Sedgeford is a village and civil parish in the

English county The counties of England are areas used for different purposes, which include administrative, geographical, cultural and political demarcation. The term "county" is defined in several ways and can apply to similar or the same areas used by each ...

of Norfolk, about 5 miles south of the North Sea and east of the Wash. It is 36 miles north-west of Norwich. Its area of had a population, including Fring, of 613 at the 2011 Census. It was estimated at 601 in 2019.City Population. Retrieved 2 January 2021.
/ref> For local-government purposes, it falls within the district of

King's Lynn and West Norfolk King's Lynn and West Norfolk is a local government district with borough status in Norfolk, England. Its council is based in the town of King's Lynn. The population of the Local Authority at the 2011 Census was 147,451. History The district was ...

. It lies in a farming valley with main crops of barley, wheat and sugar beat, in a belt of chalk with the small Docking River running through.

History

The villages name probably means "Secci's ford". It is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. Part of the church, built of flint and stone, is Anglo-Saxon in origin. It has one of the 124

round towers Round or rounds may refer to: Mathematics and science * The contour of a closed curve or surface with no sharp corners, such as an ellipse, circle, rounded rectangle, cant, or sphere * Rounding, the shortening of a number to reduce the number ...

in Norfolk. There is archaeological evidence of people living there in much earlier times: remains of Roman villas, pottery, a gold torc from the Iron Age, and Neolithic flint tools found in fields and gardens. Furthermore, it is crossed by two ancient roads, the

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

Icknield Way and the Roman-period Peddars Way.

Peddars Way

Peddars Way, an ancient

Roman road Roman roads ( la, viae Romanae ; singular: ; meaning "Roman way") were physical infrastructure vital to the maintenance and development of the Roman state, and were built from about 300 BC through the expansion and consolidation of the Roman Re ...

, runs through the top end of the village and leads directly onto the Norfolk Coast Path. After Fring, the national trail passes through the hamlet of Littleport, a small row of higgledy-piggledy cottages that now forms part of the main village. The route takes walkers past a local landmark, Magazine Cottage, built in the 17th century by the Le Strange family during the civil war as a gunpowder magazine. Legend has it that a secret tunnel ran from the old armoury to the church in the heart of the village. Today this small part of Peddars Way derives its name from this historical building, with Magazine Wood and Magazine Farm just a few steps away. All these properties were once owned by William Newcombe-Baker, a local landowner whose estate covered much of the land round the village. He was a founder member of NORMAC, the Norfolk machinery body that did much in the 20th century to bring modern mechanisation to arable farming in East Anglia. Magazine Wood was rebuilt in 2000. From this high vantage point on Peddars Way, the sun can be seen setting over the sea – one of the few places this is possible on the east coast of Britain. Peddars Way passes Magazine Wood and crosses the disused

West Norfolk Junction Railway The West Norfolk Junction Railway was a standard gauge eighteen and a half-mile single-track railway running between Wells-next-the-Sea railway station and Heacham in the English county of Norfolk. It opened in 1866 and closed in 1953. At Well ...

. Sedgeford railway station lay on the line between Wells and King's Lynn, but closed to passengers in 1952 and to goods in 1964. The parish church, Sedgeford St. Mary, is one of 124

round-tower church Round-tower churches are a type of church found mainly in England, mostly in East Anglia; of about 185 surviving examples in the country, 124 are in Norfolk, 38 in Suffolk, six in Essex, three in Sussex and two each in Cambridgeshire and Berkshi ...

es in Norfolk.

Archaeological project

The

Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project The Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research Project (SHARP) is a long-term, multidisciplinary research project based in north-west Norfolk, United Kingdom. It is involved in the investigation of the local history and archaeology, with a st ...

(SHARP) was established in 1996 to reconstruct the story of human settlement in the parish. Initially, it focused on the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

cemetery located to the south of the modern village, but it is an ongoing project expanding to many other sites in the parish.

Sports

The village has an associated football team, Sedgeford FC.

Bibliography

Website 1643 Civil War in Lincolnshire and Sir Hamon LeStrange
*Neil Faulkner ''et al.'', eds, 2014, ''Digging Sedgeford: A People's Archaeology''. Poppyland Publishing. *Garry Rossin (2018) ''Sedgeford Aerodrome and the aerial conflict over North West Norfolk during the First World War''. Poppyland Publishing.

Notes

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

External links

St Mary's on the European Round Tower Churches websitewww.sharp.org.uk Sedgeford Historical and Archaeological Research ProjectSedgeford Village Online website
{{authority control Villages in Norfolk King's Lynn and West Norfolk Civil parishes in Norfolk