To Wymondham is our next stage, a flat six miles.

In midst of this level tract of country, where villages, and houses even, are few and far between, the wayfarer’s eye lights upon a stone pillar on the grassy selvedge of the road, a dilapidated object that looks like a milestone. But as it occurs only three-quarters of a mile after passing the sixteenth stone from Thetford, it is clearly something else, and inspection is rewarded by the discovery of this inscription:—

“This Pillar " was erected by " the order of the sessions of the " Peace of Norfolk " as a gratefull " remembrance of " the Charity of " Sir Edwin Rich Knt " who freely gave " y^e sume of Two hundred " povnds towards y^e " repaire of y^e highway betweene Wymondham " and Attleborough " A.D. 1675.”

Who, then, was this Sir Edwin Rich, whose charity was so necessary to the upkeep of these six miles of road between Attleborough and Wymondham? He was a distinguished lawyer, a native of Thetford, born in 1594. His monument in the church of Mulbarton, three miles from Wymondham, rich in moral reflections, surmounted by a large hour-glass, and further adorned with eulogistic verse written by himself on himself, quaintly tells us the circumstances of his birth and breeding:—

Our Lyef is like an Hower Glasse, and our Riches are like Sand in it, which runs with us but the time of our Continuance here, and then must be turned up by another.

He died in 1675, at the advanced age of eighty-one, and not only left those £200 towards the repair of the road, but made the curious bequest to the poor of Thetford of the annual sum of £20, to be distributed for five hundred years, on every 24th of December, in bread or clothing. Why he should have limited his charity to a mere five centuries does not appear, nor does it seem to be clearly understood what is then to become of the property of Rose Hill Farm, Beccles, whence the income is derived. Perhaps he thought the end of the world will have come by that time.

It will be observed that Sir Edwin was a prudent as well as a pious man. Desiring some recognition of his excellent traits and achievements, he judged it best to write the epitaph himself: and a very curious mixture of humility and pride it is. There were sufficient reasons for his leaving a bequest for the maintenance of this road, which was in his time an open track, going unfenced the whole twenty-nine miles between Thetford and Norwich, and plunged in the fourteen miles between Larlingford and Wymondham into successive bogs and water-logged flats. If we consult a large map of Norfolk and scan this district well, it will be seen that on descending from the uplands of Thetford Heath to the Thet at Larlingford the road traverses a considerable district, veined like the leaf of a tree with the aimless wanderings of many streams, and dotted here and there with such meres, or marshy lakes, as those of Scoulton and Hingham. It is even now an oozy plain, but was then a veritable piece of fenland, where the bitterns boomed among the reeds, the corncrakes creaked, the great horned owls hooted, and the gulls screamed in unstudied orchestration. The last bittern—“bog-bumpers” the country-folks called them—long years ago was gathered into the natural history collections of rare birds, and the bass-viol bellowings of his voice are no longer heard after sundown. The great horned owls, too, are no more; but lesser owls still tu-whoo in the woods, and the screaming gulls of Scoulton yet startle the stranger as they rise, voiceful, in their many thousands from the mere.

In 1675, when Ogilby’s “Britannia,” that first, and most magnificent, survey of the roads, was published, this spot was pictured on his sketch-plan of this road as “Attleburgh Meer,” and was apparently something between a bog and a lake. It stretched across the road, and to a considerable distance on either side. This was in the very year of Sir Edwin Rich’s death, when his bequest became available, and we may suppose that this hindrance to travellers was abolished very shortly afterwards and the monument to his liberality erected here, on the very spot where that slough had once been.

From its old name of the “Portway,” it is obvious this road must have been in existence in very ancient times, but it is equally obvious it was early discarded for other routes, for Ogilby is the earliest map-maker to mark it, and Will Kemp, who seventy-five years earlier danced his nine days’ dance from London to Norwich, went the less direct road to Norwich from Thetford by way of Rockland, Hingham, and Barford Bridge, which he would not have done had the way through Attleborough and Wymondham been passable.

Kemp, who was a low comedian, and, according to his own showing, spent his life in “mad Igges and merry iestes,” wagered he would dance down all the way, and did so perform the distance in nine days jigging, with intervals for rest and entertainment in between: not a very difficult performance, even for that time, and even though it was winter when he did it. He tells us fully in his “Nine Days’ Wonder” how, accompanied by his tabourer, or drummer, he skipped and joked the miles away, and gives the route he took, over Bow Bridge to Romford, Ingatestone, Widford, Braintree, Sudbury, Long Melford, and Clare, to Bury St. Edmunds. It was on a Saturday, at the close of his sixth day’s dancing, that he entered Bury, and there, “by reason of the great snow that then fell,” he stayed until the following Friday morning, February 29th. The distance between Bury and Thetford is really twelve miles, and so Kemp does not take full credit for this day’s performance when he tells us that “Dauncing that tenne mile in three houres,” and leaving Bury shortly after seven in the morning, he was at Thetford soon after ten o’clock: “So light was my heeles that I counted the tenne mile no better than a leape.”

Master Kemp jigged to some profitable purpose, for as many people came to see him as are attracted by the modern pedestrians who wear out so much shoe-leather on the classic miles of the Brighton Road; nor were the county magnates above patronising this Merry Andrew. Thus he reports, “At my entrance into Thetford the people came in great numbers to see mee, for there were many there, being Size time. The noble gentleman, Sir Edwin Rich,^[1] gaue mee entertainment in such beautiful and liberal sort, during my continuance there, Satterday & Sunday, that I want fitte words to express the least part of his worthy vsage of my unworthines; and to conclude liberally as hee had begun and continued, at my departure on Munday his worship gaue mee fiue pound.”

On that Monday Kemp danced to Rockland and Hingham. At Rockland his host at the inn was a boon companion, but stood a little upon his dignity, for he would not appear until he had shifted from his working day’s suit; when, valiantly arrayed, he entered, hat in hand, with “Dear Master Kemp, you are even as welcome as—as—as—” and so stammering until he found a comparison—“as the Queen’s best greyhound.”

“After this dogged, yet well-meant salutation,” says Kemp, weakly punning, “the Carrowses were called in, and they drank long and deep.” So merry did this convivial interlude make him that, although he was an extravagantly fat man, he insisted upon dancing off with Kemp; but two fields sufficed him, and then, breathless, bade his visitor “go—go, in God’s name.” So they parted. From Thetford to Rockland, Kemp had found “a foul way,” and onwards to Hingham it was not only foul, but deep, and no one knew the road. There were twenties and forties, nay, sometimes a hundred people, in groups, come to see him pass, but of the way to Norwich they could tell him nothing. “One cried, ‘The fayrest way was thorow their Village,’ another, ‘This is the nearest and fayrest way, when you have passed but a myle and a half.’ Another sorte crie, ‘Turn on the left hand,’ some, ‘On the right hand’”; but with it all he did at last reach Hingham, and on the next day through Barford Bridge reached Norwich.

It was a roundabout way, and Kemp would have found more publicity had he gone through the towns of Attleborough and Wymondham. But the people of Thetford had probably warned him of the bad way through those places.

Sir Edwin Rich’s £200 probably did not suffice for anything beyond filling up that ambiguous stretch of watery mud called Attleborough Mere, and thus we find, twenty-one years later, an early Turnpike Act, the Act of 1696, 7th and 8th of William and Mary, passed for the repair of the highways between Wymondham and Attleborough. This road is thus claimed by Norfolk antiquaries as the first turnpike road to be constructed in the kingdom, but that is a slight error, for the Act was passed merely for repair, and was antedated by thirty-three years, in the first of Turnpike Acts, that of 1663, which provided for the repair and turnpiking of the road from London to Stilton—the “Old North” and the “Great North” roads of modern parlance. If, however, we somewhat limit that claim, and declare this to be the first turnpike road in Norfolk, we shall probably be correct