With being brought-up in south-west Norfolk, in and around the village of Boughton seven miles east of Downham Market (see above map) and with often cycling around that area I suppose I became faintly ‘landscape aware’ at an early age. The above map taken from The Norfolk Landscape (s.p.b.), p. 29 shows that the immediate locality was at the southern end of the Western Escarpment (chalk), on the dip slope but that relatively nearby were two different drift geological areas/ landscapes – the Peat Fen of south-west Norfolk and the Brecklands, a large area that extends across the county boundary into Suffolk.
Back then the Breckland was characterised to me by a vast extent of coniferous forests planted earlier in the 20th century by the Forestry Commission to reduce the country’s dependence on imported softwood. The soils were/are very sandy, mostly post-glacial wind-blown sands but with some intensive farming, particularly of specialist crops such as carrots and chicory (made popular as a coffee substitute during the Second World War). It was, I was later to discover, an area of relatively dense population in pre-historic times, the light soils facilitating woodland clearance and enabling Neolithic farming. Also an area of large scale flint production from veins in the chalk bedrock, made famous as Grimes Graves in later centuries.
To the south the neighbouring parishes of Stoke Ferry, Wereham and West Dereham spanned the south end of the chalk Escarpment and the Peat Fen outlier of the Fens. Here then were the characteristic ‘black soils’ and level landscape, crossed by long straight narrow roads that bent and buckled, a bleak but productive region. At the Fens eastern end the parish of Methwold spanned the peat land and Breckland, its church’s needle spire being a prominent landmark.
The River Wissey drained the Peat Land and southern Escarpment, this a tributary of the River Great Ouse which flowed into the Wash north of Kings Lynn. The northern edge of the parish of Boughton was defined by a tributary stream of the R. Wissey, fed by springs in the Escarpment its steep banks a result of erosion through the overlying boulder clay.