The Welney Website
serving the community of Welney in Norfolk, England
page created Feb 2005, amended/updated Monday, 08 February 2010
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Welcome to this community website. No pop-ups, no adverts, just Welney stuff.
Welney is both a small village and a civil parish in the south-west corner of the county of Norfolk, just across the border with the county of Cambridgeshire, in a region of eastern England known as East Anglia. We are in the centre of the small spot on the right of the outline map of the UK at top right of this page.
Welney in a wider sense is also a community encompassing properties and areas in other parishes, other counties. This website is for that community, and for our friends, relatives and "ex-pats" all over the world. It is independently managed and free of local authority, commercial or ecclesiastical control or influence.
The land is flat and low-lying and the soil is mostly very fertile black peat with some silt. It is part of the area known as Fenlands, or "the Fens", once swampy and eerie with small islands of habitation, but now drained by a complex system of ditches, dykes and rivers.
The parish of Welney covers 2056 hectares (5080 acres). We have a church, primary school, pub and restaurant, parish hall, playing field with sports pavilion, and a retirement home. Like many rural communities we have lost several local services in recent years. Our post office and shop closed in June 2007, but postal services are available for an hour or so daily from a mobile post office.
Within the parish there are about 210 dwellings housing just over 500 people, and there are three main areas of habitation: in the centre, the small village of Welney; to the north-west, the hamlet of Tipps End; and to the south-east the settlements at Suspension Bridge and Gold Hill, plus a straggle of houses spread out northwards along the Hundred Foot Bank. If we include adjoining areas which this website covers, we could add perhaps 30 to 40 properties, say another 70 people.
Sounds straightforward, but it isn't.....................
The eastern part of the civil parish is separated from the rest by three man-made parallel rivers. Contained by them is a 21 mile long flood plain known as the "Ouse Washes". It's the UK's largest floodwater storage area and a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Sometimes the flooding can make travel across the washes on the A1101 main road a little difficult....... A regular problem for many years.
Suspension Bridge hasn't had a suspension bridge since 1926, Gold Hill doesn't have gold or a hill, and the Hundred Foot Bank is neither 100 feet high, wide or long, and is actually one bank of the New Bedford River, which is tidal, but sometimes called a drain.
The name of the western hamlet is shown on the road signs and most maps as Tipps End; other maps show Tipp's End or Tips End; the Post Office and some locals call it Tipsend. It is also split administratively - just less than half the houses are in the Norfolk parish of Welney, a couple are in the Norfolk parish of Upwell, and the rest are in the Cambridgeshire parish of Christchurch.
Our wetlands have been world famous for many years.
The area was once the centre of ice-skating in England, and Welney had a world champion and several British ones. Sadly, warmer winters make ice a rarity here now, but we still have a skating club.
Fishing in the River Delph (right) and the Old Bedford River is fortunately still very popular, attracting anglers from far and wide. Pike up to 28lbs (13kg), zander, roach, bream, perch and rudd can all be found.
Wildfowling, the shooting of ducks, was also once popular and the area supplied vast quantities of ducks for the London markets shot by wildfowlers in punt boats using 8 foot long punt guns.
Nowadays the emphasis is on conserving and protecting wildfowl rather than killing them, and most outsiders seem to have heard of Welney because of the swans that visit here every year. You will have heard them too when this page opened.
The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) reserve in the Ouse Washes north east of Welney village has been the winter home of thousands of swans and ducks from northern Europe and the Arctic for more than 35 years. Over 8,000 Bewick's and Whooper swans now over-winter here, together with thousands of Wigeon, Lapwing, Mallard, Pintail, Pochard, Teal, and Plover ducks, and hundreds of others.
The regular floodlit evening feeding (right) is a popular and unforgettable sight.
Conservation and the environment are also the themes of other Welney organisations, too.
Giles Landscapes won silver medals in 2004 and 2005 for its Wildlife Trust gardens at the world-famous annual Chelsea Flower Show in central London. (They did not exhibit in 2006.)
The 2004 garden with lych gate and trellis is on the left, the 2005 one with cedar cabin on right.
In 2009 they won, at last, a Gold, for their 'Fen Ben' alchemist garden.
The Pisces Country Park, previously known as Pisces Caravan Park and Fishery, has been awarded three successive annual gold medals since 2003 from the David Bellamy Conservation Organisation for its 22 acre holiday site, now with lakeside lodges available on 50 year leases.
Welney also has what is possibly the largest steam distillation plant of its type in the UK, producing high quality essential oils and floral waters from locally grown aromatic herbs supplied by a number of small farmers who are members of a co-operative.
Crops such as chamomile, peppermint, thyme, angelica, and lavender are a welcome change for residents from the traditional - and very muddy - root crops such as potatoes and sugar beet.
We also have a village cricket team who were hosts in May 2002 to a first-class county team which included a famous ex-England test fast bowler. In 2005 two ex-England players made guest appearances for Welney.
And in August 2004 a small group who first got together just four months previously, put on a Gala and Dance which raised nearly £4,000 for children's play equipment. Not bad for a small fen community!
The village sign was erected in Main Street just outside the church in 1978. It depicts ice skaters, a windmill draining the land, wildfowl, and the entwined initials 'WM' below the village name. The actions of William Marshall, and also those of the 4th Duke of Bedford and the Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden, have hugely influenced Welney ever since the middle of the 17th century.
To learn more of these and many other facets of Welney life from prehistoric times to the present day please take a good look around. Use the links at the top or bottom of each page or go to the contents page for a detailed site index, list of features and the local news headlines.
The site is constantly changing and growing, so please come again.
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