Stalham

Museum launches and the River Ant

At Poor's Staithe, the Museum of the Broads offers trips on two launches: Falcon, a Victorian steam launch, and Marsh Harrier, an Edwardian-style electric launch. Both still take passengers out onto the river, which is more or less the point of Stalham. The museum spreads across four display buildings with a picnic area and its own river frontage, and its collection runs to Broads boats, tools, photographs and the sort of 1950s and 1960s holiday films that show people doing here exactly what visitors still come to do.

The town sits on the River Ant, a little inland, but the staithes and boatyards begin about where the High Street runs out. Three major boatyards take up around twenty acres, and Stalham works as one of the main cruiser-hire bases at the northern end of the Broads. You are roughly fifteen miles north-east of Norwich, about halfway between Great Yarmouth and Cromer, with the North Sea coast some three miles off. The A149 skirts the town. The nearest railway station is North Walsham, about eight and a half miles away; the Konectbus 10 runs hourly to Norwich, and Sanders buses reach the coast and North Walsham.

Pubs and provisions on the High Street

A May 2026 review of The Swan Inn, at number 90, recorded whitebait, a Mediterranean vegetable tart, a chicken panang curry and a local-wagyu burger with apple-and-beer chutney. Its garden has wooden pods with roll-down covers and heaters, which is a sensible arrangement for Norfolk. One recent visitor called it a "genuinely brilliant local pub that also welcomes visitors warmly." The Grebe Hotel at 123 leans towards sport and live music. The Harnser, on the Yarmouth Road side of The Green and once the Carpenters Arms, keeps a lunch list of ham, egg and chips, sausage and mash, pie of the day and Korean-style chicken thighs with spicy fries; the roast dinner is the thing people recommend.

For the kitchen at your rental, Cawdrons at 103 High Street is a family butcher that grew out of a small central-Stalham shop and now does free-range pork, hog roasts and outside catering. Café Charlotte handles cakes and lunches. Broadland Fish & Chips adds southern-fried chicken and kebabs to the usual.

St Mary’s unfinished tower and carved font

The Church of St Mary the Virgin has a fourteenth-century nave and a Perpendicular west tower that was still being built when the Dissolution stopped the work and left it squat and two-storeyed. Inside there are four cusped circular clerestory windows, an 1801 sundial on the wall, and a late-fifteenth-century octagonal font carved with the Baptism of Christ, the Trinity, apostles, prophets and saints. In the chancel, Katherine Catfield's 1718 tomb carries high-relief cherubs.

Walks from Stalham Staithe

Walking is easy to organise. A two-mile circular starts from Stalham Staithe, and Weavers' Way passes through the town along the old railway line, which reached Stalham in 1876; the North Walsham section runs seven and a half miles and pairs neatly with a bus back. Hickling Broad, four kilometres south, has hides, a visitor centre and swallowtail butterflies over its reedbeds.

The 1833 fire engine house

Beside the church stands the fire engine house of 1833, with a small brick lock-up added on. The town's early volunteer firefighters were paid in beer tokens.