STRANGE VILLAGE

The strangest thing about a cutting I turned up recently in a largely forgotten file was not its headline about The Strangest Village, but the fact that someone other than me had snipped off the name of the local newspaper from which it was taken. Only the year of publication remained, 1932, which goes some way to explaining why I cannot remember where I got it from.
Nevertheless, the Special Correspondent who wrote the article had plainly done his homework, visiting this evidently weird place and in the process discovering that:
The village in question had no baker, butcher, fishmonger, draper, tailor, bootmaker or resident policeman. It was close to the coast, yet residents could not see the sea. No-one in the village had the surname Smith, Brown, Jones or Robinson. The 500 or so inhabitants were not able to call upon a loal doctor, chemist or dentist. It had a railway, but no station, and a church but no chapel. And one of the local farms was hitherto in the possession of a family named Crowe, their predecessors being the Rookes, and their neighbours the Owles and the Starlings.
I certainly liked the Norfolkesque story the writer told of a meeting a yokel who claimed they didn't burn much oil in the village. Why not, the visitor asked? Replied the yokel: 'In the summer I potter in the garden until its time for bed, and in the winter go to bed early.' That would drive me to drink, retorted the visitor. ,Well,' said the old man, 'you'd have to go to Trimingham or Trunch for that.'
As for the village, it was (and still is) called Gimingham, and is between Cromer and Mundesley in east Norfolk. As for the description, it seems to me to fit pretty much any present-day Norfolk village.

ENERGY SEARCH

Fracking is the current energy buzzword. It is also a subject which, if it ever visits Norfolk, will provoke a very heated debate. Old-timers, however, will muse that it - or something like it - has happened before.
In 1914 oil-bearing shales in the county were seen as a possible source of paraffin, but a high sulphur content proved a fatal stumbling block. Then six years' later oilmen thought they had struck liquid gold when oily deposits were seen floating down the River Puny (yes, that is correct) at Setch, near King's Lynn. Workers arrived, a shanty town sprang up, and the locality was extensively drilled. But once again, the product was either below par or too expensive to process.
Don't start celebrating yet, however, because in 1986 coal exploration licences were issued for the northen half of Norwich and as far out as Coltishall, Aylsham, Hindolveston and Honingham, and including land in Happisburgh, Acle and around Great Yarmouth. Searches had already covered other blocks of land at Syderstone, East Ruston, Potter Heigham, Saxthorpe and Irstead.
Energy exploration could still be coming to a town or village near you.