Egmere medieval settlement

Egmere is a deserted medieval village in Norfolk, about four kilometres west of Walsingham. It stands as a Scheduled Monument on either side of a minor road linking North Creake and South Creake with Walsingham. The site includes the ruins of a church and traces of a manor house, all on low earthworks. A stream runs along the western edge of the remains. Fishponds and water-control channels lie north of the modern road. The village was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 under the Bishop of Thetford. Tax records show a steady fall in population: thirty-one taxpayers in 1334, ten in 1449 and five in 1523. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538, Henry VIII gave the manor to Sir James Boleyn. By 1603 only one household remained and the church had become a barn. The church of St Edmund dates from the 12th century, with a 14th-century tower. Visitors find the ruined church of St Edmund standing almost to its original height. Parts of the nave walls remain on a mound about three metres above the surrounding fields. South of the church lie the remains of a manor house now covered by two cottages. Beyond them stretches a long rectangular ornamental pond, about one hundred metres long, marking the site of a formal garden. West of the church, earthworks outline the foundations of former village buildings along the stream. North of the road, channels and banks show where fishponds once stood. The line of the main street survives as a ditch running south past the church.