3 
The interwar years
Of all the schemes and ideas to preserve the animals and flowers — and indeed the scenery of England — I know of none that seems more quietly effective and more humane than those put in practice and fostered by the Norfolk Naturalists’ Trust (Sir William Beach Thomas, The Spectator, 27 June 1931)
In his reply Mr Bailey (of the National Trust) said ‘He knew of no other county in England which had anything corresponding to the Norfolk Archaeological Trust…’ (The Times, 8 September 1924)
The 1920s saw the setting up of two pioneering Trusts in Norfolk, one for wildlife and one for archaeological sites, of which one (the Naturalists’ Trust) was to set the agenda for nature conservation in Norfolk for the rest of the century, in spite of the fact that, following the First World War, there was a stagnation in the study of botany. ‘Was there less to discover? Or was it, as has been suggested, that more attention was now being paid to the budding science of ecology?’1 ‘Nature preservation failed to take off. Whether measured in terms of legislation, public awareness or nature reserves, the tangible achievements of the interwar years were meagre.’2 If this analysis was true on the national stage, it certainly was not so in Norfolk, where an awareness of the fragility of the natural environment was clearly evident. The war years had resulted in the ploughing up of heath and the draining of marsh, and it was threats to the Cley Marshes from the War Agricultural Committee that led to concerns over its future and its purchase as a nature reserve.3
The period after 1918 saw immense change in the countryside, with increased tensions between the natural environment and man’s activities. Improved roads, petrol stations, advertisement hoardings, electricity pylons and suburban sprawl were all seen as threats to the ‘traditional countryside’ and were themes taken up by many of the writers of the 1930s. ‘When one considers the changes to the face of the county that are being made or are being contemplated by the Forestry Commission, the Drainage Boards, speculative builders and the like, one is anxious to preserve for future generations areas of marsh, heath, woods, and undrained fenland with their natural wealth of fauna and flora.’4 The selling off of many of the great sporting estates, which had increasingly been managed for the protection of game, and the purchase of many farms by their tenants led to changes in land management, particularly the possibility that land that had previously been left for field sports would be brought into cultivation. However, as agricultural depression set in in the late 1920s the threat of the ploughing up of old pasture and thus the destruction of archaeological earthworks receded.
Concerns also came from another direction. The increasing availability of private transport in the form of the motor car meant that more people were able to visit what had previously been quiet ‘unspoilt’ areas, a situation bemoaned by nature lovers. After 1918 ‘beaches and quiet sea shore, up to this time known to comparatively few people interested in the birdlife there, were invaded by holidaymakers’.5 The phrase ‘beauty spot’ entered the language, while the popularity of taking trips out into the country increased. Alongside the serious publications of botanists, ornithologists and antiquarians, this new interest in and nostalgia for the countryside was being fed by an ever-increasing number of popular books. From the 1930s Harry Batsford was producing a series of local guides. In 1939 East Anglia, for his ‘Face of Britain’ series, written by the Suffolk novelist Doreen Wallace, was published. Illustrations covered churches, great houses, rural scenes and picturesque villages and the author claimed to be ‘a country woman with an eye for beauty’ rather than an academic. The aim of such books, as Harry Batsford saw it, was to help urban dwellers to ‘see the country — to get to understand, appreciate and realise something of the message of its outward aspect, its changing seasons, the people and their life and work’.6 Arthur Mee’s King’s England series, describing counties village-by-village, began publication in the 1930s, with the Norfolk volume appearing in 1940. Described on the back cover as ‘The indispensable companion of the Motor Age’, it was read alongside the One-inch Ordnance Survey maps without which ‘A holiday in any part of Great Britain is incomplete’. The publication of Roger Tory Petersen’s Field Guide in 1934 provided for those with an interest in natural history and the countryside and gave a huge boost to the hobby of birdwatching.
While, in 1890, Pitt Rivers had worried about taxpayers’ money being used to preserve ancient monuments of interest to only a very limited elite, such sites were now being visited by a far wider cross section of the public. Several Norfolk sites were taken into guardianship between the wars, with Castle Acre Priory being the first, in 1929.
Not only were more people visiting the countryside, but both public and private transport was enabling others to move out of the towns, thus invading the secluded surroundings of those who had come before. In spite of the complaints of those who had already escaped the towns, this exposure of the countryside to a wider audience did have the positive affect of increasing people’s awareness of both the natural world and the historic interest of their surroundings.
Interwar Broadland and Breckland
It was the period after the First World War which saw the real explosion of the Broadland holiday industry. While there were 165 boats available for hire in the Broads in 1920, by 1939 there were 587 and in 1955, 919.7 The popularity of sailing on the Broads impacted on the landscape of the area generally, but particularly on those villages with railway stations such as Wroxham, Horning, Hoveton, Brundall and Potter Heigham. Here ease of access was combined with wooded and undulating scenery that added a picturesque quality which was lacking nearer Yarmouth8 — or, as the guide book put it when describing Wroxham:
19 Castle Acre Priory, taken into Guardianship in 1929, shown as it was before it was taken over and as it is now.
A joyous spot and beautiful, with a charm shared by no other holiday centre in the kingdom; the rural approach to much that is most fascinating in this region of out-of-the-world enchantment … a stepping stone to a magic realm where there is no movement save that of the water and the swaying reeds and no sound but the cry of the wild birds.9
Boatyards flourished, building, maintaining and hiring out boats. Hotels and guesthouses, regarded by some as ‘unsightly modern houses for accommodation of visitors’, sprang up.10 Holiday houses and villas, from the grandest to the most simple Boulton and Paul prefabricated and corrugated iron bungalows, or even home-made constructions, appeared along the banks, and there was plenty of opportunity for the conservationists in their tudoresque brick houses to grumble about the railway carriages and ‘shacks’ put up by those humbler folk who enjoyed a bit of coarse fishing on a day off.
The railway not only allowed holidaymakers ease of access but meant that wealthy Norwich families could afford to leave the city and live permanently in the countryside. One of the finest houses resulting from these developments is that at How Hill (now a residential educational centre), perfectly sited overlooking the River Ant, designed by the influential Norwich architect Edward Boardman and built between 1901 and 1903. Thatched and built of roughcast brick to give a vernacular feel, its detailing is Jacobean. It was those people who owned these substantial riverside villas who were most likely to complain about the increasing numbers and changing types of ‘trippers’, a term always used in a derogatory way. They were blamed, for example, for substantial damage to the stonework of St Benet’s Abbey in 1928,11 but the conflicts over development and use of the Broads were often as much about class as conservation.
It is clear that the different strands of the holiday industry affected the landscape in different ways, from the large Edwardian hotels to the caravan and holiday camps, and all were seen as a threat to the natural and historic landscape. It is also clear that the expanding availability of transport to the countryside meant that, while the rural population was declining, a far wider cross section of the population was coming into contact with the countryside and taking an interest in changes taking place; its recreational as well as its food-producing role was beginning to be of concern to more than the landed gentry. A newspaper article of 1920 stressed the value of commons not only to the local inhabitants but also to those from the towns: ‘it is generally admitted that common lands are not only important as a means of livelihood for the small holder and others who live upon their boundaries, but also as a source of fresh air and recreation for the town dwellers.’12
20 Perhaps the most impressive of the holiday homes built in the Broads is How Hill House in Ludham. It was built by the architect Edward Boardman between 1903 and 1905 and perfectly sited with views over the River Ant and the Reedham marshes.
21 Most of the manual planting of over 2,000 acres a year of conifers by the Forestry Commission was undertaken by unemployed labour from the north of England during the 1930s. Here nursery beds of young conifers are being inspected in the 1950s.
It was not only those with cars who bought guide books of the kind being produced from the 1930s. A good network of buses running from the train stations in many a market town as well as the bicycle allowed urban dwellers to explore the countryside, its churches, village greens and pubs. Camping holidays also became fashionable, with cyclists and walkers bringing their tents, often in small hand carts or pulled behind their bicycles. Hiking became popular in the 1920s and 1930s, with the Ramblers’ Association being founded in 1935. By the 1930s troops of Boy Scouts came out from the towns and, having introduced themselves to the local vicar, would ask permission to camp in a farmer’s field. Some campers were not so considerate, however. Having complained about those who pitched tents without permission, left gates open and dropped litter, a correspondent to the Eastern Daily Press went on to say ‘i am confident that any Norfolk farmer would accede to any reasonable request which would promote the enjoyment of holiday-makers, but it is not fair to expect us to suffer fools gladly.’13
As early as 1884 G.C. Davies’ description of a village on the River Yare was of a scene that visitors expected to see and which they associated with an ‘unchanging’ countryside.
From a grey stone bridge we see an old-fashioned village, built with delightful irregularity, the houses with strange and fantastically curved gables. Through the village runs the broad high road to the city … a little apart on the banks of the river stands the hoary church.14
What life was like for the villagers in their tumbledown gabled cottages was of little concern to those enjoying the quaint view.
Alongside the increasing popularity of the Broads went a concern for the future of Breckland, which was being threatened from a different direction. As a result of timber shortages in the First World War the government adopted a policy of afforestation. In 1919 Forestry Acts authorised the appointment of Forestry Commissioners who were empowered to acquire land. Several contributory factors combined to create a unique situation enabling the purchase of land for forestry. At this time of agricultural depression poor land was cheap to buy and the country’s wood supplies, depleted by wartime requirements, needed replenishing. There was also a need to find employment for the unemployed, and work in tree planting was seen as one solution. The sandy soils of Breckland were highly suited to forestry and from 1922 the Commission began buying land in the area, with nearly 15,000 acres purchased by 1925. Both arable and heathland rapidly gave way to conifer plantation, with an average of 1,300 acres being planted every year between 1922 and 1960, the bulk of it in the first decade, with 2,226 acres planted annually between 1924 and 1929.15 At 40,000 acres, Thetford Forest is the largest lowland forest in Britain. In 1880 there had been 54,000 acres of heathland in the Norfolk and Suffolk Breckland, but by 1968 only 6,600 remained.16 Just as Breckland began to disappear, its unique qualities were being recognised. In 1925 W.G. Clarke’s In Breckland wilds was published and immediately became a classic. In describing the natural and geological history of the heaths, using words such as ‘spaciousness’ and ‘peaceful solitude’ to describe the area, Clarke exudes an enthusiasm for the Brecks which is infectious. ‘He who has vibrated with the thrill of the heathland is never quite the same again.’17 The popularity of such books is an indication of the widening interest in the countryside and a growing awareness of its fragility away from the standard holiday resorts.
The role of the National Trust
After its initial acquisitions on the north coast the Trust was nervous of acquiring more sites and lengthy negotiations were needed before they took on land neighbouring Blakeney Point at Scolt Head. This was bought from Lord Leicester with funds raised through the efforts of Oliver and Sydney Long, a Wells doctor and honorary secretary of the NNNS. An undated letter preserved at Holkham from Dr Frank Penrose, who presented two ‘rare migrants’, a barrell warbler and a lecterine warbler, to Lord Leicester for his collection, reads ‘i am sure all naturalists are most grateful to you for what you have done in saving Scolt Head and the Burnham Overy Marshes.’18 The area was finally handed over to the National Trust in 1923 ‘so that it could be preserved for ever as a nature reserve’. A watcher’s hut from which the terneries could be guarded from egg collectors and other disturbance was designed in an arts and crafts style by the Norwich architect Edward Boardman.19 In 1937 the foreshore off Scolt Head was acquired from the Board of Trade. A further site acquired in the 1930s from the Felbrigg estate was over 60 acres of West Runton Common.
A further important acquisition of the National Trust in Norfolk, which was again a first, was the gift of Blickling Hall along with 4,270 acres of land from the Marquis of Lothian (1882–1940).20 As the son of Lord Ralph Kerr, the third son of the seventh Marquis of Lothian had a traditional aristocratic upbringing on the family estate at Newbattle, near Edinburgh. After Oxford he spent four and a half years in South Africa working for Lord Milner on plans to rebuild the colony following the Boer War. Here his earnestness, coupled with a strong sense of duty, was obvious and would ensure that he would always be an influential figure in government circles. It also convinced him of the value of the British Empire as a world-wide force for good and he travelled widely, lecturing to encourage a spirit of cooperation among its members. To this end he became editor of a quarterly review of imperial politics. All of these made him an expert in foreign and imperial affairs, but travelling and the intensity which he gave to his work resulted in a nervous breakdown in 1913, after which he joined the Astor family in St Moritz for a long rest. As secretary to Lloyd George from 1916 to 1922 he attended the 1919 versailles peace conference. A charming and good-looking man, a golfer with a love of motorbikes in his youth — later replaced by fast cars — he played a not insignificant role in great international affairs, yet never became pompous. Although not closely aligned to any political party his views tended to coincide with those of the Liberals. He felt that responsibility was the sole justification for privilege and power and, in principle, he supported Lloyd George’s tax reforms: ‘in my capacity as an ordinary citizen I think highly of these arrangements, but as an inheritor of a title and estates thereto they will prove somewhat embarrassing.’21 This proved to be the case when, on the death of his father in 1930, he inherited the title of tenth Lord Lothian and three fine houses and their estates, bringing with them death duties of £300,000 which could be paid only by selling some of most valuable books from the Blickling library. This made him very aware of the effect a further round of death duties would have on the estate. In 1930 he wrote to The Times urging that income from death duties should be used to support agriculture, and he then became a spokesman for the National Trust. Up to this date its experiences of taking on large country houses had been financial disasters. Under new leadership, however, the Trust, still a small organisation with a membership of little over 3,000, was ready to embark on new acquisition policies. At the 1934 Annual General Meeting Lord Lothian gave a speech entitled ‘England’s Country Houses: the case for their preservation’, arguing that the main threat came from the level of death duties. The solution, as he saw it, was for the National Trust to take over properties without any burden of taxation and this eventually became law under the National Trust Act of 1937. The act enabled the Trust to hold land and investments free of tax as endowments for country houses. In future, whole estates could be given to the Trust without incurring tax liabilities. The Act also allowed for the furniture and pictures within the house to be excluded from valuation for taxation.
22 the Watcher’s hut on Scolt Head was designed by Edward Boardman in an arts and crafts style soon after Scolt Head was taken over by the National Trust in 1923. Below: The Scolt Head Committee outside the Watcher’s hut, June 1928.
22 The Scolt Head Committee outside the Watcher’s hut, June 1928.
Lord Lothian died in 1940 while British ambassador in Washington and left the Blickling estate, with its 100 cottages, to the National Trust, making it the first of many country house acquisitions to benefit from the 1937 Act. Of his other houses, Newbattle had been given to the university of Edinburgh as an adult education college, Ferniehurst, a border castle overlooking the River Jed, was let at a small rent to the Scottish Youth Hostel Association, while the modern house at Monteviot remained in family occupation.
Blickling, however, was his favourite and although his public and diplomatic duties left him little time to enjoy it he hoped that, under National Trust ownership, it would become not a ‘melancholy museum’ but set ‘a standard of beauty, in garden and furniture and decoration by which later generations can mould their own practice’.22 In 1952 Oxburgh Hall was acquired by the National Trust under a similar arrangement.
23 Blickling Hall, with its surrounding estate, was the first to be gifted to the National Trust by Lord Lothian under the Country Houses Scheme in 1940.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds
During most of the interwar period the RSPB was more concerned with lobbying for improved legislation to protect birds than the acquisition of sites. A major concern of the 1920s was the damage caused to sea birds by oil spillages,but any attempts to control the emptying of bilge tanks needed international agreement. The society continued to call for one and publicised the need. Finally, in 1926, a meeting took place in Washington, but it ended without agreement and all the RSPB could do was call for voluntary agreements, in which it was partially successful.
Two local Trusts
Norfolk is remarkable in that the 1920s saw the founding of two local trusts with the aim of acquiring and conserving sites of wildlife and historical interest. Both of these were founded and promoted by a small group of local natural historians and antiquarians, many of them landed gentry and eminent in their fields. The Norfolk Archaeological Trust (NAT) was founded in 1923 and the Norfolk Naturalists’ Trust (NNT) in 1926. Pivotal to both trusts in their early days was the support of the Norwich solicitor Basil Cozens-Hardy (1885–1976) and, early on, both trusts held their committee meetings in the offices of Cozens-Hardy and Jewson at Castle Chambers in Opie Street. Basil was a remarkable man. Very tall, and of impressive build, he had lost a leg while a pilot in the First World War. This did not cramp his style, however. He had a metallic artificial leg and kept a few spare in a cupboard in the offices — ‘a somewhat unnerving sight’ for junior staff. He is said to have ridden a bicycle and stories of how he mounted it were told from time to time. During the interwar years he played cricket for Norfolk with the help of a runner.23 As a member of the Cozons Hardy family of Letheringsett he was very well connected within the county, being on the committee of many city charities as well as the Board of Norwich union. He was made a Deputy Lord Lieutenant in 1935, when he was also Sheriff of Norwich. The family had many influential friends. Basil describes in his diary the visit of his school friend Augustus Birrell to the family home in Letheringsett in 1912, when he was Chief Secretary for ireland. ‘He was accompanied by a detective to guard against the suffragettes.’ Like so many of the early supporters of local charities and trusts, Basil was a nonconformist; while he lived in Norwich he supported the large Congregational chapel just around the corner from Castle Chambers, in Princes Street. After the death of his father he moved back to the family home in Letheringsett and his funeral was held in the Methodist church in neighbouring Holt.
24 Basil Cozons-Hardy was the founder of the Norfolk Archaeological Trust and was influential in the Naturalists’ Trust. This civic portrait shows him in 1935 as Sheriff of Norwich.
The Norfolk Archaeological Trust (NAT)
Basil had joined the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society (NNAS) in 1919 and within three years he was Excursion Secretary. It was this role which enabled him to become familiar with archaeological sites across the county and this knowledge was put to good use when he recommended sites for scheduling as protected ancient monuments. He could see that the NNAS was not a suitable body for the owning of property and so founded the NAT as an independent trust closely linked to the Society. Its aims, stated in its Memorandum and Articles, were ‘to promote and foster the discovery, excavation, preservation, recording and study of sites and objects of archaeological importance within the county of Norfolk for the public benefit’. This stress on preservation was revolutionary at a time when excavation and the collecting of objects was the main aim of many archaeologists. It was a cause taken up by O.G.S. Crawford, who pioneered the use of aerial photography to discover archaeological sites and who, in 1920, was appointed archaeological officer to the Ordnance Survey. Six years after the founding of NAT he wrote in the editorial of the first volume of Antiquity: ‘conservation, not excavation is the need of the day’.24 The first meeting of the NAT was held in the Norfolk and Norwich Library in March 1923. It was agreed that the Council should consist of not less than ten and not more than twenty and the original members included the indian prince and antiquarian Duleep Singh as vice-president and Basil Cozens-Hardy as secretary. The Norwich architect William Boardman and W.G. Clarke, better known as the author of In Breckland Wilds, were both council members. The first site which concerned the new Trust was drawn to its attention by the Runton Common Purchase Fund, which wanted to preserve the common with its ‘Roman Camp’ (in fact a Napoleonic War beacon site) as an open space. Ten guineas was granted to the fund on the understanding that the Trust would be given a mandate to manage the beacon. Having raised the money the common was then given to the National Trust, but the NAT maintained an interest in its management and owned several strips within it until 1969, when the whole area became a registered common and there was no longer any need to retain a token ownership.
25 The clearance of the site at Binham Priory was carried out by the Ministry of Works in 1932–39. The work was done with little concern for the archaeological layers, but rather in preparation for its opening to the public.
Binham Priory as it is today.
More important was the purchase in October 1924 of the Augustine Steward’s House, a fine mid-sixteenth-century timber-framed building on Tombland. It had been put up for sale along with the neighbouring Samson and Hercules building in Norwich, which had then to be sold on. A joint appeal with the Archaeological Society was needed to raise the necessary money, and an overdraft was required to cover the ‘preservation work’.
In 1932 Binham Priory was the first archaeological monument to be purchased by the Trust, with the help of £279 raised by a public appeal, leaving only a small balance to be found. The site was immediately handed over to the Ministry of Works (now English Heritage) to manage in guardianship. As was usual with properties newly acquired by the Office of Works, clearance of the site in preparation for opening to the public took place. The ground level of the field was lowered as the floor levels of the priory were revealed. However, much of the work was undertaken by workmen with little archaeological supervision. There was no proper report written and, although some of the finds were kept, there is no plan showing where they were found. This type of excavation or ‘clearance’ was typical of the period and has generated long-lasting criticism from archaeologists of later and more methodical generations. At the time it was believed in scholarly circles that the results of excavation would add little to the dating and understanding of documented medieval sites.25
The 1920s saw increasing concern over the future of windmills and there were efforts by the NAT to find one that might be suitable for purchase and conservation. Protracted negotiations for Sprowston Mill began in 1926, but were brought to an abrupt end when it was burnt down in 1933. The Trust was actively seeking buildings to buy through the late 1920s and 1930s. Pykerells House in St Mary’s Plain, Norwich, a late-fifteenth-century hall-house and one of only seven thatched buildings remaining in the city, was bought in 1928 for £350. The building had been the house of Thomas Pykerell, Lord Mayor of Norwich, in 1525, 1533 and 1538 and had a fine oriel hall window and queen post roof with elaborately carved spandrels. A lease was negotiated for the redundant St Peter Hungate church, also in Norwich, in 1931.
In Kings Lynn the seventeenth-century timber-framed and jettied merchant’s house known as the Greenland Fisheries Museum was bought in 1932 from the executors of Edward Beloe, one of the original signatories of the Trust’s Memorandum and articles. With the help of an honourary curator the museum was reopened in 1936. However, the building was badly damaged during the war and the museum exhibits handed over to the Kings Lynn Corporation. The building was then repaired and let as a house.
In 1929 the Trust took on a lease of Bishop Bonner’s Cottages, a row of seventeenth-century timber-framed cottages in Dereham with fine pargetting along the front and a cruck roof, and finally bought them in 1939. In 1954 they were leased to the Dereham and District Antiquarian Society. Without the Trust becoming involved these cottages would probably have been pulled down for road widening.
A letter circulated to members in 1936 stated that ‘with the rapid development of modern buildings … we are anxious to preserve and keep in good condition typical cottages and buildings of olden days in various parts of the County’. True to this aim, in 1938 a ‘picturesque seventeenth century cottage in Field Dalling’ was added to the Trust’s portfolio. It can be seen that the emphasis at this time was very much on buildings rather than the more general sites and objectives specified at its foundation. It was not until much later that the preservation of archaeological sites became an important consideration. However, the lack of membership and thus of funds was a continuing problem, and appeals to members of the Archaeological Society did not produce results. Considering the small size of its membership, the Trust’s achievements in its early years were impressive.26
26 Properties purchased by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust in the 1920s and 1930s included Augustine Stewards House, Tombland.
26 Properties purchased by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust in the 1920s and 1930s included Bishop Bonner’s Cottages, East Dereham.
26 Properties purchased by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust in the 1920s and 1930s included a seventeenthcentury cottage in Field Dalling.
26 Properties purchased by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust in the 1920s and 1930s included Pykerell’s house, St Mary’s Plain, Norwich.
The Norfolk Naturalists’ Trust
A similar need for the preservation of wildlife sites of importance was recognised in 1926, when the Norfolk Naturalists’ Trust (NNT) was set up independently of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society (NNNS) with the specific aim of procuring land to create nature reserves. Following the purchase of Blakeney Point in 1912, Scolt Head was bought from Lord Leicester in 1926 and, like Blakeney Point, handed over to the National Trust. However, there were already those who felt that local sites should be managed through a local rather than a national trust. The prime mover in this was Dr Sydney Long (1870–1939), the son of a Wells doctor who was familiar from childhood with the salt marshes. His working life was spent as a doctor in Norwich, where he was a well-respected physician at both the Norfolk and Norwich and Jenny Lind hospitals. His main fields of activity were ornithology and entomology and, in particular, the theory which had been proposed by Sir Ronald Ross that malaria could be carried by mosquitoes. This was of local relevance in that ‘Fen ague’, associated with fens and marshes, was also a form of malaria. However, Dr Long’s lifelong interest was in ornithology and he spent his leisure out in his open-topped car, recording in detailed diaries in a meticulous hand numerous sightings of birds and their activities. Like so many naturalists before him he lived in Surrey Street in Norwich, within easy reach of the hospital.
As well as being an academic and active researcher, he was a great organiser. When, in 1921, the four Norfolk Bird Protection Societies amalgamated, he became their honorary secretary and initiated some exemplary prosecutions of predatory collectors of rare birds and their eggs.27 At different times he was both secretary and president of the NNNS as well as the editor of its journal, which under his control reached a high academic standard. His two interests in medicine and ornithology were shared by the Duke of Bedford, who carried on a detailed correspondence with him between 1914 and 1923 about the birds he had seen as well as the layout and management of the hospital he supported on his estates.28
27 Dr Sydney Long (1870–1939), founder of the Norfolk Naturalists’ Trust. He is shown here at Scolt Head.
28 The Cley marshes were the first acquisition of the Norfolk Naturalists’ Trust in 1926. The scrapes to attract waders have been dug recently and the new Visitor Centre can be seen in the bottom right-hand corner.
Long was well aware that the NNNS was an academic society, unsuited to the owning of land. He had been a prime mover in raising the funds for the purchase of Scolt Head and was a member of the Blakeney Point Local Management Committee. He had observed the National Trust’s reluctance to overstretch itself and when, in March 1926, 407 acres of the Cley marshes plus a building plot came on the market, Long purchased it himself. Frustrated by the procrastination of the National Trust, he then invited a group of like-minded individuals to a lunch in Cley to consider the setting up of a Naturalists’ Trust so that the marshes could be vested in the hands of, and administered by, local naturalists. As a result, the NNT was formed as a company limited by guarantee. The aims in the Memorandum of Association, under 24 headings, were deliberately wide. The most significant were ‘To protect places and objects of natural beauty or of ornithological, botanical, geological or scientific interest from injury, ill treatment or destruction’, to ‘establish … reserves’ and to accept subscriptions. The membership should not exceed 200 and life membership was £10.
The first meeting of the Trust was on 30 November 1926 in the solicitors’offices of Cozens-Hardy and Jewson, and their Castle Chambers was to be the registered office. Others present included such well-known names as R.J. Colman and G.H. Gurney, as well as Dr Long. Surprisingly, after some discussion, shooting out of the breeding season at Cley continued to be allowed, perhaps because C. Mclean, who was also a member of the shooting syndicate, was present. A new five-year agreement with the syndicate, at £225 per annum, was agreed. The grazing tenancies on the marsh would continue, but were rearranged so that the central part was reserved for nesting birds. Twenty-six life members (all from the local gentry) were admitted. The first AGM was held at the Castle Museum in February 1927, when the accounts were presented and agreed.29
The main concern of the early conservationists was the north Norfolk coast, with its marshes. Salt marshes tended to be dismissed by the romantic admirers of the ‘picturesque’ as flat, bleak and inhospitable. However, their importance for breeding and migrating birds was critical. In 1929 a house at Brancaster Staithe was acquired and in 1937 the adjoining cottage was bought to extend visitor facilities. In 1937 the Duchess of Bedford gave land at Burnham Overy Staithe, while Little Eye and Great Eye at Salthouse were bought in 1937 with the help of a grant from the Pilgrim Trust. These areas of coastal marshland offered some of the best vantage points for observing migrating and wading birds.
The Broads were, as we have seen, vulnerable to disturbance by tourists. However, they were mostly in the hands of sympathetic owners. In March 1929 the NNT purchased marshland at Martham from Norfolk County Council for £150, and in 1930 fourteen acres of reed bed and twenty acres of arable and marsh at Alderfen Broad was bought, helped by an interest-free loan from Major Trafford of Wroxham Hall. In 1946 Sir Christopher Cadbury helped the Trust to buy the Whiteslea estate at Hickling, where he had the use of the house, while in 1949 Ranworth and Cockshoot Broad were given to the trust by Colonel Cator subject to the king having one day’s shooting a year.30
In addition to the north Norfolk Coast and the Broads, a third area of important habitats was Breckland, which was subject to different pressures. Here the Forestry Commission was regarded as a threat to the heathland environment. It was with great difficulty that the NNT finally managed to obtain land there. In March 1932 Dr Long reported that, although he had made enquiries, he had not heard of any part of Breckland which could be acquired for the Trust. His only suggestion was the purchase of cottages with commoning rights in Lakenheath, which would ensure that Lakenheath Common could not be planted, and these were bought in 1933. This failed to secure the common, however, as the land was taken over as an airfield early in the war. Protracted negotiations began in 1938 for land at Wretham. The Forestry Commission had recently purchased a large area of Breckland around Wretham and Kilverstone and agreed to sell that around Wretham Hall to Mrs Riches, who planned to give it ‘as a sanctuary for all time’ to the NNT in memory of her father, Sir John Dewrance. Lord Fisher of Kilverstone would also contribute land and part of the mere if he could keep the duck shooting, but Mrs Riches refused to purchase the land from the Forestry Commission if this was part of the bargain. Finally 500 acres was handed over to the NNT, but, again, some had to be handed on to the Ministry of Defence for military training as part of the Battle Area and for an airfield. Attempts to protect further areas from afforestation continued, with the acquisition of 260 acres at Weeting. This land was important not only as a potential nature reserve and bird sanctuary but also as an archaeological site, as the heath contained several barrows. This purchase was made possible by a gift of £900 from Christopher Cadbury, who had moved to Norwich in 1939 to manage the family’s chocolatemaking business. He was to become an important benefactor of the NNT as well as a prime mover in the conservation movement nationally. Not only did he have wealth at his disposal but he was a great committee man, working for both national parks and national nature reserves as well as the RSPB and the World Wildlife Fund. He was a founder member of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, which coordinated the work of local bodies such as the NNT. In 1945 he was coopted onto the NNT Council and remained a member for forty-three years. In 1949 he bought 225 acres of Thetford Heath — ‘typical rabbit-cropped stoney breck of which so little survives in a natural form’ — which he then gave to the NNT.31
29 In the early days of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust a major source of income was the sale of Christmas cards. These examples are from 1958 and 1959.
It would have come as a surprise to the early naturalists that in recent years Thetford Forest has been designated as a Site of Special Scientific interest (SSSi) and a Specially Protected Area (SPA) (a European designation) because of the unique habitat it provides for birds such as the woodlark and nightjar. As timber has been thinned out from twenty years of growth to final felling at sixty years, natural regeneration of native trees has taken place and a millennium forest scheme covering 300 acres of heathland in six different lots has been created and managed by the NWT, thus finally allowing it to achieve the aim of its founders. The diversity of conifers and deciduous trees alongside open heath has created an environment suited to a wide variety of wildlife, including the rare stone curlew. Under the shelter of the pines, plants adapted to hostile conditions can survive.
In its early years the NNT restricted membership to 200, with a subscription of £10 securing a life membership. In the years leading to the outbreak of war membership grew to 150. More sites were acquired, so that by 1939 the Trust owned land worth over £14,000. In 1939 it was able to appoint a secretary and assistant treasurer at a salary of £300 a year plus a £20 car allowance. The largest source of income for the Trust was the sale of Christmas cards. Taking the idea from the RSPB, who had been selling cards and calenders from 1899, it was made possible by the gift every year from 1930 of a painting of a bird by the eminent wildlife artist F.C. Harrison. His picture was used for the card and then auctioned. By 1939 40,000 were sold each year. Within two years of its purchase in 1930, the overdraft on Alderfen Broad had been paid off entirely from the sale of Christmas cards.
30 Ted Ellis (1910–1986). As keeper of Natural History in the Norwich Castle Museum in the 1930s, and later through his weekly columns in the Eastern Daily Press, Ted Ellis became the public face of natural history and conservation within the county.
Ted Ellis
Alongside the important work of the Trusts in bringing the causes of conservation to the public went the influence of individuals. Ted Ellis (1910–1986) became the public face of Norfolk’s natural history between the wars. Writing a weekly column in the Eastern Daily Press for forty years from 1928, he described the world of the Norfolk fens and waterways and emphasised the need for their protection and conservation. By 1930 he was working firstly in the Tollhouse Museum in Yarmouth and then in the Castle Museum in Norwich, where, as keeper of natural history, he initiated the installation of a new and much more lively type of exhibit than the glass cases of stuffed birds and animals he found on his arrival. These were the three-dimensional displays known as dioromas in which wildlife was shown in its natural setting. He commissioned the building of several pieces with backgrounds painted by well-known theatre artists, Owen Paul Smyth and Ernest Whately, each illustrating the environment and wildlife of the regions of Norfolk, including the Broads, the Brecks, the coast and a Norfolk ‘loke’ or lane. The museum curator of the time, Frank Leney, described them as ‘exhibits of extreme beauty and interest’ which will ‘attract wide attention and stimulate the desire to protect and preserve the wildlife which still survives in Norfolk’. They were installed between 1931 and 1936 in what was called the Norfolk Room (now the Ted Ellis Room), and they are still some of the most popular exhibits in the museum. Ellis also initiated an ambitious card index record (the foundation of the current Biological Record) covering every species of plant and animal known in Norfolk, noting where it had been seen, when, how often and by whom. In 1946 he bought and moved to 150 acres at Wheatfen, near Surlingham. He became a popular broadcaster and writer in the 1950s and 1960s, urging vigilant care of the natural beauty of the region. After his death in 1987 Wheatfen was established as a permanent nature reserve.32
31 These dioramas in the Norfolk Room at the Castle Museum were the brainchild of Ted Ellis. Those illustrated here show Breckland with a stone curlew in the foreground, a broadland scene with a crested grebe, and Breydon Water with a bird of prey — all shown within their natural surroundings and a great contrast to the rows of stuffed birds in glass cases of an earlier era.
Rainbird Clarke
Overlapping with Ellis for a few years at the Castle Museum was Rainbird Clarke (1914–1963). The son of W.G. Clarke, he continued his father’s work of recording archaeological sites. From the 1930s onwards, initially for the Ordnance Survey, he started to build up a record of antiquities shown on their maps. This developed into a card index of archaeological discoveries which forms the basis of the modern computerised Historic Environment Record. While at the Castle Museum he initiated several excavations and his book East Anglia, published in 1960, was the first modern systematic account of the archaeology of the region.33
The beginnings of national pressure groups: the Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves
Pressure groups such as the RSPB, whose early campaigns in the 1890s had been against the import of exotic bird feathers for ladies’ hats, had existed before 1918, but it was after that date that threats to the environment seemed more pressing. New groups were formed and older ones became more active. The Society for the Promotion of Nature Reserves (SPNR), set up in 1912, was influenced by the new science of ecology and the understanding of causal relationships between habitats and animal and plant communities. Its foundation by Charles Rothschild had been greeted by a leader in The Times bewailing the fact that, while the nineteenth century had seen a drift away from the countryside, the improvements in transport were seeing a move back from the towns. The risk was that the entire countryside would be covered by ‘a sort of universal suburb’.34 This may seem rather an exaggeration at this time, and the Society’s aim of creating a list of nationally important sites that should be protected as nature reserves was not fully appreciated by the mainstream nature conservation movement. Bodies such as the RSPB were more concerned with promoting legislation against bird catching and egg collecting, and nature reserves were seen as of less importance and very expensive. The Society’s work, however, became urgent as the First World War progressed and the Board of Agriculture produced a list of areas of land, including uncultivated marshes and heaths, that the Board felt were suitable for ploughing as part of the war effort. A provisional list of 251 sites, including fifty-two classed as the most important, was sent to the Board in June 1915. This included the north Norfolk coast around Burnham Overy, the Norfolk Broads and Winterton on the east coast.
32 Rainbird Clarke (1914–1963) was curator of the Norwich Castle Museum and responsible for establishing a record of archaeological sites which became the foundation of the modern Historic Environment Record (HER).
Professor Oliver, who had been a member of the SPNR executive Committee from 1912, expressed the view at the first meeting of the British Ecological Society in 1913 that ‘the country districts of England are not obviously seriously threatened and therefore the nature reserve movement does not have strong popular appeal’, especially as nature reserves were seen as areas which, rather like game reserves, would restrict public access.35 At a meeting of the British Association in Leeds in 1927 which discussed the role of nature reserves, Oliver again stressed the importance of the SPNR, pointing to the ‘revolution in communications which petrol and the motor car had wrought’ and thus the urgent need for obtaining representative examples of natural ground with its flora and fauna, so that these might serve as ‘present enjoyment and solace and might be handed down to future generations intact’. In this he thought that local trusts such as the NNT should play a vital role.36 However, it was many years before any other county Trusts came into being, and the SPNR achieved little in the years following Charles Rothschild’s death in 1923.
The beginnings of national pressure groups: the Council for the Preservation of Rural England
Conservation in the interwar years was concerned not only with the protection of individual sites of natural or antiquarian interest but also with the preservation of the wider countryside. The Council for the Preservation (later changed to Protection) of Rural England (CPRE) was founded nationally in the same year as the NNT (1926) with a much wider remit — to preserve ‘all things of value and beauty’. The man behind the CPRE, which consisted of a small group of Londoncentred intellectuals, was the architect and town planner Patrick Abercrombie. He saw that the countryside was being affected by rapid and damaging change, and that the protection of both the countryside and the coast was needed. The CPRE’s aim was to encourage the preservation of ‘all things of true value and beauty, and the scientific and orderly development of all local resources’. It was very much an aesthetic movement, with a deep antipathy towards industrialisation, and saw the future of the countryside in the revitalising of farming. Its concern was the countryside as a whole, rather than individual sites, and particularly the unplanned scruffy sprawl of new housing development. This included the ‘holiday shacks’ in the Broads. CPRE policy was never to own property, but rather to act as a pressure group to influence owners, public opinion and local authorities. A plan to buy land on the coast at Stiffkey to protect it from further invasion by the War Department in 1939 was mooted, but doomed to failure. The Norfolk branch was founded in November 1933, well after many of the groups in other counties. Its stated aim was ‘to guide necessary development upon right and orderly lines, so that our great heritage may be handed on unimpaired’. The heritage the CPRE wished to protect included the city of Norwich and the port of Kings Lynn, the Norfolk Broads — ‘a unique landscape in the British isles’ — picturesque villages and churches. The earl of Leicester supported the founding of a county branch and spoke of the ‘unsightly bungalow development on the important salt marsh coast from Sandringham to Sheringham’. A dislike of this type of development was frequently voiced. For instance, Mr Bristow of Hunstanton wrote to the London office of the CPRE complaining about the development along the Kings Lynn Road ‘of the commonist type of bungalow’.37 Early in 1934 a provisional local committee was formed to discuss a constitution and committee structure. The original committee included several landowners, such as the historian R.W. Ketton-Cremer of Felbrigg, Roger Coke of Bayfield, Captain Desmond Buxton of Catton and Alec Penrose of Bradenham. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Basil Cozens-Hardy was also an active committee member.38 On many occasions the CPRE worked hand-in-hand with both the NNT and the National Trust. In 1937 a scheme for the management of the Morston and Stiffkey marshes was promoted by the CPRE whereby covenants with the National Trust would be entered into by the owners. All three bodies were working in ‘friendly co-operation’.39 Early campaigns of the CPRE included criticism of local landowners for felling and selling the limited timber left on their estates, drawing attention to the problems of litter, road widening, demolition of old cottages and barns, and ribbon development. The County Council was asked to stop digging road material from the coastal hills behind Morston and agreed to do so. At the CPRE AGM of 1938 there was already concern about the loss of hedgerows and the effects on the countryside of increasing farm mechanisation. Problems which conservationists of all types still face were thus already evident in the interwar years. How could the countryside be protected while promoting its appreciation by a wider public? Could it be protected from urban influence while making it more accessible?40
National parks
One solution to this problem was seen as the creation of national parks, of which the original list of proposed sites included the Norfolk Broads. Agitation, supported by the CPRE, had begun in the 1920s and led to the appointment of the Addison Committee to investigate the need for national parks. A Standing Committee on National Parks, set up in 1936, attempted to coordinate the often conflicting interests of the amenity societies who campaigned for more public access and the nature conservationists who wanted to protect nature reserves from visitors. While there were those who felt that these two aims were incompatible, it was the firm belief of the Committee’s first chairman, John Dower, that recreation and conservation must come together for the common good, but in spite of the presentation of a draft National Parks Bill in 1939, nothing was achieved before the outbreak of war.
The role of local and national government
The interwar period also saw the beginning of powers over planning and conservation being granted to local authorities. The 1929 Local Government Act encouraged the setting up of planning committees covering several rural and urban district councils to advise on planning issues. The first in East Anglia was the Norfolk (East Central) Joint Planning Committee in 1930. That for the north and east followed in 1934. Their responsibilities included the drawing up of planning schemes for their area and advising the local councils. The zoning of industrial and commercial development as well as the safeguarding of natural characteristics was seen as of prime importance. The north and east committee, which covered part of the Broads, advised that the river banks and land near the Broads should be kept in their natural state, areas of special landscape value should be preserved and there should be strict control on the design and external appearance of buildings.41
The Office of Works
The Ancient Monuments Act of 1913 had seen the beginning of a realistic approach to scheduling, but it was not until the 1920s that real progress was made. The recently created Ancient Monuments Department of the Office of Works was actively encouraging owners to put their sites into guardianship while seeking, through local voluntary correspondents, for sites to schedule. Nationally nearly 3,000 sites were added to the new schedule of monuments between 1923 and 1931.42 In 1921 the Roman site of Burgh Castle was scheduled, but the main burst of activity came in 1924/25, when the excursion secretary of the Norfolk Archaeological Society, Basil Cozens-Hardy, was responsible for submitting 190 sites to the Ancient Monuments Board. While the earliest monuments to be scheduled were medieval castles and abbeys, Cozens-Hardy identified a wide range of sites. These included Caistor Roman town and prehistoric remains such as Warham iron Age camp. The Neolithic flint mines at Grimes Graves, whose significance had been understood following the excavations of the Rev. William Greenwell there in 1869–71, were of obvious importance. In 1917 Reginald Smith of the British Museum had requested that the monument be scheduled as it was ‘incontestably the finest Stone Age site in England and probably elsewhere’. However, when the Forestry Commission (as a government department) bought the whole area in 1926, the scheduling became void and a large part of the area was planted with trees, the Commission claiming that its brief was to make the area as profitable as possible. However, the Office of Works countered by saying that the state must set an example in the management of historic sites. There was criticism in the press and after much negotiation the site was bought by the Office of Works in 1931.43 Also scheduled were earthworks such as barrows and the Dark Age Devil’s Dyke at Ashill (1924), the medieval ecclesiastical sites of Binham Priory and the cathedral site and bishop’s chapel at North Elmham (1924), with Creake Abbey following in 1928. Early site descriptions, however, were sketchy and their extents seldom defined. Caister Castle, for instance, was described simply as a ‘picturesque ruin’. In all 188 sites were protected by 1925, ensuring that, after Wiltshire, Norfolk had more Scheduled Ancient Monuments than any other county.44 A further Ancient Monuments Act of 1931 introduced two new powers. Three months’ notice had to be given before a scheduled monument could be disturbed and the Crown was able to prosecute a person for damaging a monument. The Act also protected the setting of a monument. By 1950 about forty more sites had been added to the list. These included such important sites as Brancaster Roman Fort, the abbeys at Coxford and Marham and several ruined churches.45 Almost 200 files in the National Archives (WORKS 14) contain correspondence from the 1920s and 1930s covering Norfolk sites to be scheduled and brought into guardianship, as well as advice to owners on conservation and repair.
33 Burgh Castle was taken into Guardianship in 1921. The photograph shows the state of the Roman walls before conservation work began.
34 Burgh Castle Roman Saxon-shore fort, as it is now, beside Breydon Water (a Special Protection Area for birds and added to the Ramsar list of ‘wetlands of international importance’ in 1996). The reed beds below the fort are an SSSI. The Halvergate marshes can be seen on the other side of Breydon Water. The fort and surrounding land is now owned and managed by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust.
Although the Ministry of Works has been empowered since 1883 to take monuments into guardianship, no sites in Norfolk were included until the 1920s. Guardianship allowed the Ministry to take charge of monuments, whether or not it owned them, and to open them to the public. One of the first was Castle Acre Priory, which was taken over from the Holkham estate in 1929; it was followed by Binham Priory in 1932. The site of the Saxon cathedral and ruins of the bishop’s chapel at North Elmham, which had been cleared by the victorian rector Augustus Legge, was not taken into guardianship until 1948, by which time it was heavily overgrown. The thickets were cleared, but there was no modern excavation until 1954 and 1958.46 The Ancient Monuments Act of 1931 provided for the preparation of Presentation Schemes and restricted ‘development within the vicinity of an Ancient Monument to ensure its preservation’. As with early scheduling, it was castles and abbeys which were most favoured. The iconic site of St Benet’s Abbey in the Broads was offered by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to the Ministry of Works three times between 1937 and 1954, but was refused each time, the first time because it was said to be in good repair and too isolated to attract visitors. In 1939 it was the cost of excavation which put the Ministry off, while no specific reason was given in 1954.47 It has since been taken on by the NAT.
35 The iconic St Benet’s Abbey was scheduled in 1915, soon after the passing of the Ancient Monuments Act in 1913. It has recently been conserved by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust with funding from the HLF and other charitable bodies.
A later Chief inspector of Ancient Monuments wrote that he saw the 1920s and 1930s as a ‘golden age’ in which the reputation of the Ministry and the management of its guardianship monuments was high.48 Nearly all of the sixteen guardianship sites outside the main urban centres in Norfolk were taken on in this period — a time in which, according to Simon Thurley, the political interest in national identity was high.49 After the horrors of the First World War and the economic depression that followed there was a desire to connect people in an immediate and visible way with the achievements of the national story. The public were given the maximum degree of access and, from 1917, guide books began to be produced. By 1937 seventy-six sites nationally had guide books which often contained the first measured survey of the site to be made. While the technical nature of these drawings, showing different phases of construction and giving rather dry, detailed descriptions, do not contain the social context which makes a modern guide book more readable, they do represent an important step in the interpretation of ancient monuments and are a model of their type. As a rapidly increasing and varied range of mainly medieval ruins and building was taken on, a well-structured team of technically experienced foreman, superintendents, craftsmen and labourers were employed. Monuments and their surroundings were well cared for ‘to a high, if perhaps over-trim degree’.50 However, interwar ancient monument legislation was limited to the protection of individual sites and monuments; it did not cover areas, or buildings in use. This had to wait for the introduction of planning legislation.
The Second World War
The war itself created problems for the Trusts, with much land in Norfolk being taken for airfields. Emergency excavations took place at Hethel in 1941 in advance of the airfield there.51 The war effort itself sapped energy away from conservation. In 1944 there were even discussions on combining the NNNS and the NNT. However, Basil Cozens-Hardy repeated the view that he had held when the Trust was founded that such an arrangement would not be practical, as the Society was primarily academic and scientific while the Trust was a property-owning body incorporated for the purpose of owning land.52
We can see, therefore, how the major forces for conservation which were to grow in importance after 1945 originated in the interwar period: the two Norfolk-wide Trusts (NNT and NAT), the CPRE county branch, the increasing presence of the National Trust in the county, the launching of the Country House Scheme and the beginnings of the involvement of both local and national government were all in place by 1939. However, the main aim at this time was the preservation of important sites and habitats rather than a regard for the wider landscape. Membership, particularly of the NAT, was very small and there was no interest in opening to the public. While the National Trust had always welcomed visitors, who would be taken out in organised trips to walk through the tern colonies under the eye of the watcher,53 the main concern for the NNT was protecting areas from too much disturbance. Opening up sites and interpreting historic places for the public was well understood by the Office of Works on their guardianship sites, but as far as natural habitats were concerned the conflicting aims of preservation and encouraging visitors remained unresolved.
1 Bull 1999, 40.
2 Sheail 1998, 6.
3 NRO C/C/10/19, 476 (April 1919).
4 Eastern Daily Press 15 November 1926.
5 Gay 1944.
6 H. Batsford (1940) ‘introduction’ to How To See The Country. London, Batsford.
7 George 1992, 361–6.
8 T. Williamson (1997) The Norfolk Broads: a landscape history. Manchester, Manchester university Press, 159.
9 Ward Lock & Co. (n.d.) The Broads. London, 17.
10 Dutt 1905, 151.
11 TNA WORKS 14/1735.
12 East Anglian Daily Times, 3 January 1920.
13 Eastern Daily Press, 31 August 1935, 12.
14 G.C. Davies (1884) Norfolk broads and rivers, 2nd edn. Edinburgh and London, W. Blackwood and Son, 114.
15 Wade Martins and Williamson 2008, 91–100.
16 Dymond 1985, 250.
17 W.G. Clarke (1925) In Breckland wilds, Cambridge, Heffers, 31.
18 Holkham MS H/invB1.
19 M. Waterson (1994) The National Trust: the first hundred years. London, BBC/National Trust, 61.
20 For a biography of Lord Lothian see J.R.M. Butler (1960) Lord Lothian. Oxford, Oxford university Press.
21 Butler 1960, 145.
22 Waterson 2011, 41–50.
23 information from Matthew Martins, formerly a partner in Cozons-Hardy and Jewson.
24 O.G.S. Crawford (1929) ‘Editorial’, Antiquity 3:2, quoted in Hunter 1996, 48.
25 Saunders 1983, 20.
26 The work of the early years of the NAT has been summarised from NRO uncat. Minute books of the Norfolk Archaeological Trust.
27 For details of Dr Long’s life see Fowler 1976, ‘introduction’.
28 Sydney Long’s scrap books in the archives of the NWT.
29 Minute books in the archives of the NWT.
30 Minute books in the archives of the NWT.
31 NNT minute book annual report 1949.
32 M. Kirby (1999) ‘Nature’ , in T. Heaton (ed.), Norfolk century. Norwich, Eastern Daily Press, 37.
33 Wade-Martins 1999, 311–12.
34 Sheail 1976, 61.
35 Sheail 2002, 126.
36 F.W. Oliver (1926–27) ‘Nature reserves’, TNNNS 12:3, 311–18.
37 CPRE Norwich office, uncatalogued archives.
38 E.W. Young (1996) Sixty years of the Norfolk Society. Norwich, Norfolk Society, 1–5
39 Letter by D.M.Matheson, secretary of the National Trust, to the Eastern Daily Press, March 2nd 1937.
40 E.W.Young 1996, 1–12.
41 George 1992, 401–6.
42 Hunter (ed) 1996, 48.
43 Thurley 2013, 101–6.
44 B.Cozens-Hardy 1926 ‘Scheduling of the Norfolk Ancient Monuments’ Norfolk Archaeology 22 , 221–227.
45 Development Plan for the County of Norfolk 1951 NRO Acc 2012/163
46 S.E.Rigold 1961–3 ‘The Anglian cathedral of North Elmham, Norfolk’ Medieval Archaeology 1–7, 51–66.
47 TNA WORKS 14/1735.
48 Saunders 1983, 19.
49 Thurley 2013, 256.
50 Saunders 1983, 20.
51 TNA WORK 14/1225.
52 NNT minute book. 1944.
53 Pers.com. John Sizer, National Trust.