North Walsham

In Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Dancing Men - Holmes and Watson take the train from North Walsham to Riding Thorpe. (The fictional village of Riding Thorpe is probably a composite of Ridlington and Edingthorpe.) Here is Watson's description of the landscape they see from the train window:

'...yet there was much to interest us, for we were passing through as singular a countryside as any in England...on every hand enormous square-towered churches bristled up from the flat green landscape and told of the glory and prosperity of old East Anglia. At last the violet rim of the German ocean appeared over the green edge of the Norfolk coast...'

In the story Holmes cracks a code composed of dancing, pin men - an idea which Conan Doyle picked up while staying at the Hill House pub in Happisburgh in 1903.

George Borrow (1803-81)

In Lavengro (1851) George Borrow records a boxing match which takes place in North Walsham on 17th July 1820. Borrow's father was a pugilist.

'I think I now see them upon the bowling-green, the men of renown, amidst hundreds of people with no renown at all, who gaze upon them with timid wonder. Fame, after all, is a glorious thing, though it lasts only for a day. There's Cribb, the champion of England, and perhaps the best man in England; there he is, with his huge, massive figure, and face wonderfully like that of a lion. There is Belcher, the younger, not the mighty one, who is gone to his place, but the Teucer Belcher, the most scientific pugilist that ever entered a ring, only wanting strength to be, I won't say what. He appears to walk before me now, as he did that evening, with his white hat, white greatcoat, thin, genteel figure, springy step, and keen determined eye.'

The Paston School

The town is also home to The Paston (Grammar) School - which was founded in 1606 by Sir William Paston. Distinguished 'Old Pastonians' include Lord Nelson (and his brother), Stephen Fry, Allan Smethurst - The Singing Postman and Keith Skipper. Today, it is still an educational establishment - namely Paston College.

Paston School Gate

Sir William Paston and the Rev Michael Tilles (the school's first teacher) are both remembered in the school song:

Sir William Paston, he up and said
The Norfolk lads, I am sore afraid,
Have overmuch liberty
Come hither Rev Michael Tylles,
and into their heads we'll hammer
Godly learning to guide their wills
Arithmetic, writing and grammar.

Sir William Paston - a descendant of the letter-writing Pastons - has a magnificent tomb inside St. Nicholas' Church.

Sir William Paston, St. Nicholas Church

Stephen Fry

In his autobiography Moab Is My Washpot Stephen Fry describes how he hated being at Paston School and how he played truant. (He was sent here by his parents after being expelled from Uppingham.)

'Paston School lived up to all my prejudices, as things always will to the prejudiced. I did not take to the place one bit. I can remember barely anything about it, except that it was there that I started to smoke and there that I learned to play pinball: not within the school grounds, but within the town of North Walsham. For within a very short space of time I started to cut the school dead. I would get on the Cawston bus and dismount at either Aylsham or North Walsham and then head straight for a cafe and spend the day pinballing, listening to records by Slade, the Sweet, Wizzard, Suzi Quatro and smoking interminable Carlton Premiums, Number Sixes and Embassy Regals.'

Links:

Paston College

St. Nicholas' Church

More Paston Family Photographs

Read a Paston Letter

Paston Heritage Society

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