The most prominent hostelry at Thetford in coaching days was the “Bell,” and it still occupies that geographical pre-eminence, even though its commercial importance has decayed. The “Bell,” in fact, has never recovered from the blow dealt it in 1846, when the coaches ceased to run, and overhangs the narrow street, its great courtyard a world too large for the diminished traffic.

Lord Albemarle has a good deal to say of the “Bell” in his book of reminiscences. As a young man, travelling about 1810 between London and Elveden Hall, then in the possession of his family, he sometimes, in common with the sporting youngsters of that age, had the opportunity of driving the Mail for a stage or two. It was not always, indeed, an opportunity desired by the passenger who shared the box-seat with the coachman, for those who sought that glorious elevation, paying rather heavily for the privilege in the form of a tip to the yard-porter who reserved the seat and in a series of drinks to the successive Jehus who drove, were, much more often than is generally supposed, quite content to let the coachman do the driving. Comparatively few were ever to be found skilled in the difficult art of guiding four horses, and not every box-seat passenger was eager to “take the ribbons.” The coachmen, on any quiet stretch of road, were generally more keen to make the offer of “taking ’em for a bit” than their passengers to accept, for those professional occupants of the box were, in the well-known etiquette of coaching, always sure of half a sovereign as a tip from the sportsman who “took ’em,” and when, from sheer timidity, their offer was not accepted, they were indignant, especially if some one who would have “taken ’em,” and tipped accordingly, was elsewhere on the coach. Under such harrowing circumstances a coachman generally felt himself to be defrauded. “What are you ’ere for, then?” asked such an one of his box-seat passenger who had declined the honour and glory—and the danger; and when, after a halt for refreshment, the passengers resumed their places, this one who would not have distinction thrust upon him found his place taken by a dashing fellow who, a few miles down the road, landed them all into a ditch and most of them into hospital.

But to return to the youthful Keppel. “At the ‘Bell,’” he says, “I used to sit down to a most sumptuous breakfast of eggs, buttered toast, fried ham, etc., and all for love, and not money. I was a prime favourite with the landlady, Betty Radcliffe, so much so that for the many years that, as man and boy, I frequented her hostelry, she would never accept a sixpence from me. Betty wore a high cap, like that in which Mrs. Gamp is seen in Dickens’s novel, and a flaxen wig which she appeared to have outgrown, for it ill-concealed her grey hairs. Being the sole proprietress of post-horses into Norfolk, she assumed an independent demeanour and language, to which every one was compelled to submit.”

Betty Radcliffe is still a Thetford legend, and the tale is yet told how, when the Duke of York was paying for his post-horses, on one of his visits to a neighbouring squire, she jingled the coins in her hand with a humorous air of satisfaction, and said, “I may as well take a little of your money, for I have been paying your father’s taxes for many a long day.”

The church of St. Peter, adjoining the “Bell,” is locally known as the “Black Church,” from the more than usually dark colour of the flints of which its tower is built. It is not so old a tower as it looks, for it was built so lately as 1789, in imitation of the then almost forgotten Gothic style. The imitation, making due allowances, is not so bad. The footpath here is so narrow that a projecting buttress has been cut back to give room to pass.

The older one grows, and the nearer to occupancy of the churchyard, the less does one care to frequent such places; and besides, those of Thetford are of no great interest. But the historian’s duty compels a search for the farcical rhymed epitaph stated, in many collections, to be “at Thetford.” It is—but read it for yourself:—

Many a pilgrim in search of such mortuary extravagances has sought this; all of them sent on a fool’s errand by the original wag who invented it, and by the copyists of other people’s collections who have performed the easy task of copying without verifying. Thetfordians disclaim it altogether.

Every traveller come to Thetford has dwelt at length upon its mazy streets, and how infallibly those who are not Thetford born lose themselves in them and walk in circles. It is indeed difficult to find one’s way about Thetford. A far-off echo of the desperate old times, sounding across the void of a thousand years, was the old name of what is now called Guildhall Street. Until fifty years ago it was still, as it had always been, “Heathenman Street,” a title alluding to the march of the pagan Danes; and I would the name were restored, for romance is evident in that old name.

It is down Guildhall Street, behind the recently rebuilt Guildhall, that the old Friends’ Meeting House stands, in Cage Lane. That name marks where the old lock-up, or “cage,” once stood. The Meeting House, now threatened with destruction, was in use by the Quaker community of the town until about 1865. It was built in 1696, seven years after the time of persecution had been brought to a close by the Toleration Act of 1689. Those were humble days, and, newly freed from persecution and imprisonment for the mere act of meeting together, those early Dissenters were probably thankful enough even for this little cottage of one room. It is built of a mixture of flint, brick, and chalk, and heavily thatched. In common with almost every other building of any considerable age in Thetford, there may be found among those varied materials large pieces of freestone, the spoils of the ancient religious houses of the town. The Quakers are a hard-headed, rather than a sentimental, body; else they would not have abandoned this historic cottage, which has since 1865 been used successively by the Plymouth Brethren and the Salvation Army, and is now ruinous.

Past the Guildhall, a street leads directly to what was the gaol in those days, still regretted in the town, when the Assizes were held alternately at Thetford and Norwich. The gaol is now merely a police-station. Thetford lost its Assizes in 1833, its Parliamentary representation in 1868, and all its old fairs have decayed; so that the only excitement in the lives of the worthy burgesses is when an itinerant circus pitches its tents in the neighbourhood. The road-life between Thetford and Norwich had its own picturesqueness before 1833, for prisoners were conveyed in waggons to be tried here or at Norwich, and Attleborough March Fair, from being generally held while the Assizes were in progress, was popularly known as “Rogues’ Fair.” There were sometimes in those days “maiden” Assizes at Thetford, but the term had a different signification from that it now bears. In those times a “maiden” Assize was one of those exceptional occasions when no one was condemned to death. Things were not at the last so bad as in earlier times, when the Manor Courts, the Ecclesiastical Courts, and the Mayor’s Court were competent to inflict the death penalty, but it was still a barbaric age in 1824, when twenty-six prisoners were condemned to death, some for sheep-stealing.

Thetford Gaol still remains, an appropriately grim building of black flint, with representations of fetters over the doors, together with the town arms and an inscription stating that “This Gaol was enlarg’d in the Year 1816.” Opposite is a great brewery of old standing. It would be pleasing to the teetotal interest to establish a connection between the building of the brewery and the enlarging of the gaol as cause and effect, but it cannot be done.

This is the quaintest corner of old Thetford, and abounds with inns. Among these is the sign of the “Good Woman.” It is at the rear of the row of houses of which the “Good Woman” forms part that the most interesting thing in Thetford is to be seen. This is the giant earthwork, to which a passing reference has already been made, the earthwork known as “Castle Mound,” or, in a manner better befitting the dignity of it, “Castle Hill.” It is not the tallest of the mysterious tumps England has to show, for it is but 100 feet in height, and its bigger brother, “Silbury Hill,” on the Bath Road, is 70 feet taller, but it rises more abruptly from the level, and looks all its height, while Silbury Hill is spread over a wider base and ascends more gently. No one knows what race of men raised this tremendous heap of chalk. They heaped it up, undoubtedly, for purposes of defence, and as the pilgrim painfully climbs its steep and now grassy sides, principally on hands and knees, he is fain to acknowledge that an ancient enemy seeking to storm this stronghold would have had an almost impossible task.

The Castle Hill stands on a considerable space, its circumference measuring 984 feet. Three deep grassy trenches and two steep ramparts guard the foot of it, and the defenders at the summit found shelter in the deep cup-like depression, resembling the crater of a volcano. A bygone generation planted a clump of trees in this hollow, and they have now grown to noble and striking proportions. There was never at any time any building on this defensible earthwork, which was itself the “Castle.”

The place stands in a beautiful spot on the eastern outskirts of the town, in the midst of noble trees and luxuriant turf. Unlike the great majority of the prehistoric earthworks noticed in guide-books and in the learned papers of archÆological societies, it is generally interesting, and appeals to the eyes even of those uninstructed in archÆology.

That the Castle Hill was built for defence there can be no doubt, and its height, its steep sides, and the defensive earthworks that describe a rude half-circle around it give the measure of the fear its unknown builders had of their unknown enemy. They who reared these works were terribly scared. That enemy was evidently expected to come out of the south, for the great mound stands on the northern side of the rivers and marshes which then spread over all the neighbouring flat meadows; and the horns of the semicircular ditches and ramparts at that time touched those kindly frontier waters. The Icknield Way, already traced to the “Nuns’ Bridges,” came across that watery waste and pursued its course into Norfolk under the shoulder of the mysterious mound.