The medieval market town of Wymondham has the misfortune of being 9 miles south of Norwich on the main A11 route to Cambridge, London and the rest of the world. Its position must have worked in its favour for centuries but today it is being smothered to death by acres of new houses.
The medieval town grew up around the beautiful Norman abbey, which like all ancient monastic buildings, bagged the best spot next to a river. It couldn’t be lovelier, the little river Tiffey winds its way through rough, watery meadows up to the abbey, round, and on beyond. The views of the two towered abbey, from high ground to the east and along grazing meadows, is magical. It appears to be an almost perfectly preserved medieval time warp. Until that is, you notice the housing estate on the skyline. But worse by far, is the noise of traffic. In one place I sat down to draw, I was only yards from the current A11. Analysis of that particular piece of work will, without doubt, show unusually high levels of nitrogen oxide. The Tiffey has been bridged again and again in a bid to move ever greater quantities of traffic, faster. Wymondham is currently on its second bypass and 2,200 new houses are in the process of being built.
There’s nothing remotely unusual about this, most little towns across the country are suffering, or have suffered, similar fates. In 2008 the Wymondham Arts Forum set up the Tiffey Trail, a footpath through the valley, to draw attention to this ancient, pastoral landscape. After all, this was this land that Wymondham’s most famous son, Robert Kett and 15,000 men were prepared to fight and die for. Perhaps the locals aren’t prepared to die for it today but they have done a pretty good job of high-lighting the importance of the landscape the town grew out of. South Norfolk’s Action Plan for Wymondham takes pains to stress the importance of Kett’s Country Landscape and the Tiffey valley, consequently house building has been turned down in some places. But the fact remains that Wymondham is obliged to build a minimum of 2,200 new homes by 2026, it just means that less visually pleasing ground will be gobbled up for new homes.
