Haddiscoe

Romanesque Stone and Marsh Horizons

The south doorway of St Mary's is carved with scallop, roll, zigzag and chip patterns, exceptionally elaborate Romanesque work. Its iron doorwork is early, its round west tower probably late eleventh century, finished at the top with a fifteenth-century parapet of chequered flint flushwork. Inside there is a font ringed with angels, the four Evangelists and four lions, a fragment of a fourteenth-century St Christopher on the wall, a double piscina, and a 1671 monument to a rector named C. Ashby. The church is Grade I and in poor condition; its roof has given trouble for a long time. "Haddiscoe is a beautiful and interesting church," the rector wrote to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1907. "The roof is in a very bad state."

The village sits on higher ground at the edge of the marsh. Its northern area, Haddiscoe Island, is largely grazing marsh enclosed by the River Yare, River Waveney and the straight New Cut. Built for a Lowestoft-to-Norwich navigation, the Cut opened in 1833 and still forms part of the parish boundary.

Farm Produce and St Olaves

The Crown had stopped trading by 2019, and the Haddiscoe Tavern closed in 2020. Follow the B1136 toward Thorpe-next-Haddiscoe to Hillfield Nursery, a family-owned farm shop and pick-your-own site set across 40 acres. The shop sells fresh produce, locally supplied meat and dairy, including fruit from its own fields. Pick-your-own crops include strawberries, raspberries, plums and apples, with more than 250 apple varieties in the orchards.

At St Olaves, Priory Farm Restaurant offers a cooked and continental breakfast buffet and carvery lunch. Nearby St Olave’s Priory is a free English Heritage ruin with a remarkably complete fourteenth-century brick-vaulted undercroft that was used as a cottage until 1902.

The Nine-Mile Marsh Circuit

Walking is a major attraction here. A nine-mile circular from Haddiscoe station runs through woodland and grazing marsh under wide skies, with chances of seeing geese, ducks, swans and short-eared owls. Expect wet ground, livestock, stiles and gates; wear boots and bring lunch. The station is about a mile and a half from the village, unstaffed, on the Wherry Line between Norwich and Lowestoft; the Lowestoft-bound platform is reached by a barrow crossing over the tracks. By road the village sits at the A143 junction toward Beccles and Great Yarmouth, and BorderBus 580 stops here on its way between Bungay, Beccles and Gorleston.

Hadescou, Templars and Hidden Silver

Domesday lists the place as Hadescou, "Haddr's wood," seventy households spread among seven owners; the king's own share of it had climbed in value from ten pounds to twenty-four in the twenty years after the Conquest. Norfolk's only Knights Templar preceptory stood here from 1218 until 1312, though nobody now knows where. In 2003 a machine scattered 316 silver coins across a field, probably buried during the Civil War. The junction of road, rail and water drew bombers in the last war, and the craters are still in the ground.

The Painter Beneath Norfolk Skies

Sir John Arnesby Brown, who painted Norfolk skies for a living, lived in the village and lies in the churchyard, under the sort of wide grey light he spent his life trying to get onto canvas.