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After working all week, we enjoy travelling around the country at weekends, where it’s not unusual when passing through some of the villages to spot a sign denoting the name of the village. Such signs usually have a story behind them, depicting some aspect of the history of the village in question.

I like to think that the presence of such a sign shows that the village has a pride in their community. Indeed, the tradition of village signs started in Norfolk at the beginning of the 20th century when King Edward VII suggested having signs to focus the identity of the villages around the Royal Sandringham Estate. The idea was slowly taken up by other villages in the region.

In the 1930’s Harry Carter, an art and woodwork master at Hammonds Grammar School in Swaffham, carved a sign for his home town. Little did he know that it was a start of a lifetime hobby. When he died in 1983 there were over 200 villages and towns in the region that boasted of a sign carved by Harry Carter.

There was a large increase in the number of signs at the time of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and since then other national and local occasions have been marked by the erection of signs. Many new ones appeared marking the Millennium, and the concept has now spread far beyond Norfolk.

This site was originally available, poorly crafted using HTML frames. I hope the move to Wordpress will make things a little more organised. I’ll be adding posts to the site as I visit more villages and find out more information.