Ranworth

Waterside dining at The Maltsters

The Maltsters stands on The Hill, opposite Malthouse Broad, close enough to the water that you can eat a plate of lamb and watch holiday craft turn among the reeds. The kitchen runs from Devon crab crostini with chilli and cucumber and salt-and-chilli calamari with miso mayo to British rack of lamb with a summer-grain salad and feta, and South-West monkfish in a butter makhani sauce with fragrant rice. The garden is built for eating outside beside the broad, and the pub welcomes dogs.

Attached to the pub is the Malt & Vinegar counter, which cooks fish and chips with potatoes from a local farm, to take away or to eat at a table by the garden. If you would rather stay at your seat, the main menu also does beer-battered fish and chips with minted mushy peas, tartare and curry sauce, alongside a wild-mushroom bourguignon pie.

From staithe refreshments to St Helen’s

Down at Ranworth Staithe, The Granary is the village café. Beyond the staithe, the floating, thatched visitor centre on Ranworth Broad sells cold drinks, ice creams, snacks and sweet treats, as well as binoculars, books, cards and toys. A volunteer tea room occupies the old vicarage coach house, converted in 1993, with aromatic shrubs and flowers in its terrace garden.

St Helen's is the reason many people come. It is called the Cathedral of the Broads, a Grade I flint church whose nave was consecrated in 1453, and it keeps a remarkably well-preserved painted rood screen. The twelve Apostles stand in silk-brocade garments; look lower and you will find hunting dogs attacking a swan and a falcon seizing a rabbit.

The Antiphoner and the tower

The church also holds the Ranworth Antiphoner, a choir book of 285 sheepskin pages and nineteen painted initials, made around 1460. It was removed during Edward VI's reign and probably kept in a Catholic household until it resurfaced in the nineteenth century; John Cator bought it back for the church in 1911. It is the only English parish church that still keeps its own medieval antiphoner.

You can climb the tower if you are willing to earn it: ninety-six feet by way of eighty-nine uneven steps, two ladders and a trap door. From the top you can see St Benet's ruined gatehouse and, on a clear day, the Scroby Sands wind farm and perhaps Happisburgh lighthouse.

Broad, boardwalk and onward travel

The rest of Ranworth is water and reed. A boardwalk of about 750 metres runs from the village through wet carr woodland and reed fen to a viewing platform, past royal fern and orchids, with reed warblers and Cetti's warblers in the cover. A separate two-mile route on hard surfaces suits wheelchairs and can loop by the church. Only assistance dogs are allowed on the reserve, where swallowtail butterflies and Norfolk hawker dragonflies fly in summer and ospreys have bred nearby since 2025.

From the staithe, the Edwardian-style electric launch Liana makes fifty-five-minute trips across Malthouse Broad toward the River Bure. Salhouse station is approximately 3.4 miles off; the roads come in from the A47 through South Walsham, and the weekday 71A bus stops in Ranworth, excluding bank holidays.

Domesday and a walker’s view

Domesday found seven freemen here, one plough team and eight acres of meadow. As one walker put it, "I liked the circular walk past the church and back into the village for a cup of tea."