Sedgeford is a civil parish in the English county of Norfolk, about 5 miles south of the North Sea and east of the Wash. It is 36 miles north-west of Norwich. Its area of had a population, including Fring, of 613 at the 2011 Census. This was an increase from 540 people and 224 households in the 2001 census. For the purposes of local government, it falls within the district of King's Lynn and West Norfolk. It lies in a predominantly agricultural valley with main crops of barley, wheat and sugar beat, in a belt of chalk with the small Docking river running through it. This and the many springs feeding it have always ensured a good water supply for successive groups of settlers.
History
The village is recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086. Part of the church, built of flint and stone, is Anglo-Saxon in origin It is one of 124 round-tower churches in Norfolk. and it is known from archæological evidence that people have lived here from much earlier times. There are remains of Roman villas, pottery and a gold torc from the Iron Age and many earlier artefacts, like the Neolithic flint tools which are found in fields and gardens. Also, it is crossed by two ancient roads – the prehistoricIcknield Way and the Roman-period Peddars Way.
Peddars Way
, an ancient Roman road, runs through the top end of the village and leads directly onto the Norfolk Coast Path. After Fring, the national trail passes through the hamlet of Littleport, a small row of higgledy-piggledy cottages which now form part of the main village. The route takes walkers past a local landmark Magazine Cottage, built in the 17th century by the Le Strange family during the civil war as a gunpowder magazine. Legend has it that a secret tunnel ran from the old armoury to the church in the heart of the village. Today this small part of Peddars Way has derived its name from this historical building with Magazine Wood and Magazine Farm just a few steps away. All these properties were formerly owned by William Newcombe-Baker, a local landowner whose estate formed much of the land surrounding the village. He was also a founder member of NORMAC, the Norfolk machinery body that did much in the 20th century to bring modern mechanisation to arable farming in East Anglia. Magazine Wood was rebuilt in 2000 and from this high vantage point on Peddars Way you can witness the sun setting over the sea – one of the very few places this is possible on the east coast of Britain. Peddars Way passes Magazine Wood and then crosses the disused West Norfolk Junction Railway. Sedgeford had its own Sedgeford railway stationon the line between Wells and King's Lynn, but it closed to passengers in 1952 and to goods in 1964. The parish church, Sedgeford St. Mary, is one of 124 round-tower churches in Norfolk.
