Longham is a village situated in the Breckland District of

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the No ...

and covers an area of 540

hectares The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

(2.1 square miles) with a population of 219 in 100 households at the 2001 census, increasing to a population of 224 in 99 households at the 2011 Census. Longham lies north-west of

Dereham Dereham (), also known as East Dereham, is a town and civil parish in the Breckland District of the English county of Norfolk. It is situated on the A47 road, about 15 miles (25 km) west of the city of Norwich and 25 miles (40& ...

and south of

Fakenham Fakenham is a market town and civil parish in Norfolk, England. It is situated on the River Wensum, about north west of Norwich. The town is the junction of several local roads, including the A148 from King's Lynn to Cromer, the A1067 to Norw ...

. The villages name means 'homestead/village of Lawa's people'. Longham is served by the mediaeval church of St. Andrew & St. Peter in the Benefice of Gressenhall. It is a grade II* listed building.

Robert Howlett

The Victorian photographer

Robert Howlett Robert Howlett (3 July 1831 – 2 December 1858) was a pioneering British photographer whose pictures are widely exhibited in major galleries. Howlett produced portraits of Crimean War heroes, genre scenes and landscapes. His photographs include ...

grew up in the parsonage at Longham from circa 1840 until 1852, the second of four sons of Reverend Robert Howlett and Harriet Harsant. He is renowned for his iconic photograph of

Isambard Kingdom Brunel Isambard Kingdom Brunel (; 9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859) was a British civil engineer who is considered "one of the most ingenious and prolific figures in engineering history," "one of the 19th-century engineering giants," and "on ...

. Circa 1845, the parsonage in Longham had an

electrical telegraph Electrical telegraphs were point-to-point text messaging systems, primarily used from the 1840s until the late 20th century. It was the first electrical telecommunications system and the most widely used of a number of early messaging systems ...

link to the local Manor House only eight years after

Samuel Morse Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph ...

filed his telegraphy patent in America.

References

http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Norfolk/Longham {{authority control Villages in Norfolk Civil parishes in Norfolk Breckland District