Edingthorpe was added to the civil parish of Bacton under the County of Norfolk Review Order, 1935. The village is thought to date back to the 11th century. Its name possibly comes from ‘Eadhelm’s thorpe’, where ‘Eadhelm’ was a female Anglo-Saxon name and ‘thorpe’ meaning a village or outlying settlement.
The parish of Edingthorpe is elongated in shape and is bordered by Bacton in the north, Witton to the south-east, North Walsham to the south-west and Paston to the north-east. It is also quite spread out, with three distinct areas – the village around Rectory Road and Church Lane, Edingthorpe Green at The Street and The Green, and part of Bacton Road and Mill Road, which extends towards Bacton Woods.
The dispersed nature of the community has often been commented upon. In 1940 Arthur Mee stated in ‘The King’s England’ that ‘the cottages are scattered about its lanes and the church is on a lonely hill’. Although there has been some limited development since, it still remains quiet and spread out. There is no longer a village shop, which was once on the corner of Rectory Road and Church Lane, or a post office; the surrounding countryside is mainly composed of arable fields intersected by hedgerows and small areas of woodland.
The climate, landscape and soils of the local area are ideally suited for growing wheat, malting barley and other combinable crops such as oilseed rape and peas. Other important crops include potatoes and sugar beet. Some grazing of sheep and beef cattle takes place on coastal and other small areas of grassland, together with some free range pig production. Grazing land is also used for horses, often divided into paddocks.
Edingthorpe plays a role in the introduction of sugar beet into the UK. A Dutch company realised that the local soil and climate were suitable and set up the first processing factory in Cantley in 1912. A supervisor was sent over from Holland to oversee the factory and to buy up farms suitable for growing the crop. One was in the neighbouring village of Paston, which he then managed on behalf of the company.
In the mid-1920s, his nephew Antonius de Feyter came to Paston for a holiday, and liking the area, asked his uncle to find him a farm to rent. Green Farm in Edingthorpe was secured; he started farming in 1929 and in 1930 married a local girl from Paston. The farm was subsequently purchased and the de Feyter family still farm there today. In 1936 all the sugar beet factories were amalgamated to form the British Sugar Corporation, which manages the domestic crop and ensures fair pricing between growers and processors. The result is the ‘Silver Spoon’ sugar that we use today.
The New Village Sign
On Sunday 7 May 2023 the new Edingthorpe Village sign was unveiled by Graham De Feyter of Green Farm, at The Green. The new sign is dedicated to the Coronation of King Charles III and a plaque will be added to the base is due course. Many local people attended the event.
Graham gave a brief talk, including details of our previous village sign, which had been erected to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and was unveiled by John Withers on 11 December 1977.
The new sign is a simple view of the church with a bright blue sky background. There is a nod to the village’s farming heritage with a small painting of a vintage plough set at the top and two sheaves of corn on the supporting brackets.
