Swaffham's importance in the Middle Ages stemmed from its position as a crossroads on main E-W and N-S routes, not for its position on a river. The market and two fairs were established by the mid C13 on the triangular Market Place bounded on the N by the present Lynn Street. It was probably open to the church on the E side, but C17 development has closed this off and the Shambles have grown up within the middle, further reducing the size of the open space. The Market Cross, erected in 1575, stood N of the present Shambles, but by 1783 was invisible from the surviving open part, and was demolished. The late C18 was a period of some social importance for the town, when it became at least locally fashionable. There had been a racecourse since the C17 and the Earl of Orford founded the Coursing Club in 1786. The Assembly Rooms came in 1817. The existing impression of the centre is mid-late Georgian, but there is evidence for C16-C17 work behind many frontages.
The perambulation begins with the MARKET PLACE. It has a nice irregular shape, the main part funnel-like, widening to the N and continuing round an island, The Shambles. The main funnel-shaped part has in the middle the MARKET CROSS, erected for the Earl of Orford in 1781-83. The Norwich Chronicle for 21 July 1781 tells us that the design was `by that eminent architect Mr Wyatt'. Probably James Wyatt. Very elegant, spacious rotunda of unfluted Doric columns, with a lead-covered dome and a figure of Ceres on the top. ¿ propos Ceres, the town erected the CORN EXCHANGE (now the Job Centre) N of the market cross, on a separate small island E of The Shambles, a depressing round-arched structure of red and gault brick like a Methodist church in four by two bays. It is dated 1858, built and probably designed by Mathias Goggs, a local builder, a year after J. & M.W. Goggs finished the Dereham Corn Hall. The ground floor had a reading room, library and billiard room. The other principal building is at the W end of the central island, the former ASSEMBLY ROOMS, built in 1776-8 and at first facing W: five bays, the centre three broken forward and rebuilt in the 1950s. In 1827 William Newham of King's Lynn added the four-bay stuccoed S front. One storey and fitted with sashes. Hipped roofs. The main room has only partially pilastered walls and a suspended C20 ceiling. Between these two buildings runs the S side of THE SHAMBLES, like the rest of the buildings in the island of C17 origins but progressively altered and added to in subsequent centuries.
Our tour of the MARKET PLACE begins at the NE corner and proceeds clockwise. Opposite the Corn Hall lies No. 63. A double shop front of c. 1965 and two C19 sashes forlornly above, but there are roll-moulded bridging beams inside from c. 1540, and it was probably always floored. The early C18 RED LION (No. 87), has been greatly altered in the C20. In the middle of the E side is the dominating mid C18 MONTPELIER HOUSE (Nos. 89-91), of flint with gault brick trim, seven bays and two and a half storeys. Curved porch on Roman Doric columns. The GREYHOUND INN (No. 97) follows. This retains bridging beams and wall plates in the ground-floor N room carved with wave and hollow mouldings of c. 1520. The exterior, however, was redone in the C18 and given C19 sashes.
On the opposite side various altered C18 houses mixed with new building. No. 38 (CERES CHEMIST) mid C18, five bays, three storeys, and a passageway door to the r. The interior has ghosts of its former genteel status in the form of a doorway with a pulvinated frieze and some moulded cornices. Good late C18 staircase added at the back of the rear passageway. Then the PLOWRIGHT SHOPPING CENTRE, contrived in 1982 from the large premises of Plowright engineers. Ugly mid C19 yellow-brick front with an ungainly shaped gable in the middle. The long C19 buildings of the works and foundry extend to the rear, converted to shops. FITZROY HOUSE follows (No. 32), mid-Georgian, of brown brick, two and a half storeys in five bays. It heralds the best series of houses, to the W of The Shambles, a row of Georgian date, including Nos. 26-30, late C18, of seven bays and three storeys. Then SWAFFHAM SIXTH FORM CENTRE, converted from two houses, first SCHOOL HOUSE (No. 20), of five bays and two storeys, with a central doorway in a rusticated surround, and the whole ground floor itself dressed with shallow rustication. Giant pilasters at the corners. It can be dated probably by the tablet on the adjoining late C18 HEADMASTER'S HOUSE (also No. 20), which says 1736 and commemorates the foundation of Hamond's School. Conventional two-storey, three-bay design. Minor plasterwork inside. Rear wing of the School House has curved windbraces in the roof, a late use. Entry to the yard has good vases on rebuilt gatepiers. Finally OAKLEIGH HOUSE (Nos. 16-18), also 1730s, at least the facade. Seven bays and two storeys, with a three-bay pediment. The three middle bays and the corners have rusticated quoins. The doorway has Doric pilasters with alternated blocking and similar treatment of the rustication of the segment-headed middle window and the lunette window in the pediment. Restless keystones to all windows, which are early C18 sashes. This, the most imposing Georgian facade in Swaffham, is a refronting of an early C17 house, witness the blocked windows to the flint N gable and the two banks of triple octagonal chimney flues. Two C17 wings at the rear, the narrow space between them filled in the C20.
The shorter N side of the Market Place has been noted already as invisible from the Market Cross because of The Shambles. The KING'S ARMS (Nos. 21-23) is a longish flint and red brick pub from the C17, with the remains of a platband and renewed casement windows at upper level still of horizontal type. C18 buildings follow, all minor. The POST OFFICE (No. 35) in a mid C18 house has been raised into three storeys in the C19. No. 39, of the same date, has an irregular seven-bay front in two storeys; r. part rebuilt C20, l. part with four nice C19 Roman Doric columns to the display window and door, under a projecting entablature. The rear passageway has a display of early C16 roll-and-hollow-moulded joists and wall plates marking the site of a grand hall. Then, at the corner of Station Street, lies No. 59 (CRANGLEGATE), of nine bays (l. bay blind) with an open segmental pediment over the doorway on unfluted pilasters. Wide platband, dormer windows and, at the back, two large wall stacks.
The church of ST PETER AND ST PAUL is hidden from the Market Place and approached from it by a narrow passage, Church Lane. A large church of flint and Barnack stone and, with few exceptions, Perp of the C15 and the early C16. A rector, John Botewright (rector 1435-74), undertook the rebuilding of the chancel, and compiled the Swaffham Black Book from 1454. Mainly an inventory, it does however state that `Swaffham church built' in that year, presumably meaning his chancel finished. The N aisle added, or rather the wall rebuilt, in 1462 at the expense of John Chapman. The tower was the subject of bequests from about 1485 but was not complete in 1507 when Master Gyles was called in. The tower roofed in 1510 and the bell-frame installed in 1515, although the battlements had to wait till 1533. That seems to mark the completion of the church. The church was a little restored in 1848-51, a lot restored in 1876 and 1888-95 by William Milne.
Spectacular N side of seven bays with big windows and clerestory of thirteen windows under basket arches, repeated on the S side. Crenellated brick parapet to the N only. N transept (much renewed), vestry of two storeys, the upper floor of which contains the parochial LIBRARY. Chancel with tall renewed windows, the E window with its wild Curvilinear forms entirely of 1853. On the S side, in addition to the transept, the small projecting chapel of the Guild of Corpus Christi added by a benefactor who died in 1501. Surprisingly large four-light window. Less than lavish S porch with a cusped lozenge frieze above the entrance, a niche, pinnacles, but - and this is lavish - a pretty little hammerbeam roof inside donated by William Coo (died 1518). It has three bays, with angels against the hammer beams and tiny angels back-to-back as bosses on the ridge. Finally the tower. Set-back buttresses. Base course with shields, mouchette-wheels, and panels with crossed keys and crossed swords (St Peter and St Paul). W doorway with niches for images. W window of five lights with diagonally placed, canopied niches in the jambs. Three-light bell-openings. Openwork battlements, pinnacles, and angels instead of intermediate pinnacles. Also inscribed PETVR and PAWLE. Sweet little Gothick lantern and spike, lead-covered, erected in 1778 to John Frost's design but rebuilt in 1897.
GLOSSARY:
Rotunda: a building or room circular in plan
Roll-moulded: medieval moulding of part-circular section.
pulvinated frieze: literally means cushioned, a frieze with bold convex profile.
Rusticated: Exaggerated treatment of masonry to give an effect of strength. The joints are usually recessed by V-section chamfering or square-section channelling.
Quoins: dressed stones at the angle of a building
Platband: flat horizontal moulding between storeys
Clerestory: uppermost storey of the nave of a church, pierced by windows.
Curvilinear: a type of C14 bar tracery (the pattern formed by intersecting moulded ribwork from the mullions) characterised by uninterrupted flowing curves
Mouchette: a tracery shape, resembling daggers but with curved sides.
