Wymondham, Norfolk


A Brief History

In the Domesday Book the town was called Wimundham and was situated with its Saxon Church in the Abbey meadows. It must have been an important town even before the Normans arrived. The parish is one of the largest in Norfolk, with no less than seventeen other parishes adjoining it, like spokes of a wheel. This importance continued in Norman times with the establishment of the great priory, which would have generated much trade for the local people, particularly innkeepers, leather workers and food suppliers.

Wymondham's most famous inhabitant was probably Robert Kett, who in 1549 led a rebellion of peasants and small farmers who were protesting about the enclosure of common land. He took a huge force of almost unarmed men, and fought for and held the City of Norwich for six weeks until defeated by the King's forces. He was hanged from Norwich Castle, and his brother William from the West tower of the Abbey. Kett's Oak, said to be the rallying point for the rebellion, may still be seen today on the road between Wymondham and Hethersett.

In 1785 a new Bridewell or prison was built incorporating the progressive ideas of John Howard, the prison reformer. It was the first prison to be built in this country with separate cells for the prisoners, and was widely copied both in England and the United States of America.

Like many other East Anglian towns, Wymondham earned its wealth from wool, but another industry which survived in the town into the 1980s was the making of small wooden objects. In the Middle Ages it was spoons - hence the local village of Spooner Row - spigots and bungs for barrels, but later brush-making. The textile tradition also continued into the twentieth century with horsehair weaving.

The collapse of the woollen industry in the mid-nineteenth century led to great poverty in Wymondham. In 1836 there were 600 hand looms, but by 1845 only 60. During Victorian times the town was a backwater, escaping large-scale development, and the town centre remains very much as it must have been in the mid-seventeenth century, when the houses were rebuilt after a great fire. These newer houses, and those which survived the Great Fire in 1615, still surround shoppers and visitors as they pass through Wymondham's narrow Mediaeval streets.

For more information see Places in Wymondham.


Acknowledgements: Wymondham Town Council