Buildings
In the town centre, there is a market cross, which is now used as a Tourist Information Centre and is owned by the Town Council. The original building was destroyed in the Great Fire of Wymondham in 1615; the present building was rebuilt between 1617-18 at a cost of £25-7-0d with funds loaned by local man, Philip Cullyer. The stilted building was like many others designed to protect valuable documents from both flood and vermin. According to T.F. Thistleton Dyer's "English Folklore", live rats were nailed by their tails to the side of the building by way of a deterrent. This bizarre superstition ended in 1902 after a child was bitten, later to die of blood-poisoning.
Wymondham Abbey is the Church of England parish church.
A large housing development has commenced in Wymondham near the Hethersett road. Construction of this housing estate began after much opposition and, more recently, plans for a new housing estate on a green-field site on the Wicklewood-side of Wymondham have been put forward. There is opposition to the development as wildlife may be damaged and the buildings will be on a flood plain.
Another much larger development of 3,000 homes has been proposed for the South of Wymondham and has attracted tremendous local opposition. A campaign group known as "Fight for Wymondham" has been formed by local residents to oppose this development, on the grounds that it will destroy Wymondham's character as a historic market town and potentially overwhelm local services and pose a threat to wildlife.
The headquarters of Norfolk Constabulary are located in Wymondham.
The former town jail or bridewell now houses the Wymondham Heritage Museum.
Read more about this topic: Wymondham
Famous quotes containing the word buildings:
“The American who has been confined, in his own country, to the sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter’s at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are imitations also,—faint copies of an invisible archetype.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)