Tor Falcon

Stiffkey freshes, Jan 2017 pastel on paper 28 x 38 cm

One of seven drawings I will be showing

Devil’s Punchbowl, Thursday morning 16th Feb 2017 

pastel on paper 28x38cm

Rivers of Norfolk

River Thurne

It’s mid-week in late October as I turn off the busy main road and drive down the hill from Martham towards the boat yard. There are a surprising number of cars parked here but I can’t see anyone. Then my eyes adjust to the chaotic boatyard surroundings and I realise that there are fishermen everywhere, sitting between boats, on platforms, in fact perched on every available edge. None of them openly looks at me, no one says a word. I gather up my drawing equipment and walk out of the yard and along the mown bank until I get to the last fisherman. I leave a polite distance, upend my bucket and settle down to draw the river.

Rivers of Norfolk

River Thurne

Look at a map and you will see that the Thurne appears to rise just behind the costal sand dunes at Horsey and travel inland for six miles before joining the Bure and eventually making it to the North Sea at Great Yarmouth. It seems like a really long way round but it’s an interesting tale of costal erosion and man made landscape manipulation.

2,000 years ago the Thurne flowed into the North Sea through a big delta, where it now appears to rise. Winterton and Martham were on the south shore and Ludham and Hickling, the north. The villages of Horsey and Waxham were probably islands. Further up the coast erosion of cliffs, at what is now Happisburgh, slowly blocked the mouth with sand. Unable to escape, the water created a stagnant, bog, which the sea would have inundated every fifty years or so. It would still be like that if man hadn’t turned the river around and sent it inland to find and join the Bure.

Banking a river and creating a barrier causes the water level to rise. If it can be raised several feet above the surrounding ground, and as long as there are channels for it to flow the way you want it to go, then gravity will do the rest. If the sand bar is planted with marram grass, dunes will build up and the sea can be kept out, more or less, permanently. Slowly land can be reclaimed. Over time, and with the arrival of wind pumps from Holland, drainage became more efficient. Wind powered pumps were replaced by steam and now water is pumped up from the the land into the river by electricity. Today the source of the river Thurne could very plausibly be said to be a small brick electric pump house mid-way between Horsey and West Somerton, on the Hundred Dyke. In fact I think there are probably lots of beginnings to the Thurne, water from Somerton, Martham Broad, Horsey Mere, Waxham Cut and Hickling Broad all flow into it.

Rivers of Norfolk

River Thurne, tributary of the Bure

Rises a mile from the coast, at about one metre above sea level, in east Norfolk, between Horsey and West Somerton. Joins the Bure at Thurne Mouth.

6 miles long.

Read a list of all the rivers in Norfolk and it’s like saying something in Anglo-Saxon. You’re not sure what you’ve said but it’s undoubtedly something wet.

Rivers of Norfolk, River Tiffey

Rivers of Norfolk, River Tiffey

While drawing on the Tiffey Trail footpath an overly perfumed man told me his life history. He had recently moved to Wymondham from Chingford. He said Chingford was terrible now, fourteen different languages spoken in his street and five burglaries in a year, but Wymondham was lovely, just like Chingford used to be.

Rivers of Norfolk

River Tiffey

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.

Rivers of Norfolk

River Tiffey, tributary of the Yare 

5.5 miles long

Rises a few miles south west of Wymondham

Joins the Yare at Swan’s Harbour near Barford

Highlights include, flowing past Wymondham Abbey and being improved by Capability Brown at Kimberley Park.

River Tiffey at The Lizard, November 2016 pastel on paper 28x38cm