What’s new?
Latest Site Updates – with links
New in November 2025
The Village Hall page, under Places, has a much expanded introduction. It tells the story of the land the hall occupies, and the history of the land’s ownership back to the late 1700s in the adjacent features box.
New in October 2025
A brand new page the Alan Ford Memoirs has been added to the People menu. This provides a link to a 15-page reminiscence of Alan Ford’s early years in Wreningham, which he wrote in the 1980s. Arriving as a small boy in Wreningham school in 1932, his detailed memoirs describe the many village residents he got to know during his early years, where they lived and how they earned their livings. Mapping is provided to help place everyone mentioned.
New in August 2025
A brand new page The Claylands has been added under the Places menu. It provides a potted story of our local land and some of its occupiers between the Ice Age and present times. A story about how the clay deposited by the last glacier to cover this area helped to shape much of what followed.
New in July 2025
The Hill House Farm page has been largely rewritten to introduce information we hold about farm tenants up to about 1930. This page can also be found by looking under the Farms sub-section of the Places menu. Information will shortly be added about later tenants.
Supplementary details about the farmhouse have been added to the Elm Tree / George’s Farm page, also found under the Farms sub-section of the Places menu.
New information about a large childrens’ summer treat held in 1908 has been added to the Methodist Chapel Sunday School page. This can also be found in the Places / Places of Worship menu under the Chapel Sunday School button.
New in June 2025
Details of a 1950’s Pantomine: Jack and the Beanstalk have been added to The Village Hall page, under the Places menu. It includes a listing of the principal players and extracts from local newspaper reviews. The story of Wreningham Village Hall has also been brought up to date at the bottom of the same page.
Additional details about the 2025 repairs to the Wymondham Road railway bridge can be found at the bottom of The Railway page, under Places.
New in May 2025
The Railway page, under Places, has multiple additions – including further illustrations – as well as being partly rewritten. The additions include an up-to-date description of work currently being carried out to repair one of the two bridges surviving in Wreningham.
New in April 2025
A new section has been added to the Fir Grove page – under Places / Farms, describing the arrival in Wreningham of Ian Foster and his wife – see the section marked Cheriton Cottage. In 1976/7 Ian constructed the wooden village sign.
More information describing the Village Sign, has been added to the Reading Room page, under Places. Much village history was referenced within the sign’s original design – going back to the time of the Norman Conquest – and these details are included on this page.
More information has been added to the Post Offices page under Stories, near the bottom of the page. The new details describe a typical working day for Mabel Ireland in 1981.
An extraordinary photograph showing a collection of old Wreningham-owned prams has been added to the end of the Local Transport page under Stories.
Information has been added to the Carriers page speculating on the identity of the two people driving the carts in the old photograph at the top of that page. The details are contained in the grey features box just below the top photograph.
New in March 2025
A brand new page has been added: Burton family under the People menu. It gives the history of Wreningham’s Burton family members from the beginning of the 1700s until the end of the Wreningham line in the second half of the 1800s. In the usual way, there are many links within the text which lead to other pages – both in this website and also to third-party sources.
Information has been added to the Ernest Scott Fardell page. It shows the printed cover of the new Parish Magazine, commissioned by Fardell directly after his arrival in Wreningham. The new information is in a grey features box near the bottom of the page.
New in February 2025
A brand new page has been added: Added Colour! under the Stories menu. It illustrates a range of old black and white village photographs from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, which have been colourised using a new and innovative technique.
Another brand new page: Chapel Sunday School has been added under the Places / Places of Worship menu. It describes the contents of two Sunday School attendance record (roll) books which were kindly made available to us.
There is an addition to the Methodist Chapel page providing details of Nigel Barber being recognised as a local preacher in 1965 – in a grey features box near the bottom of the page.
Information has been received about the construction of The Homestead on Church Road in the early 1900s. This has been incorporated into the Bothway Family page under the People menu button. Scroll down to the Paragraph between the two grey features boxes.
New in January 2025
A brand new page has been added: Elm Tree / George’s Farm under the Places / Farms menu. It tells the story of this farm, centred on Hethel Road, together with some of the people who farmed it, from the early 1800s until the present day.
Recreated map data showing the evolution of Peartree Farm’s boundaries between the 1700s and c1838 have been added near the top of the Peartree Farm page under the Places / Farms menu buttons.
New in December 2024
A brand new Menu button has been added called Gallery. This button can be found directly adjacent to the Home page button at the top of each page. It provides a dedicated page containing a small selection of the many images used across the site. Clicking on any image will take you directly to the page containing the related information. The intention is to provide the visitor with a new, dynamic and unexpected way to engage with the site, to discover information they may otherwise have missed. More images will be added, and others will be removed or rearranged over time to keep the experience fresh.
A second brand new Menu button has been added called Blog. This button is directly adjacent to the Home page and Gallery menu buttons at the top of each page. It provides summaries of all / recent Wreningham Heritage Group meetings (starting in February 2024) and additions will be made following each future meeting. The new page also gives guidance on how to get the best from this website.
New in November 2024
A brand new page Long’s Wood has been added under the Places menu. Extensively illustrated, it is based on Rachael Long’s recent talk at a Wreningham Heritage Group meeting.
New links have been added to the bottom of the Toprow Auction page under the Events menu.
New in October 2024
Our World War 1 Records page, under People / Parish Records, has been extended and includes a link to a new set of pages: “Wreningham WW1 – those who served“. The link can be found at the bottom of this page.
New in September 2024
More information about the Christmas & New Year Card design, commissioned by the Fardells, has been added to the Ernest Scott Fardell page under the People menu. It’s near the bottom of the page. Information has been added to the same page about an ancient artefact he sold to the British Museum.
New in August 2024
A brand new page Court Books has been added under a new sub-header The Manor. In turn, this is positioned under the Places menu. A Simple History (of the Barons Berners) has been moved from under Stories to join Court Books under The Manor sub-header.
A photograph of Robert Bell has just been added to the Thrown out! page described below.
A brand new page Thrown out! has been added under Stories telling how, in 1911, three sets of tenants were told to quit their properties by one landlord. It includes a series of links between people, places and events already covered in these pages – but in a totally unexpected way!
New in July 2024
Newly discovered photographs of Elizabeth Long (1851-1933) have been added to the Church Farm and Long Family pages under Places and People menus, respectively.
The Home Guard page has been greatly extended with further images and text – under the Stories menu.
A series of extra details have been added to the Bird in Hand page under the Places menu.
Some website formatting changes:
Page titles have all been given a bigger, bolder look which improves their appearance on each page.
In addition, we know from website analytics that half of our visitors interact with this site using mobile phones. To optimise their experience – i.e. making it easier to read, the size of paragraph text displayed on mobiles has been boosted.
New in June 2024
A brand new page has been added under the Stories menu called Steam Threshing. It includes information from several sources, including extracts from a journal written by John Bullimore between 1879 and 1887. Steam threshing also features on the 1861 Diary page – also under the Stories menu.
New in May 2024
A brand new page has been added under the Stories menu called the 1805 Tenancy Agreement. This dedicated page describes the main aspects of a farm rental agreement (the original document remains in the village, today) between Suffolk landlord Charles Harrison and Wreningham farmer William Burton.
New in April 2024
The sub-menu header “Wreningham Church” has been renamed “Places of Worship” (under the Places menu) and the “Methodist Chapel” page has been moved to this location. The first 3 paragraphs of the Methodist Chapel page have also been extended to include additional information about its history.
A brand new page has also been added under the Places of Worship sub-menu called Village Nonconformists. This tells the story of a previously not-so-well-known place of worship operating in the farmhouse at Hill House Farm during the 1800s. The new page provides information about the origins of nonconformism and information about the lives of a group of 19th-century village residents who followed it.
New in March 2024
There are 4 new “Village Voices” recordings. The first gives advice on what you need to know, should you ever wish to hire a reindeer! Find it near the bottom of the Bothway family page, under the People menu button. There are then three more – covering various aspects of life at Church Farm between about 1950 and the early 1990s. Topics include the initial use of Heavy Horses, Eggs and Poultry, Pigs, Cattle and early harvesting methods. Go to the Church Farm page under the Places menu button and it’s near the top.
A brand new page: “About us” has been added to provide many more details … about us!!
A new page has been added to describe the Carrier services for moving goods/parcels to & from Norwich in this area from the late 1700s and onwards. The page is under the People menu – in the sub-menu for Traders.
Information has been added about the travelling knife and scissor man – on a visit to Toprow in the 1950s. A photograph and details have been included under Shops and Buses near the bottom of the page.
New in February 2024
A map showing what we believe to be the extent of Wreningham’s Old Commons has been added to the top of The Old Commons page.
A further map has been added to the Maps – early 1800s page to show the c1839 tithe map but, in this case, colour-coded by identified land-owners.
Spratts Shop and bus business was nearly sold in 1961. The information has been added to the Shops and Buses page – and the complete page has been rearranged.
A new page has been added: Maps – early 1800s under the Places menu button. It provides an Ordnance Survey map of the village from 1818 and a modernised Tithe map from c1839. The latter includes a link to a transcription of the Tithe Table – listing all the landowners and their tenants from that time.
New in January 2024
A transcription of the (very long!) Wreningham ‘Inclosure’ Act from 1777 is provided from a link part-way down the The Old Commons page, under the “Places” menu button. It describes who was allocated which Common lands, and where each piece of land was located.
A transcription of the (nine-page) July 1805 farm lease agreement between Charles Harrison (land owner) and Wreningham farm tenant William Burton, has been added as a link near the top of the Burton / Poplar Farm page. The text provides a fascinating insight into the typical obligations and responsibilities of tenant farmers at this time.
A new page, Wreningham Raceway – under the “Events” menu button – tells the story of Wreningham’s Trotting Track where horses and their jockeys regularly raced around a grass track lined with white railings at Poplars Farm.
A story about a Fish & Chip van which caught fire in Penny’s Green in the 1970s has been added to the bottom of the Shops and Buses page.
Archived images from the Wymondham Town Archive have been added. These include an Auction Map of Fir Grove from 1912 and an extract from an Auction Document from The Mill dated 1887 – which can each be found on those respective pages.
A NEW FEATURE has been enabled on the website, which permits most images to be enlarged on the screen. Simply click on the image (or tap when using a touch-sensitive screen) and the selected image will display with increased dimensions and on a white background. To return to the full page, click (or tap) for a second time. Note: this feature has mixed success on small-screen devices such as mobile phones, where rotating the phone can also help.
New in December 2023
A Wreningham School group photograph from about 1984 has been added to the Wreningham School page. This photograph was published in a set of laser discs by the BBC, in 1986, as part of their Domesday 900th anniversary project.
A high-quality Aerial Reconnaissance photograph from 1944 taken by the US Army Air Force has been added to The Airfield page – courtesy of Historic England. Scroll down to the middle of the page. It is possible to zoom into / roam around the photograph. A link is also included to many similar images from the same period. The Airfield page has been rearranged and provides additional information about the aircraft.
A translated extract from the Will (proved in 1377) of the “Little Wreningham” Church Rector, Henry Fithel has been added in a grey features box on the Wreningham Church page.
A postcard image of Toprow has been added near the top of the Toprow 1918 Auction page. This photograph would have been taken at about the same period as the auction.
A new photograph of the Methodist Chapel has been added. This is believed to be from about the time of its opening. See here – near the bottom of the page.
A higher quality photograph of the Windmill has come to light, which shows much greater detail of the mill’s wooden structure. This photograph has replaced the original at the top of the Windmill page. Further down the same page an impressive photograph of a single F C Aldridge lorry has been added.
A new features box has been added near the bottom of the Wreningham School page describing the July 1973 retirement of teacher Irene Gray.
A photograph from a coach trip to Felixstowe (probably in 1955) has been added to the Shops and Buses page (under People / Traders) – part way down in a grey features box,
The Post Offices page has been rearranged and now includes a higher quality postcard image of the Post Office in Ashwellthorpe Road, a photograph of the original Wreningham Post Office and details about the 1965 auction of the cottage containing the Toprow Post Office.