Chedgrave

Church stone and the River Chet

All Saints' Church has a thatched roof on its tower, a detail you register before anything else about Chedgrave. Inside, the east window holds 16th-century continental glass. Two Norman doorways survive, the southern one carved with rope moulding and intersecting zigzags, and there is a 15th-century octagonal font ringed with winged angels. A memorial slab records Robert Gilbert, who died in 1671. The church is open during daylight hours; visitors can make tea or coffee and use the loo.

From the churchyard the paths lead down toward the water. Chedgrave sits on the north bank of the tidal River Chet, the smallest of the seven Broads rivers and navigable for a little over five kilometres. Reed-fringed banks, boatyards and common land give way northward to arable fields that rise gently away from the marsh.

Pub tables and local provisions

The White Horse stands about 150 yards from Loddon Staithe, with a separate bar and restaurant and a large garden that has hosted East Coast Sinfonietta concerts and free fireworks displays. Yash and the team have run the pub since 2024. The kitchen prepares fresh food from a menu that changes daily. Four regular cask ales are Adnams Southwold Bitter and Ghost Ship, Timothy Taylor Landlord and Young's London Original. Dogs are welcome in the bar, with water and biscuits for them, but not in the restaurant; Charlie is one canine regular. Children have highchairs, baby-changing facilities, games and toys. The bowls club plays behind the pub, with more than fifty members and Mike Jones as chairman.

For a shop, Chet Stores on Hardley Road is a convenience shop that has run a Post Office Drop and Collect counter since 2024. For meat, cross into Loddon to A J Ward, a butcher the Ward family opened in 1881 and now run by Chris Turner, who took over from his father Eric in 2007. The counter carries East Anglian beef and lamb, Blythburgh free-range pork, Suffolk chicken and seasonal game, house-made sausages and hand-raised pork pies, alongside Baron Bigod and Binham Blue cheeses and bread from Stradbroke Bakery.

Along the Chet to Chedgrave Common

Wherryman's Way Walk 7 starts at the church door. It crosses the Pits play area and boatyards, then follows the Chet to Chedgrave Common. Its original four-and-a-half-mile and seven-and-a-quarter-mile circuits continued towards a bird hide and Hardley Flood, with walking estimates of two and three and a half hours. Two closed footbridges interrupt the Hardley Flood section; return from the common for a riverside walk. The paths are flat to gently graded, partly soft underfoot and have no stiles.

Weavers, wherries and wartime defences

The village grew in the 17th century as weavers left Norwich for the riverside, and again after Woods, Sadd, Moore and Co opened their wherry yards in 1884 and Cannell's seed merchants arrived in 1906. The Domesday surveyors valued the whole place at four pounds, twelve shillings and sevenpence, with two mills and a church. A wartime pillbox still guards the bridge over the Chet, the last major chokepoint on the road into Norwich.

Across the river and into evening

Loddon lies directly across the river, close enough that the two places share a playing field and tennis courts. Trains serve Cantley, under three miles from Chedgrave as the crow flies, while the X21 and X22 buses stop in the village on the Norwich-to-coast corridor. In the evening the moored boats knock quietly against the staithe, and the light goes out of the reeds last of all.