Oxborough is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the

English county The counties of England are a type of subdivision of England. Counties have been used as administrative areas in England since Anglo-Saxon times. There are three definitions of county in England: the 48 ceremonial counties used for the purpo ...

Norfolk Norfolk ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in England, located in East Anglia and officially part of the East of England region. It borders Lincolnshire and The Wash to the north-west, the North Sea to the north and eas ...

, well known for its church and manor house

Oxburgh Hall Oxburgh Hall is a moated country house in Oxborough, Norfolk, England. The hall was built for Sir Edmund Bedingfeld who obtained a licence to crenellate in 1482. The Bedingfelds gained the manor of Oxborough through marriage in the early 15t ...

. It covers an area of and had a population of 240 in 106 households in the 2001 census, reducing to a population of 228 in 111 households at the 2011 Census. For the purposes of local government, it falls within the

district A district is a type of administrative division that in some countries is managed by the local government. Across the world, areas known as "districts" vary greatly in size, spanning regions or county, counties, several municipality, municip ...

Breckland Breckland in Norfolk and Suffolk is a 39,433 hectare Special Protection Area (SPA) under the European Union Directive on the Conservation of Wild Birds. The SPA partly overlaps the 7,544 hectare Breckland Special Area of Conservation. As a la ...

. The villages name means 'Ox fortification’. The Oxborough dirk, a Bronze Age ceremonial oversize dagger was discovered nearby in 1988. It was acquired for the nation and is now on display in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

Churches

St John's Church, in the centre of the village, is partially ruined. Its Bedingfeld Chapel of 1496 contains two rare

terracotta Terracotta, also known as terra cotta or terra-cotta (; ; ), is a clay-based non-vitreous ceramic OED, "Terracotta""Terracotta" MFA Boston, "Cameo" database fired at relatively low temperatures. It is therefore a term used for earthenware obj ...

tombs, unique in England, which commemorate members of the Bedingfeld family of Oxburgh Hall. In 1948, the tower and spire of the church collapsed onto the church below in high winds, destroying the south side of the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

. The surviving chancel and Bedingfeld chapel were subsequently repaired to become the main church buildings, leaving the destroyed nave as a grassed area. At the Reformation, the Bedingfeld family retained their Roman Catholic faith as

recusants Recusancy (from ) was the state of those who remained loyal to the Catholic Church and refused to attend Church of England services after the English Reformation. The 1558 Recusancy Acts passed in the reign of Elizabeth I, and temporarily repea ...

; the Hall contains a

priest hole A priest hole is a hiding place for a priest built in England or Wales during the period when Catholics were persecuted by law. Following the accession of Queen Elizabeth I to the throne in 1558, there were several Catholic plots designed to remo ...

. Following the Catholic emancipation, a new Roman Catholic chapel dedicated to St Margaret and Our Lady, was built in the grounds of Oxburgh Hall. It contains a large

triptych A triptych ( ) is a work of art (usually a panel painting) that is divided into three sections, or three carved panels that are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all m ...

altarpiece An altarpiece is a painting or sculpture, including relief, of religious subject matter made for placing at the back of or behind the altar of a Christian church. Though most commonly used for a single work of art such as a painting or sculpture, ...

constructed of 16th-century panels from

Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...

. Remains of an earlier

Norman Norman or Normans may refer to: Ethnic and cultural identity * The Normans, a people partly descended from Norse Vikings who settled in the territory of Normandy in France in the 9th and 10th centuries ** People or things connected with the Norma ...

church, St. Mary Magdalene, also survive within the grounds of the Old Rectory at Oxborough Hythe, a hamlet south west of the main village. File:OxboroughChurchRuinedNave(JohnSalmon)Oct2004.jpg, The ruined nave File:OxboroughChurchEastEnd(JohnSalmon)Oct2004.jpg, The east end File:OxboroughChurchNorthWall(JohnSalmon)Oct2004.jpg, The north wall File:OxburghHall.jpg, Oxburgh Hall File:Oxburgh Hall (4458440664).jpg, Roman Catholic chapel of St Margaret and Our Lady File:Oxborough Hythe, ruin of the church of St. Mary Magdalene (geograph 4353781).jpg, Ruin of the church of St Mary Magdalene, Oxborough Hythe

Oxburgh Hall

Oxburgh Hall is the ancient ancestral home of the Bedingfeld family, and is now owned by the

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

References

http://kepn.nottingham.ac.uk/map/place/Norfolk/Oxborough

External links

Villages in Norfolk Civil parishes in Norfolk Breckland District {{Norfolk-geo-stub