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St
Nicholas, Rougholm
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The
Gressenhall Museum of Rural Life is one of
Norfolk's most interesting attractions, a former
workhouse filled with a collection of
things-gone-by. It is set on the road to Beetley,
and nearer to that village than the one from
which it takes its name. Across the
busy road is Union Farm, a part of the Museum and
a place to see some of these artefacts in use.
There are pleasant walks, and a model farm, and
generally it is an interesting place to take your
children. We came here on a really hot day in the
summer of 2006, and a patient shire horse was
dragging a trailer of delighted children along
the narrow lanes.
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curiosity is that Union Farm is historically
neither in Gressenhall nor Beetley parish, but in
the outer limits of the parish of East Dereham,
forming the hamlet of Rougholm. Until the
Reformation there was a parochial chapel of ease
here, dedicated to St Nicholas, and enough
survived in the early 1960s for Pevsner to make
out the south transept and ruins of the north
transept and chancel. Today, all that
survived has been built up into the walls of a
barn of the model farm, poignantly named on the
map as St Nicholas' Barn. Pieces of old
masonry, including corbels and lumps from
doorways and possibly memorials, are set in the
interior walls, and you can see them below. |
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