East Winch

East Winch's name is of Anglo-Saxon origin and derives from the Old English for the eastern part of a settlement or farmstead based on a pasture.[1]

In the Domesday Book, East Winch is listed as a settlement of 51 households in the hundred of Freebridge. In 1086, the village formed part of the East Anglian estates of King William I, Roger Bigod, Ralph de Tosny, Hermer de Ferrers and a freeman by the name of Rainer.[2]

Crancourt Manor was a Medieval residence of the Howard family, built as a fortified manor house. By the mid-Nineteenth Century, the manor was ruined apart from a single chimney stack which remains the case today.[3]

In May 1944, a de Havilland Mosquito of No. 23 Squadron RAF crashed within the parish after technical difficulties on a test flight from RAF Little Snoring. Pilots F/O Charles J. Preece (RCAF) and F/O Frederick H. Ruffle DFC (RAF) were killed in the crash.[4]

According to the 2011 Census, East Winch has a population of 779 residents living in 350 households. The parish covers a total area of 19.95 square kilometres (7.70 sq mi).[5]

East Winch falls within the constituency of North West Norfolk and is represented at Parliament by James Wild MP of the Conservative Party. For the purposes of local government, the parish falls within the district of King's Lynn and West Norfolk.

East Winch's parish church was built in the Perpendicular style in the late-Fourteenth Century under the leadership of the Howard family, by the Eighteenth Century the church had largely fallen into disrepair until it was repaired under the oversight of George Gilbert Scott. All Saints' features good examples of Nineteenth Century stained glass installed by Clayton and Bell depicting Christ as a shepherd and the Parable of the Good Samaritan, with a further depiction of the Resurrection by Ward and Hughes.

East Winch airfield was founded in 1986 by Colin and Peter Burman, initially for crop dusting. However, after this was banned in 2009 by the European Union, the airfield has been dedicated to leisure.

East Winch railway station opened in 1846 as a stop on the Lynn and Dereham Railway between King's Lynn and Dereham. The station closed in 1968.

• Sir William Howard (1225-1308)- English lawyer and justice
• Sir John Howard (c.1366-1437)- English landowner, soldier and courtier
• Sir Osbert Lancaster (1908-1986)- English cartoonist, historian and author

East Winch's war memorial takes the form of an inscribed marble Roll of Honour, located in All Saints' Church. The memorial lists the following names as fallen during the First World War:

• Stoker-First-Class Robert B. Weston (1895-1916), HMS Queen Mary
• Private Albert E. Reeve (1895-1916), 7th Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment
• Private Albert Berry (1886-1915), 1st Battalion, Essex Regiment
• Private Bert T. Edwards (d.1917), 1st Battalion, Essex Regiment
• Private James T. Reeve (1896-1916), 8th Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment
• Private William J. Brown (1895-1918), 9th Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment[6]

Media related to East Winch at Wikimedia Commons