Two banks, one Broads gateway
Wroxham
A busy boating base shared by Wroxham and Hoveton, with river trips, family attractions and a remarkable Norman church doorway.
- Best for
- Boating, family attractions and church architecture
- Two places
- Wroxham on the south bank, Hoveton on the north
- Don’t miss
- St Mary’s richly carved Norman south doorway
The Fox verdict
More than a departure point for the Broads
Wroxham and Hoveton combine river activity and family days out with an older landscape of church, meadow and boating history.
The bridge-centred visitor hub is the place for a skippered cruise, a heritage train or an attraction-led family day. Cross to Wroxham proper and the atmosphere changes: Water’s Edge faces the Bure, while St Mary’s preserves an exceptional Norman doorway away from the commercial riverfront.
Where to go
Places in Wroxham
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesWroxham Bridge
A bridge with a historic core dated to 1619 and an average high-water headroom of 2.18 metres; it is both the paired settlement’s visual centre and a real navigation constraint.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 30 minutes
- Locality
- River Bure: Wroxham south bank and Hoveton north bank
- Access
- Water level, vessel dimensions and pilot instructions—not the average clearance alone—must determine boat passage.
Broads Tours
Skippered river cruises with commentary offer an easy first encounter with the Bure, while the day-boat fleet ranges from small electric boats to larger cruisers with onboard facilities.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 2 hours
- Locality
- Wroxham
- Access
- Self-drive boating calls for attention to buoyancy aids, weather, navigation rules and bridge clearance.
BeWILDerwood Norfolk
A woodland adventure park based on Tom Blofeld’s stories, with treehouses, slides, giant swings, zip wires, storytelling and crafts, designed especially for children aged 0–12.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 2 hours 45 minutes
- Locality
- Hoveton
Food & drink
2 placesWater’s Edge
A waterside restaurant and bar, relaunched from The Bridge in 2024, with river views, local produce, outdoor tables and a menu spanning small plates, fish and Sunday roasts.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Wroxham parish, on Norwich Road beside the Bure
- Access
- Dogs are welcome.
Hotel Wroxham Bar and Restaurant
A hotel bar and restaurant with a large riverside terrace, broad bridge-and-river views, and food and drinks available to non-residents, including cakes and cream teas.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Hoveton, on the north bank across Wroxham Bridge
Walks & outdoors
1 placeSalhouse Broad
A community-run broad with paths through meadow, reedbed and woodland; unlike many Broads, it was formed by gravel extraction rather than medieval peat cutting.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Nearby at Salhouse Broad
History & heritage
1 placeSt Mary the Virgin, Wroxham
A Grade I-listed flint-and-limestone church whose outstanding feature is a Norman south doorway with seven differently carved arch orders and human and monstrous figures.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Wroxham, apart from the commercial riverfront
- Access
- The carved doorway is on the church’s south exterior.
Things to do
3 placesBure Valley Railway
Narrow-gauge steam and diesel trains run between Wroxham and Aylsham beside a nine-mile traffic-free path, allowing a rail outing or a one-way walk-and-train combination.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 2 hours 30 minutes
- Locality
- Between Wroxham and Aylsham
Wroxham Miniature Worlds
An indoor model attraction that is a useful wet-weather option near the station and Roys.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 90 minutes
- Locality
- Hoveton, a short walk from Hoveton & Wroxham station and Roys
Wroxham Barns Adventure Farm
A farm attraction with pony grooming, animal feeding, pigs and donkeys, plus climbing and play equipment, mini tractors, a train, mini golf and indoor soft play.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: around 2 hours
- Locality
- Hoveton
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Three ways to explore Wroxham
Signature outings
A Norman doorway in seven carved orders
St Mary’s south doorway crowds seven differently patterned arch orders with human and monstrous figures, the church’s exceptional architectural showpiece.
See the Broads from a trip boat
Broads Tours offers skippered cruises with commentary as an easy first encounter with the river, alongside a fleet of self-drive day boats.
Steam between Wroxham and Aylsham
The Bure Valley Railway runs narrow-gauge steam and diesel trains beside a nine-mile traffic-free path through meadowland and villages.
The town story
Wroxham Town Guide
From Wroxham Bridge and Hoveton’s busy shops to St Mary’s church, discover the boating history and peat-cut landscape of the Broads.
Bridge, banks and waterside tables
The road bridge over the River Bure looks medieval and behaves like an obstacle. Its historic core dates to 1619, though a widened "umbrella" bridge now carries the traffic, and anyone bringing a boat through has to reckon with an average high-water headroom of 2.18 metres — seven feet two inches — under an eight-metre span, using the appointed pilot where required. Stand on the bridge and you are, in a strict sense, in two places at once. The south bank is Wroxham, in Broadland district; the north bank is Hoveton, in North Norfolk. Much of what trades under the name Wroxham on either side — the railway station, the department store, the largest pubs — actually sits in Hoveton, not Wroxham parish. It helps to know which side of the water you are on before you start looking for things.
If you want a drink or a meal actually in Wroxham, there is Water's Edge, on Norwich Road, looking over the river. It traded as The Bridge until a relaunch in 2024, which is worth knowing when you come across the earlier name on older maps. It leans towards restaurant rather than drink-led local, with river views, local produce, and a menu that runs to crab-and-saffron arancini, chilli-and-garlic tiger prawns on a garlic baguette, salt-and-pepper squid and battered haddock with chips. Wayne Parker runs the kitchen. Sunday lunch is a choice of roast meats with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, seasonal vegetables and gravy, or a roast baguette with dipping gravy for a lighter version of the same idea. There is a garden with waterside tables; there is no real ale. Dogs are welcome.
The bigger places are all across the water in Hoveton, and all sell themselves as Wroxham. Hotel Wroxham sits on the north bank with a wide terrace over the Bure and the bridge, eighteen bedrooms, and cakes and cream teas for anyone who wanders in without wanting a full meal. Its four handpumps have poured Adnams Broadside and Woodforde's Wherry, alongside guest beers from Humpty Dumpty, Lacons and Falcon. The hotel exists because Leslie Trafford bought Powell's boatyard in 1967 and decided a stretch of working riverside would do better with a hotel on it. A few doors along, the Kings Head is a Greene King inn beside the bridge, with eight bedrooms, a very large garden running down to the river and a children's play area called TotSpot. The food is mainstream pub cooking, including hand-battered cod with chunky chips and garden peas. Two handpumps carry changing cask ales from brewers including Woodforde's and Greene King, and dogs are welcome here too.
Closed pubs and Hoveton shopping
Two former drinking places explain why a simple pub count tends to flatter the area. The Castle, on Norwich Road, is now flats. The Boat Shed, a one-room pub in a boatyard that in its day poured more than fifty Norfolk ales, milds, stouts and porters, has been closed since November 2022.
The reason coaches come at all is Roys, which despite the name stands on the Hoveton side. Alfred and Arnold Roy opened a general store in Coltishall in 1895 and moved to Hoveton in 1899; deliveries labelled for Wroxham are how the name stuck to the family. The business grew into a department store, supermarket, food hall, garden centre, DIY shop and toy shop, and along the way ran tailoring, drapery, pharmacy, ironmongery, furniture, carpets and a motor garage. It bought Hunt's Bakery after the First World War, employed around fifty people there, and kept it going until 1975. The 1966 department store burned down in May 1995 and was rebuilt within the year. The food hall now has a large delicatessen, a salad-and-olive bar and a bakery working from scratch, with pies, pastries and sausages from the local supplier Tavern Tasty; the toy shop stocks LEGO alongside traditional toys.
Towards the edge of Hoveton, Wroxham Barns gathers a dozen independent studios around a courtyard. Sue Windley has worked semi-precious stones and sterling silver at Sue's Jewellery & Gems since 2006, and also sells rocks, minerals and fossils; Rebecca and Pippa make ceramics at Dotty Pottery; Wroxham Antiques opened in January 2026 under Glenn Lawrence and Paul Kinsey, selling antique furniture, vintage pieces and collectables. Dogs are welcome around the shopping village, while individual studios set their own rules. The adventure farm gives children a chance to groom ponies and feed goats, sheep and alpacas, with silo towers, jumping pillows, mini tractors and an eighteen-hole mini golf course alongside the animals. Back near the bridge, Bradley Hatch has sold jewellery, watches and clocks on Tunstead Road since 1994, and the founder likes to say he has served three generations of the same families. Wroxham Angling & Chunky's Pets has combined fishing tackle and pet supplies under one roof for more than forty years.
Food, play and paths
For food that does not involve sitting down, Ken's Traditional Fish & Chips has fed the riverside for about fifty years and keeps outdoor seating; Larry's Pizzeria makes pizzas, loaded fries and flatbreads to order, with gluten-free and vegan options; Fizz & Fromage is a coffee shop, bakery, wine bar and cheese shop that has not settled on being only one of those; and The ThaiWay, run by Gan, cooks Thai food and lets you bring your own drink.
Most people who stay here come for the water, and there is a range of ways onto it. Broads Tours runs skippered river cruises with commentary and hires out day boats, from small electric craft to cruisers with a galley, fridge and toilet; CanoeMan hires canoes, kayaks and paddleboards for a lower, quieter view of the reedbeds. The cruise business grew out of the 1936 merger of the Hannaford, Littleboy and Smith & Sons fleets, and its trip boat Belle of the Broads was built in a Wroxham boatshed in 2004. On land, BeWILDerwood, built around Tom Blofeld's children's books, has treehouses, slides, zip wires and giant swings, designed especially for children aged 0–12, with adults joining the play. When the weather turns, Wroxham Miniature Worlds is an indoor model attraction a short walk from the station.
Walkers are well served. Norfolk County Council's Bittern Line Walk 3 is a 5.8-mile circular that takes in both settlements and Coltishall Common and needs no car. The Bure Valley Path runs nine traffic-free miles alongside the narrow-gauge railway to Aylsham, through Coltishall, Brampton and Buxton; you can walk it one way and take the steam train back. Closer in, a well-used footpath between Keys Hill Wood and The Avenue opens onto open country, and there is Caen Meadow, the churchyard and the public staithe to wander at no particular length. Salhouse Broad is the quieter alternative — reedbed, meadow and wet alder woodland, and unusually a broad formed by gravel extraction rather than peat.
Church, Domesday and a man-made landscape
Away from all of this, on the higher southern ground, St Mary the Virgin stands well back from the boatyards. It is Grade I listed, mostly fifteenth-century flint and limestone, with twelfth-century work surviving in the nave, and a tower with flushwork, battlements and pinnacles. The thing to see is the Norman south doorway: three orders of engaged shafts carry seven arch orders, each carved with a different motif and crowded with human and monstrous figures, one of them read variously as a Sheela-na-gig or an acrobat. The fifteenth-century door still hangs, and its latch plate is probably thirteenth-century. Pevsner summed the doorway up as "barbaric and glorious." Inside are a rood-loft stair, sixteenth-century arcades, an east window of 1851, and a medieval alabaster panel of the Holy Family kept in the vestry, and monuments to Robert Blake Humfrey, John Wace and Daniel Collyer, who died in 1886, 1795 and 1774. In the churchyard the Trafford Mausoleum is an Early English Gothic design of about 1830 by Anthony Salvin, who exhibited it at the Royal Academy the same year.
The place was already substantial when the Domesday surveyors reached it: forty-seven households, in the largest fifth of recorded English settlements. The land was divided between King William, the abbey of St Benet of Holme and Ralph of Beaufour, whose holding alone ran to forty-seven acres of meadow, woodland reckoned to feed 132 pigs, a hundred sheep, cattle and two churches, and was valued at six pounds and twelve pence, up from three pounds twenty years earlier.
The Broads themselves look like nature and are mostly bookkeeping. The open water is largely flooded medieval peat digging, worked hard between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries until the pits filled and became navigable. Wroxham Broad, off the main river, is private sailing water: you can see it from a boat or during the summer regatta known as Wroxham Week, but you cannot casually tie up and wander across it. The Norfolk Broads Yacht Club, founded in 1937 after a meeting during Wroxham Regatta Week, drained land, laid a cinder track and built a jetty and starter box; membership approached six hundred within a year. Through the Second World War it raced three days a week, while old wherries and houseboats were moored across the broad to stop enemy seaplanes landing.
Boating pioneers, connections and Ransome
The holiday-afloat trade that made Wroxham's name begins with John Loynes, who set up a hire business in 1878 and by 1888 was letting yachts fitted out so customers could sleep and cook aboard, which turned a Broads holiday from something needing a hired crew into something a family could manage alone. Ernest Suffling opened the first dedicated holiday agency in 1899, advertising wherry yachts, cutters, houseboats and a steam launch; Harry Blake followed in 1906. The river also attracted George Formby, who owned a 1907 riverside house here. He renamed it Heronby after 1945; before that it had carried the name Beryldene, for his wife Beryl.
Trains reach Hoveton & Wroxham station on the Bittern Line between Norwich and Sheringham; it is unstaffed, with a ticket machine and step-free access to each platform. The Konectbus 5B links Norwich to Wroxham and Hoveton, and the A1151 is the main road in from Norwich; the bridge and its junctions are prone to clogging on a busy weekend.
Arthur Ransome brought the young sailors of his novel Coot Club into Wroxham by train in 1934 and let one of them reduce the whole place to what could be seen from the carriage window: "an old mill, and a bridge, and a lot of masts beyond it." The bridge and the masts, at least, still look much as he left them.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- Wroxham Bridge — broads-authority.gov.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- St Mary the Virgin, Wroxham — historicengland.org.uk statutory register or public authority record not machine-readable; publisher restricts automated access
- Water’s Edge — wroxhamwatersedge.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Hotel Wroxham Bar and Restaurant — hotelwroxham.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Broads Tours — broadstours.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Bure Valley Railway — burevalleyrailway.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Wroxham Miniature Worlds — visitnorthnorfolk.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Wroxham Barns Adventure Farm — wroxhambarns.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- BeWILDerwood Norfolk — bewilderwood.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Salhouse Broad — salhousebroad.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation