BAWDESWELL HEATH

"The Reeve he came, as I heard tell, from Norfolk, a place called Balderswell. He had a 
lovely dwelling on a Heath, shaddowed by green trees above the sward..."

So wrote Geoffrey Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales in 1387.

Today Bawdeswell Heath is but a remnant of its former size.  To the right of the map you can see in the area labelled "Gravel",  all that remains. 

Up to two hundred years ago the village lay in the middle of a large Common stretching from Billingford in the West and half-way to Reepham in the East.
The old Roman Road, known as Common Lane, ran right down the middle of it.

In the year 1808 a private Act of Parliament caused the enclosure of the Common Land around Bawdeswell, resulting in the gathering up of arable land into very few hands.
This had been happening everywhere for some years as farming methods were changing from srtip-farming to field farming - due to the modern methods being introduced by people like Thomas Coke of Holkham and Townsend of Rainham, and the urgent need to grow more food  for the rising population.

Inevitably the poor suffered from the loss of their grazing rights and land, which they were compensated for - enough for a month-long binge at the Bell Inn, cynics  say!

In 1808 provision was made to set aside two acres for gravel and 35 acres of woodland 'for the poor' - this is the Bawdeswell Heath we know. 

A Committee of Trustees looks after it to this day.          RT