Shouldham - Norfolk
Posted by: 
Norfolk12
N 52° 39.078 E 000° 28.734
31U E 329462 N 5836465
A sign showing the priory with monks and farm animals
Waymark Code: WMA7VR
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 11/29/2010
Views: 3
on the green, the priory was run by the Gilbertian monks.
The erection of signs in the county languished somewhat during the 1920’s and 1930’s, despite the efforts of the Royal family to encourage them and it was not until after World War 2 that they began to appear in numbers.
The process was stimulated in many cases by local Womens’ Institutes who raised funds for their creation and helped by Harry Carter, a woodcarver from Swaffham, who between the 1950’s and 1970’s carved more than 200 signs for towns and villages in the county, as well as smaller numbers in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Essex.
Many of the signs have deteriorated over the years and have been replaced by duplicates, in wood or fibreglass, but a number of the originals are still around, carefully maintained by the villagers. Signs which he made for villages were usually semi-circular in shape, often with different scenes on the two sides.
Signs were also commissioned by a number of towns in the county and these were invariably T-shaped, again usually different on the two sides.
The theme of the designs was, in most cases, historical and the characters and events portrayed vary from the fairly well-known, such as the sign at Wymondham, which shows Thomas Kett who led a Peasants’ Revolt in 1549, to the more obscure, including the Fakenham sign which features John Garrood who manufactured cycles in the town and Sir Robert Seppings, who was born in the town and later became Surveyor to the Navy in the early 19th-century: four other one-time citizens of Fakenham are also represented. Researching the designs must have been as much fun as actually carving the signs!
Location: in the village
Plaque: no
Construction Material: carved wood stone base
Artist: In 1929 Harry Carter, an art and woodwork master at Hamonds Grammar School (which now serves as the sixth form buildings for Hamond's high school in Swaffham), carved a sign for his home town. When he died in 1983 he had carved over 200 town and village s
Sign Date: Not listed
Occasion Commemorated: Not listed
Web Address: Not listed
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