michael) has a tower and six bells, and was restored and reseated about twenty-two years ago. The rectory, valued in the King's Book at £11 0s. 6d., and now at £528, has 58A. 3R. 5P. of glebe. The Rev. Henry Evans Lombe, B.A., is patron, and the Rev. C. Jex-Blake, M.A., incumbent. The Wesleyan Reformers and the Primitive Methodists have each a chapel here. The NATIONAL SCHOOL is a neat red brick building, erected in 1863 at a cost of £450, and attended by 80 children. The Church Land, 2A. 28P., is let for £2 6s. At the enclosure, in 1808, 16A. 1R. 9P. were awarded to the poor for fuel. In 1618, Solomon Leech left yearly rent-charges of £2 12s. for the poor, 10s. for a sermon, and 1s. 4d. for repairing the bell ropes. The poor have also yearly doles of 20s., left by John Starling, in 1728; and 5s., left by the Rev. Thomas Roberts. POST OFFICE at Mr. John Long's. Letters, through Norwich, received at 9 a.m.; despatched at 2.20 p.m. (no Sunday.) Reepham is the nearest Money Order and Telegraph Office. SOURCE: Genuki see link left Worth noting the differences, not least in terms of the district council and the church dedication. First of course the idea of the village being owned by someone. Then the rateable value which would not even buy part use of a garage today. We have more inhabitants today but not so many more. The church was then St Michaels and now St Margarets. The school is now a private home and holiday letting and had 80 children attending, although back then the age range would have been very different. And the rectory, now a rather grand private home, was valued at an interestingly small amount! It appears the post office was a bit transient even then! This piece about the geology of the area makes interesting reading too: Chalk underlies Lyng as it does throughout much of Norfolk. It is rarely seen at the surface as it is covered by deep deposits of sands, gravels and clays laid down in the much more recent Ice Age. However, a little chalk can be seen by the bridge and the chalk was formerly quarried at Lyng Easthaugh for lime. The kilns used to make the lime can just be seen from the road at Limekiln Farm on the Lyng Eastaugh road. (Picture) This chalk was laid down at the bottom of a warm sea where there was little sediment from the land, from about 100 million years until about 65 million years. Fossils are rare in the chalk horizon which underlies Lyng, but includes occasional sea urchins and an extinct relative of the modern cuttlefish, the belemnite. Dinosaurs lived on land at this time. There is a long gap in the geological record until the last half million years, when the climate became cold enough for the polar ice caps to advance far south. On one of the advances, about 300,000 years ago, the ice sheet almost reached the Thames. This ice sheet deposited a thick layer of clays and sands over East Anglia including Lyng. In addition to these deposits the ice sheet left occasional boulders or erratics. One such boulder lies in the Grove, near Lyng Eastaugh (Picture). From deposits found just up the valley at Swanton Morley we know that the climate had become much warmer 200,000 years ago, sufficiently for hippopotami to wallow in the Wensum. Other interesting finds from these deposits include the extinct straight tusked elephant, bison, the giant ox, and the pond tortoise which still occurs in France. Some bones showed the characteristic signs of being gnawed by hyaenas. |
The heart of the village from the air
One of a few old maps available....
... another dated 1945 and showing the ford before the bridge was built..
Parish boundaries shown here.
St Margaret's church - or is it St Michael's?
All that remains of the priory
One of the erratics referred to (right) to be found in The Grove
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