North Elmham

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North Elmham is a village (population 1428^[1]) in Norfolk about 8 km (5 miles) north of East Dereham on the west bank of the River Wensum. It was the site of the pre-Norman cathedral of Elmham, seat of the Bishop of East Anglia until 1075.

Located prominently to the north of the village was the Norfolk County School which on closing in the 1890s was taken over for the Watts Naval School, the birthplace of the actor John Mills. The fine buildings have now been demolished. The County School Station on branch line served the school, and today is preserved as a small visitor centre.

North Elmham Mill, known locally Grint Mill, had two breastshot waterwheels until the early twentieth century when they were replaced by two turbines. By the 1970s the milling machinery was driven by mains electricity while the turbines were used to drive a sack hoist and two mixing machines. The mill continued to produce animal feed into the late twentieth century.

No trace of the Saxon cathedral survives. It housed the episcopal throne of the Bishops of East Anglia from around 955 and is thought to have done so before the Danish invasions. A mid ninth-century copper-alloy hanging censer was discovered at North Elmham in 1786. The earthworks and ruins at North Elmham stewarded by English Heritage are thought to be the remains of Bishop Herbert de Losinga's late eleventh-century episcopal church and the late fourteenth century double-moated castle built on this by Henry le Despenser, Bishop of Norwich.

It is unclear whether North Elmham or South Elmham, Suffolk is the site of East Anglia's second See ("Helmham"), founded in the reign of King Ealdwulf (c.664-713) according to Bede.

[edit] References

^ Office for National Statistics & Norfolk County Council, 2001. "Census population and household counts for unparished urban areas and all parishes."

Bede, Ecclesiastical History of England
Rainbird Clarke, R. East Anglia (London, 1960)
White, William. History, Gazetteer, & Directory of Norfolk, (1845)
Whitelock, D. 'The pre-Viking Church in East Anglia', Anglo-Saxon England, 1 (1972)