About Us
Welcome to the website for Great and Little Plumstead Parish Council
A message from the Council Chairman, Joe Wiley
This website has been created to better inform and connect with people living and working in the parish. You can read more about what the council does here and find out how to contact us.
The council and its councillors work together to continue to make our parish a great place to live. As a council, we own and maintain a number of community assets for the benefit of everyone including open spaces and allotments.
We welcome contact from all members of the community. To contact us please use the 'Contact us' page where you can submit an online form directly to us or contact one of the council members.
For the latest agenda and minutes please see the panel to the side of this page or visit the council meeting page.
I hope you will find the pages of this website both interesting and informative. After all, this is really the Community's website, which is simply administered by the parish council.
JOE WILEY - Council Chairman & Little Plumstead ward member
Latest Notices
Parish Projects
We are continually looking potential community projects and how we spend any Community Infrastructure Levy received as a result of new developments across the community. If you have any suggestions please get in touch and contact the Clerk at [email protected] or visit our Facebook Page.
To find out more about our projects, please visit our Community Infrastructure Levy page.
The Parish
The parish is on the eastern suburban fringe of greater Norwich; it stretches from the city's ancient Mousehold Heath, eastward to the Broads countryside. Its southern border skirts the A47, which links Norwich to Gt. Yarmouth. The northern border runs along a spine-road, linking the villages of Great Plumstead (330+ pop.), Little Plumstead (900+) and Thorpe End Garden Village (1,000+).
Little Plumstead
has a round-towered Church, St. Gervase and St. Protase, which is the parish's oldest building. It adjoins a typical 18th century, Norfolk estate with its hall, lake and woodland, all of which still remains intact. The former grounds of the hall, until recent times the site of a hospital, are being re-generated by the building of a large housing estate, school and business park.
The village comprises mainly 20th century housing, but agriculture remains the predominant industry; however, the rural landscape is changing, with arable crops displacing pastureland. Prior to the creation of the railways, locally-fattened cattle were assembled here, into "droves", then taken for slaughter at London's Smithfield market. This practice, along with local brick-making, has long disappeared with the only remaining reminders being the appropriately-named, "Brick Kilns" public house and "Sandhole Lane". Little Plumstead boasts a centuries-old octagon barn, one of only four remaining in the country. It is scheduled for extensive refurbishment and will become the central feature, within a commercial-use regeneration scheme now being undertaken, named 'The Octagon'.
Great Plumstead
is also an agricultural village, where the landscape is changing. Its name might mean 'the place of the big plums', but this is only one of a number of theories concerning the origins of the name. The arable farms have expanded, to displace the market gardens, which supplied Norwich with fruit, vegetables and flowers. Only one now remains, a third-generation, local family concern in Smee Lane, and still meets the demand for quality flowers and plants.
Great Plumstead, like its neighbouring village, Little Plumstead, has a medieval church; St. Mary the Virgin, the tower of which was rebuilt, in brick, after a disastrous fire, in 1891. In Low Road is the Hall, an 18th century Red House with a vernacular cottage nearby.
Thorpe End Garden Village
is, by contrast, a 20th century creation. It is Norfolk's unique version of Ebenezer Howard's concept; as exemplified at Hampstead and Letchworth. In the 1930's estate agent brothers, Percy and Leonard Howes, conceived a residential community, with individuals building their own dwellings, on individually-bought plots. All conformed to rural designs, many with thatched-roofs. Some front The Green, situated on either side of the Plumstead Road; running west from Great Plumstead, to the woodland outskirts of greater Norwich. The southern part of the village was developed with avenues of chestnut trees, having two carriage-ways, separated by a traditional hedgerow.
The northern part of Thorpe End Garden Village, completed through the 1970s and 80s, retains a landscape of trees, shrubs and integrated open spaces. The Village's infrastructure has been completed with a shopping parade, village hall and church, St. David's. Built in 1992 it has some beautiful, modern, stained-glass windows. In 1978 the village won the "Best Kept Village in Norfolk" award. It can be truly said that Thorpe End Garden Village has a special look, and feel, about it.