Norfolk Mills - Hempton watermill


Part of the structure and the brick base still standing 26th March 1958

c.1958

After the war, the mill became derelict and was finally demolished in June 1954 by the East Suffolk and Norfolk Drainage Board to improve land drainage in the area by lowering the river level by 1½ to 2 feet.

Workmen only took a day to demolish Goggs' Mill, one of the best known landmarks in rural Fakenham. The work was done on the orders of the East Suffolk and Norfolk River Board, who bought the mill some time before.
Eastern Daily Press - 7th June 1954

By 1958 all that remained were the mill house and brick foundations of the mill. Fakenham Rotary Club then levelled the banks and sowed grass to provide a riverside walk.

When I was a child at Fakenham, we would often walk down to the river via a road flanked with poplar trees, locally known (then) as the 'Unter den Linden'. Before they altered the road, there used to be a bridge and a ford, as well as an extra stream with a footbridge, where we used to stand and catch tadpoles (though I never used to know what to do with the wretched things once I'd got them in the jar).

The river, the Wensum, was a pale shadow of its former self. One old great-uncle, who had lived in Fakenham all his life, once told me that pleasure craft used to go along the river as far as Gogg's Mill. Though where from, and how big, I have no idea (at the time I imagined something like the Golden Galleon!!).
Linda Steward - 1st September 2005

When browsing I came upon the Goggs mill. It brought a smile to my face as I knew the old mill well as I born and bred in Fakenham, Quaker Lane, which was only a short distance from the mill by the still in use foot path from Hall Staithe to the location of where the mill was in the 1951 photos. Where the trees are to the right my older brother and friends use to dive from the trees into the mill pond which was very deep then. ALL of us in our family learnt to swim in the area of the mill and in those days 1950s and 1960s the mill area was very popular with so many of us who lived in the town at that time. One incident that did not go down too well with the local police was that one day during the summer holidays myself and two friends were trying to dam up the river on the down side flow of water by the arches in the mill and we discovered LOADS of ammunition small stuff and large stuff which we reported to the police. They were fed up because we were creating a load of paper work for them, I also think the incident was reported in the local paper, the police believe the ammunition was dumped in the mill pond after the 2nd WW by the local home guard. Thanks for the photos many many happy times were spent by the river and the Goggs mill.

David Perry, formerly of Quaker Lane Fakenham - 12th September 2006


Brickwork remains on the left bank October 1982		Millpond 1977


Two versions of a hand coloured postcard from 1906


c.1906			c.1914


1921	c.1925