Plowright Place

Plowright Place is the enduring legacy of the Swaffham Plowright family who are known to have lived in Swaffham since at least the 1500s. They were saddlers in the 17th century, turned into ironmongers, set up a foundry on Lynn Street in the 18th, a gas works in the 19th and became widely respected agricultural engineers in the 20th.

It was Henry Plowright who bought the derelict Bedingfield almshouses to build the family’s engineering works in 1869 and filled the space with carpenters, wheelwrights, blacksmiths and tinsmiths workshops as well as a showroom, machinery store, foundry, and the stables.

The family continued in business here until Robert Plowright sold it in 1940, but it still retained the name Plowright until the end of the 1970s when the main operation closed down.

Until then it was the major manufactory in the town and there were few families who had no connection with Plowrights.

In December 1982 the workshops were converted into 19 small shops or individual businesses but the connection with the family and its importance as an industrial related asset of the town is recognised by a Plowright plough in the centre of the courtyard.