Inside the Lord Nelson, two high-backed settles are fixed to the ceiling with a curved iron rod. One is original, one a replica installed in 2020, and one of them is said to be where the Admiral himself sat. The pub had no conventional bar for most of its life; beer came from a hatch in the tap room.
It was called The Plough when it was built, around 1637. In 1798 they renamed it after the Battle of the Nile, which made it the first pub in the country named for Nelson. He knew it before that. In 1793 he held a farewell dinner here for the men of the village before leaving to command HMS Agamemnon.
The menu changes with the seasons but tends toward things like crab risotto with chive cream sauce, a pork cassoulet, teriyaki Chinese pork steaks, and a Thai pork burger; the ciabattas are all £8.50, from breaded chicken to prawn with Marie Rose. Nelson's Revenge and Wherry are the regular ales. Dogs are welcome and the garden is large.
Greene King closed the place in September 2016 and it sat shut for five years. The Holkham Estate bought it in 2019, spent about a million pounds, and reopened it in June 2021. Next door there's a free Royal Navy museum, the Nelson Map Room, which is a map of Norfolk laid into the floor with ships to find and voiceovers to listen to.
The village is small. The 2021 census counted 131 people, down from 144 a decade earlier. It sits about half a mile inland from Burnham Market, one of the seven Norfolk Burnhams, in gently rolling arable country with the little River Burn running through toward the coast two miles off.
All Saints' Church is on Back Lane, Grade I listed, with a 13th-century arcade and a 15th-century clerestory. The white marble font Nelson was baptised in is still there. When the church was restored in time for the Trafalgar centenary in 1905, the Admiralty sent timbers from HMS Victory, and the lectern, altar and rood screen were made from them. A battle ensign from HMS Indomitable, flown at Jutland, hangs inside. Nelson's father Edmund, rector here for forty-odd years, is buried by the chancel.
Nelson was born at the rectory in 1758, the sixth of eleven children. The house was demolished in 1803; a plaque on a garden wall marks where it stood, visible from the road.
The footpaths follow the Burn down to Burnham Overy Staithe, the old inland port, across flat farmland that gives way to salt marsh and pinewoods near the sea. The circular walks around the Burnhams link the village to Burnham Market and the coast. The Nelson Way, a 404-mile route to Portsmouth, starts here.
King's Lynn station is about 20 miles off, on the line to King's Cross via Ely and Cambridge; the Coastliner 36 bus runs seven days a week and stops in Burnham Market.
On the green there is a large statue of Nelson carved from maple. Edmund, the rector, once described his parish plainly: "All is hush at high noon as at midnight."
