The varied landscape in this volume ranges from the heaths of the Breckland to the coastal fenland around the Wash. The town of King's Lynn, once one of the country's major ports, is still packed with a crowded heritage of merchants' houses, warehouses and civic buildings from the Middle Ages onwards, examined here in rewarding detail. The rural areas are no less enjoyable: Norfolk is one of the best areas in England for exploring the powerful character of Norman architecture and examples described in this volume range from small rural churches with surprisingly elaborate carved doorways and fonts, to the massive keep at Castle Rising and the great Romanesque abbeys of Castle Acre and Wymondham. The later prosperity of this sheep-rearing and cloth-making county is demonstrated by magnificent, lavishly furnished Gothic churches with soaring hammer-beam roofs, capacious barns, and countless attractive small manor houses and farmhouses of flint or brick, the distinctive local building materials. In this volume too are several great houses and parks of national significance: the innovative seventeenth century Rainham Hall, and two palatial Palladian creations: the Earl of Leicester's Holkham and Sir Robert Walpole's Houghton, where respective contributions of patrons and architects provide plenty of scope for discussion. Highlights from the Victorian period range from Gothic revival houses by S.S. Teulon to Thomas Jekyll's sumptuous gates at Sandringham, while the buildings of this century include Tayler & Green's acclaimed housing for Loddon Rural District Council and the Smithsons' bold and radical school at Hunstanton.
