The Hamond family
In the early 20th century the family let, and later sold, the market rights to the Swaffham Urban Council
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Market Place
Henry William Plowright
In 1869 the company began an engineering works on the Marketplace and continued to expand the business.
The Plowright family lived in Swaffham from the 15th century and were blacksmiths and then ironmongers from before 1775.
Henry William Plowright (1817-1874) joined the ironmongery in 1837, bought land in Lynn Street for a foundry and set up the Swaffham, Gas Light and Coke company in 1840.
In 1869 the company began an engineering works on the Marketplace and continued to expand the business.
It became one of the best known and busiest agricultural engineering works in and beyond Norfolk and was one of the biggest employers in Swaffham. There was hardly a house which did not have a member of the family who worked for the firm.
It was his grandson Robert who decided to sell the business in 1940 but the name remained until the 1970s. In the 1980s the site with its worksheds was turned into a small shopping mall and named Plowright Place in honour of the family.
Jack and Merle Boddy
Very early on he became immersed in the National Union of Agricultural Workers in Lincolnshire
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Howard Carter
He was invited to join a team of archaeologists in Egypt as a tomb painting copyist and soon developed a love for archaeology.
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Dorothy Smith
From 1944 until 1955, when the National Health Service was being set up, she was chairman of the General Nursing Council.
Learn morePedlar of Swaffham
The Pedlar of Swaffham is an English folktale from Swaffham, Norfolk.
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