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The West Runton Elephant
The West Runton Elephant was discovered in an area, which is known as the Cromer ridge, a belt of sand and gravel debris stretch's from Cromer to Holt.
This ridge was made up by melting ice flows, at the end of the last Ice Age (quaternary period) which was about four million years ago.
The first bones were unearthed in December 1990, though the actual retrieval was not launched until January 1992.
First to be found were the ribs, jaw, backbone and part of a leg. In 1995 the major excavation work took place, to recover the rest of the skeleton. This was carried out by the Norfolk Archaeological Unit. Some of these bones can now be found in the Cromer Museum in Cromer.
At this time England was in the grip of an arctic climate with ice sheets, several kilometers thick, extending over most of Britain, as far south as North London.
This means that the West Runton Woolly Mammoth had lain buried for between 600,000 and 700,000 years under thousands of tons of rock in a cliff face. Millions of years ago, the wildlife used to be much more varied in East Anglia, with hyenas, bears, monkeys, wild boar, horses, bison, giant moose, rhinoceros and elephants. The height of the elephant when alive was estimated at four meters weighing in at about 10 tons, which is nearly twice the weight of a modern African elephant. It was aged around forty years at its death.
Swaffham Pedlar
John Chapman who is traditionally called the Swaffham Pedlar, is actually buried in Swaffham church.
John Chapman was a poor pedlar who lived in Swaffham. He was barely able to provide for his wife and children. They lived in a small cottage in the shadow of a huge oak tree, which stood in their garden. One night John dreamed that he stood on London Bridge in London and that he discovered a great treasure.
Excited he set out for the capital the very next day with his small dog and made his way to the Thames and to London Bridge. On the bridge he paced up and down searching for this great treasure, but with no success. Eventually one of the shopkeepers, who had observed John pacing up and down, overcome with curiosity came up and asked him what he was doing. Chapman told the shopkeeper about his dream.
The astonished London shopkeeper said he too had had a dream and in it he went to a town in far off Norfolk. There he went to a garden belonging to a pedlar and there beneath a huge tall oak tree, he found a great fortune in gold.
Hearing this story John hastened back to Swaffham and his garden, where he dug in the shadow of the huge oak and sure enough he found a brass pot filled to the brim with coins. He emptied the pot of its coins, but being a pedlar he decided to put the pot up for sale. One of his customers who looked at the pot, told him that the Latin inscription it bore read ‘under me doth lie another much richer than I’.
So once again John took up his spade and dug in the exact spot where he had found the pot and there it is said he found an even larger horde.