Pulham St Mary

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Pulham St Mary is a village in Norfolk, approximately 7 miles east of Diss and 18 miles south of Norwich.

It is a small village and part of "The Pulhams" which also includes Pulham Market. The church, dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, is believed to date from around 1258.

Pulham St Mary has become recently famous (2006) through its inclusion in the BBC's Restoration Village programme looking to restore the village school, known as Pennoyer's. The school has a Victorian frontage that conceals a medieval Guild Chapel dating from 1401. In 1670 William Pennoyer, a puritan merchant, left money to pay for a schoolmaster to teach poor children. When the school finally closed in 1988, it was the longest running elementary free school in the country.

William Pennoyer also left money to establish a scholarship at Harvard University in the USA, which remains in place today.

Although Pennoyer's School did not make the final of Restoration Village, the project has recently had a major boost. It has received almost £1m in funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The construction work should begin in November/December 2008, with the aim of opening the Village Centre for education, business, social and recreational use, in December 2009.

The name Pulham is thought to mean the farmhouse or enclosure by the pools or streams. The earliest recorded spelling is Polleham. The Romans may have had a settlement in Pulham St Mary as pieces of Roman tile, coin and oyster shells have been found in the area.

The village was well-known in medieval times as a centre for hat-making, and the ancient Guild of St James the Lesser established the Guild Chapel, now in the centre of the village as part of Pennoyer's school.

In 1912 under conditions of secrecy a large base was constructed for the operation of airships. This operated as a Royal Navy base until 1918 when it was transferred to the new Royal Air Force. In 1917 two large steel-framed sheds were erected and in 1919 a 120-foot-high mooring mast joined them. Following its historic both-way Atlantic crossing the R34 returned to Pulham Market. The large rigid airships R33, R36 and R38 also visited. Its airship hangar was dismantled in 1928 and re-erected at Cardington. The base became disused in the early 1930s after the crash of the R101 when all work stopped in Britain on airships, although it continued as an RAF property until 1958. During World War II it was a dump for crashed aircraft from all over the east of England; parts were salvaged for re-used. Munitions testing was also conducted on the site.

Pulham St Mary railway station was a stop on the Waveney Valley Line which is now closed.

Proposal for Wind Farm

Pulham St Mary has come back to national attention as one of the four villages (also Rushall, Dickleburgh & Pulham Market) surrounding the proposed construction by SLP-Energy of 7 wind turbines each over 400 feet tall. There has been strong local opposition including Richard Bacon (MP) and Lord McGregor who both live within the blight zone of the development.

The proposed site for the wind farm being the historically important airfield of the Pulham Airships, *[1].

The first phase of the planning process, the request for permission to construct a 60-metre mast to assess wind-speed, was roundly rejected by the South Norfolk Planning Committee in a 5-1 vote. The contractor, SLP-Energy, failed to attend the meeting and has provided no communication.