Wymondham

Wymondham (pronounced ) is a historic market town (population 12539) in Norfolk to the south west of the county town of Norwich, and on the main road to Thetford and Cambridge. In the town centre it has a unique market cross, an octagonal building raised about 10ft off the ground that used to have traders in the building. It is now a Public Information Centre.

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Wymondham Abbey is the parish church.

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Wymondham's most famous inhabitant was Robert Ket or Kett, who in 1549 led a rebellion of peasants and small farmers who were protesting about the enclosure of common land. He took a force of almost unarmed men, and fought for and held the City of Norwich for six weeks until defeated by the King's forces. He was hanged from Norwich Castle. Kett's Oak, said to be the rallying point for the rebellion, may still be seen today on the road between Wymondham and Hethersett.

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In 1785 a prison was built incorporating the ideas of John Howard, the prison reformer. It was the first prison to be built in this country with separate cells for the prisoners, and was widely copied both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and forms the basis of modern prisions.

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The award-winning railway station, which is often, though wrongly, believed to have been used in the classic film Brief Encounter, has been lovingly restored by David Turner, and now houses a museum and themed restaurant. The station was however featured as the "Warmington-on-Sea" station in the popular BBC comedy series "Dad's Army"

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The collapse of the wollen industry in the mid-nineteenth century led to great poverty in Wymondham. In 1836 there were 600 hand looms, but by 1845 only 60. During Victorian times the town was a backwater, escaping large-scale development, and the town centre remains very much as it must have been in the mid-seventeenth century, when the houses were rebuilt after a great fire. These newer houses, and those which survived the Great Fire in 1615, still surround shoppers and visitors as they pass through Wymondham's narrow Mediaeval streets.

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Norfolk: :For alternative meanings see: Norfolk (disambiguation)...

Norwich: Norwich (pronounced variously "Norritch" or "Norridge") is a city in East Anglia, in Eastern England, and the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk....