The Settlement Stone and the old Post Office

This glacial boulder has caused much debate over decades and its origins are still disputed. It has been mooted that it was a boundary marker for a Saxon settlement and linked with a pagan Saxon cemetery discovered on Cley Road in 1970. If so, it may have been moved from the Marketplace.

It is argued that the word “ham” originally meant “stone” and that Swaffham would have been “Swaefas’ stone”, the home of a tribe who roamed northern Europe and then came to Eastern England after the Romans left to settle as farmers.

A second suggestion is that it was brought to this location by Norfolk Yeomanry soldiers undergoing military drills here, who used it as a mounting block but never removed it.

The Old Post Office across the road was built in 1894-5, the first to be purpose built in the town.

In 1937 a plot of land was purchased for a new Post Office but it took thirty-nine years for it to be built opposite the old one.

Changes within the postal service meant that in 1993 the service moved to a nearby stationer, leaving the main building as a Royal Mail sorting office for the area.