Barton Bendish is a civil parish and small village in the English county of Norfolk south of King's Lynn and northeast of London.Ordnance Survey (1999). OS Explorer Map 236 – King's Lynn, Downham Market & Swaffham. . It has two medieval parish churches, and once had three. The parish includes the hamlet of Eastmoor, and covers .
The village has been settled since Neolithic times and was expanded during the Saxon period. It had a population of 210 in the 2010 census and contains eight listed buildings, with the two medieval parishes churches being Grade I.
Geography
The civil parish has an area of , and in the 2011 census had a population of 210 in 96 households. Its territory comprises slightly rolling countryside and is defined by two small valleys, the brooks of which form the boundaries of the southern part of the parish. The western one is called the Lode Dyke, and the eastern one the Stringside Stream. They unite at the parish's southernmost tip, to flow into the River Wissey.Patts and Bickerton: River Wissey Investigations; Linking Hydrology and Ecology 1994 p. 30
The underlying geology is chalk, but the two boundary valleys have brickearth from the Anglian glaciation. This has affected land use. The northern part of the parish is entirely dominated by arable farming with no woodland, except for the northernmost portion which takes in part of RAF Marham airfield. However, the brickearth areas to the south has some woodland -the named woods are Birch Wood and Sluice Wood in the Stringside valley, and The Channels in the Lode Dyke valley. The latter is adjacent to Barton Bendish Fen, a former fenland common which has been drained but which is only under arable in its northern part.
The village is east of Downham Market, west of Norwich and south of the town of Kings Lynn. It is near the north-west border of the parish. In the south-east part of the latter is the separate scattered hamlet of Eastmoor, the only one in the parish territory.
The A1122 Swaffham to Downham Market road passes through the north tier of the parish, but the village is only accessible via country lanes. Fincham Road runs south from the A1122 east of Fincham, and turns north-east at a junction near the village as the Beachamwell Road. This re-joins the A1122 to access Swaffham, and also runs to Beachamwell to the east. The Boughton Long Road runs from the junction to Boughton and hence to Stoke Ferry and the A134 to Thetford. A narrow lane runs from Beachamwell Road to Oxborough to the south-east via Eastmoor. There is no direct route from the village to Marham to the north.
Village layout
Barton Bendish is a settlement of scattered households where there are two churchesThe King’s England, Norfolk, by Arthur Mee, Page 24 which are little more than a field apart. What is more remarkable is that up until 1787 the parish had three churches. All Saints' Church was pulled down in that year, with much of the material used to repair local roads and for repairing St Mary's Church. The other remaining church is called St Andrew’s.
The settlement counts as a shrunken medieval village as it was much bigger in the Middle Ages, and still has three concentrations of settlement despite its small size.Loveluck, C: Northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c. AD 600–1150, 2013 p. 285
Barton Bendish St Andrew
The plan of the main built-up area, Barton Bendish St Andrew, is shaped like a mirrored F. Most buildings are along Church Road, a dead-end street running north-east from Fincham Road near its junction with Beachamwell Road. Buildings also line the former on its east side to the latter, and a street called Buttlands Lane connects Church Road and Beachamwell Road to the east.
The former school the stands on the south corner of the Church Road junction.Ordnance Survey, 6-inch Norfolk sheet LVIII SW, 1884 On the left along Church Road before the Buttlands Lane junction is St Andrew's Church, which is a Grade I Listed building. Opposite the Buttlands Lane junction is the former Post Office, Grade II listed which is now a pair of semi-detached cottages beneath a single thatched roof and dated 1713. The walls are a chaotic mix of flint, ashlar rubble and red and yellow bricks. Down Buttlands Lane is a K6 phone box, Grade II listed. The single-storey building on the east side of the junction, with decorative brickwork, used to be the village shop in the 20th century. It's part of a larger pile called Hyde House which incorporates an older thatched building, and is the headquarters of Albanwise Ltd the owner of the Barton Bendish Estate.
Barton Bendish's War Memorial is located in the churchyard and is a Grade II listed Celtic cross in grey granite that was restored in 1977.
Further along Church Road is a former public house The Berney (formerly Berney Arms, before that Spread Eagle) and named for the former owners of Barton Hall, the Berney family. The pub closed in 2020. Opposite the pub is a village hall, and further down on the left is the old St Andrew's Rectory with a gable wall in a flint, ashlar rubble and red brick mix. This dates from 1725.
At the end of Church Road is a short private drive leading to Avenue House, a mid-18th century farmhouse which is Grade II listed. This is accompanied by an unusual domed ice-house with a vaulted entrance corridor, resembling an ancient Greek tholos tomb.
The village contains a notable manor house, Barton Hall, which is Grade II listed and is the last survivor of five medieval village manors (there were four more in Eastmoor). There is a medieval moat to the east of the Hall, but it is uncertain as to whether this is the direct ancestor of the present building. Whatever, its site was first definitely developed in the 17th century, but the original house was almost entirely torn down and rebuilt in 1856, and the present structure is architecturally Victorian. The interior of the house was then extensively redone throughout the early and mid 20th century, meaning it retains little of its original artistic integrity, even from the Victorian period. Nevertheless, the house remains one of the more notable structures in the village, and the gardens have been developed by the current owner, Count Luca Padulli di Vighignolo, and are periodically opened to the public. Guided tours of the garden are occasionally offered on request. The dog kennels here are separately listed, Grade II. The five of them comprise a single-storey brick edifice with a black glazed pantile roof and an interesting set of cages in wrought iron. It was erected in 1853.
Barton Bendish All Saints The churchyard of All Saints' Church continued in use for burials into the early 19th century after the church was demolished in 1789.Rogerson et al: Three Norman Churches in Norfolk 1987 p. 2 The site of the church is on Church Road just before St Andrew's Church, and is now a house.
Barton Bendish St Mary The other major focus of the village is Barton Bendish St Mary, which is to the west. It is aligned north to south, with St Mary's Church at the north with a triangular village green and a scatter of buildings along the Boughton Long Road.
East Barton Bendish The village used to extend beyond its present eastern limits.Belcher, J: The Foldcourse and East Anglian Agriculture and Landscape 1100–1900, 2020, p. 39 To the north-east is a deserted moated site, a scheduled monument and the location of the medieval manor of East Hall. Earthworks belonging to its deserted medieval settlement are at Abbey Farm, and are also scheduled.
The only remnant of this former built-up area is a dead-end lane leading to Abbey Farm.Whyte, N: Inhabiting the Landscape 2009 p. 51 and amounting to the village's third settlement focus. This settlement used to be called Cripple’s End. It used to have a Wesleyan Methodist chapel, and the village's first post office was just to the south of this in a low single-storey building. Both survive as private houses.Ordnance Survey, 25-inch Norfolk sheet LVIII.14, 1885
History Archaeological surveying of the parish by fieldwalking has been thorough, and has revealed that the territory has been well settled from Neolithic times. A Bronze Age hoard, now in the Ashmolean Museum, of eight bronze items was allegedly found in the parish at the turn of the 20th century, but the provenance is uncertain. Burials of this period have been found, and three ring ditches interpreted as ploughed-out round barrows have been identified on aerial photographs.
The population of the parish territory increased during the Iron Age, with at least three settlement sites which have been identified by pottery scatters. These sites also showed continuity into the later Roman period.
The A1122 to the east of Fincham follows the course of a Roman road that connected the Fen Causeway with Venta Icenorum (the present Caistor St Edmund). The outline of a Roman marching camp was identified on an aerial photograph, just north of The Channels wood and near one of the putative round barrows already mentioned.
Saxon and medieval development Fieldwalking and archaeological excavations in the village have shown that the village was a dispersed settlement throughout the entire Anglo-Saxon period. Early Saxon settlements have been identified at Hill Farm and north-east of St Mary's Glebe Farm. Middle Saxon settlement was concentrated around the site of St Mary's Church, and in the Late Saxon period the west end of the present main village was a focus with settlement spreading eastwards.
The village's name derives from the Old English Bertuna binnan dic and means 'Barley farm within the ditch'.Mills, D: A Dictionary of English Place Names 2011 p. 45 The name implies that the direction of Saxon settlement came from the west. The ditch concerned is the Devil's Dyke, a linear bank and ditch running in an almost straight line from Narborough to near Oxborough parallel to the present eastern boundary of the parish (it used to be the actual boundary), and this is postulated as an early Saxon boundary marker. The dating is not conclusive, however.
The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, where the name is given as Bertuna in the Hundred of Clackclose.The Domesday Book, Englands Heritage, Then and Now, Editor: Thomas Hinde, Norfolk page 186 There were five manors. The main tenant of the village was William who held from Hermer de Ferrers, and other tenants were Reynald Fitzlvo and Ralph Baynard. Two churches are mentioned -it is uncertain as to which church is missing, or why. The consensus is that all three were founded in late Saxon times.
In the century after the Norman Conquest, the parish still had several small manors. West Dereham Abbey, a monastery of Premonstratensians founded in 1088, had interests at Eastmoor and maintained a chapel there. The locations of the manors of East Hall (the moated site north-east of Avenue Farm), Herne Hall (north end of Eastmoor hamlet, east of lane) and Capel Hall (in the main village at The Paddocks, excavated 1988) are known.
From the time of Richard I (1157–99) to Henry VIII (1491–1547) the Lovells were principal lords of the manor here, with their seat at the present Barton Hall. Thomas Lovell, the third son of Sir Ralf Lovell was a loyal supporter of Henry VII. He fought at the Battle of Bosworth 1485 and was knighted by Henry VII for his prowess. In 1485 he was created President of the Council and Chancellor of the Exchequer for life. His elder brother Sir Gregory was made banneret at Stoke. In the later Middle Ages, the Lowell family began the consolidation of land ownership in the parish by acquiring other manors.
16th and 17th centuries