Brancaster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brancaster is a village and civil parish on the north coast of the English county of Norfolk. The civil parish of Brancaster comprises Brancaster itself, together with Brancaster Staithe and Burnham Deepdale. The three villages form a more or less continuous settlement along the A149 at the edge of marshland fringing Brancaster Bay and the Scolt Head Island National Nature Reserve. The villages are located about 5 km west of Burnham Market, 35 km north of the town of King's Lynn and 50 km north-west of the city of Norwich.^[1]

The civil parish has an area of 21.43 km² and in the 2001 census had a population of 897 in 453 households. For the purposes of local government, the parish falls within the district of King's Lynn and West Norfolk.^[2] The Clerk to Brancaster Parish Council has recently reached 40 years of service in this post, a remarkable achievement.

A petrified forest can be seen on the shore near Brancaster at low tide. There was a Roman settlement here named Branodunum. The fort at Brancaster, and accompanying area (much of which was destroyed during the construction of a locally opposed housing development in the 1970's) is not visible now, and remains mainly untouched. The garrison at Brancaster was made up of cavalry from Dalmatia in what is now Croatia and Montenegro. Native Roman centurions and officers were rarely posted to such remote places unless deemed necessary for disciplinary reasons.

Burnham Deepdale St. Mary

Numerous theories exist as to what the Roman presence would have made or exploited in the area, in particular, the natural harbour that the fort would have been very close to at that time. Theories have connected it with fossilised resins (Amber) although this is unlikely, a more likely cargo for the ships of the time would have been grain and oysters.

The Church of Burnham Deeepdale St Mary is one of 124 existing round-tower churches in Norfolk.