A message from the parish council chairman...

I hope you will find the parish council's website both interesting and informative. It has been created to fulfill our obligation to keep parishioners fully informed of their council's activities. Please let us know if you feel there are any omissions, or of any improvements we can make.

Joe Wiley - Chairman - Great & Little Plumstead Parish Council

About the parish of Great and Little Plumstead

The parish is on the eastern suburban fringe of greater Norwich; it stretches from the city's ancient Mousehold Heath, eastward to the Broads countryside. Its southern border skirts the A47, which links Norwich to Gt. Yarmouth. Its northern border runs along a spine-road, linking the villages of Great Plumstead (330+ pop.), Little Plumstead (900+) and Thorpe End Garden Village (1,000+).

Little Plumstead has a round-towered Church, St. Gervase and St. Protase which is the parish's oldest building. It adjoins a typical 18th century, Norfolk estate with its Hall, lake and woodland, which still remains intact. The former grounds of the hall, until recent times the site of a hospital, are being re-generated by the building of a large housing estate, school and business park.

The village comprises mainly 20th century housing, but agriculture remains the predominant industry, but the rural landscape is changing, with arable crops displacing pastureland. Prior to the creation of the railways, locally-fattened cattle were assembled here, into "droves", then taken for slaughter at London's Smithfield market. This practice, along with local brick-making, has long disappeared with the only remaining reminders being the appropriately-named, "Brick Kilns" public house and "Sandhole Lane". Little Plumstead boastsa centuries-old octagon barn, one of only four remaining in the country. It is scheduled for extensive refurbishment and will become the central feature, within a commercial-use regeneration scheme, named 'The Octagon'.

Great Plumstead is also an agricultural village, where the landscape is changing.  Its name might mean 'the place of the big plums', but this is only one of a number of theories concerning the origins of the name. The arable farms have expanded, to displace the market gardens, which supplied Norwich with fruit, vegetables and flowers. Only one now remains, in Smee Lane, and still meets the demand for quality flowers and plants.

Great Plumstead, like its neighbouring village, Little Plumstead, has a medieval church, St. Mary the Virgin, the tower of which was rebuilt, in brick, after a disastrous fire, in 1891. In Low Road is the Hall, an 18th century Red House with a vernacular cottage nearby.

Thorpe End Garden Village is, by contrast, a 20th century creation. It is Norfolk's unique version of Ebenezer Howard's concept, as exemplified at Hampstead and Letchworth. In the 1930's estate agent brothers, Percy and Leonard Howes, conceived a solely residential community, with individuals building their own dwellings, on individually bought plots. All conformed to rural designs, many with thatched-roofs. Some front The Green, situated on either side of the Plumstead Road; running west from Great Plumstead, to the woodland outskirts of greater Norwich. The southern part of the village was developed with avenues of chestnut trees,having two carriage-ways, separated by a traditional hedgerow.

The northern part of Thorpe End Garden Village was completed through the 1970s and 80s, retaining a landscape of trees, shrubs and integrated open spaces. The Village's infrastructure has been completed with a shopping parade, village hall and church, St. David's. Built in 1992 it has some beautiful, modern, stained-glass windows. In 1978 the village won the "Best Kept Village in Norfolk" award.