by Diana Mansell
Goosebeck in full flow through the Market Place on a Sunday morning in April 2001
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The Millennium Goosebeck in Burnham Market has
broken all previously known records.
Firstly, it has never flowed earlier than 28th December. In 2000 it
started on 8th December and continued through to the 8th September 2001. Nine months to
the day; breaking two records.
Previously, 5½ months in 1968 was the longest when it flowed from 21st January to
8th June. The shortest period was 6 weeks in 1943 flowing 2nd March to 13th April.
The average run has been around 4 months and the latest flow date was 3th August in
1937 having started on 19th March. |
| The question most often asked is "Where does it all come from
and why?" I wrote an article in the September 1999 Burnham Market Parish
Newsletter, based on observations of Gilbert White, a former Burnham Market pharmacist
1933-1975. He spent his retirement in Galen House, Church Walk until his death in
1983 where he was well able to observe the 'Fishpond' (he always referred to it thus)
filling, which it can often do, without actually flowing. He speculated that to flow
(through the Market Place) was dependant on a minimum amount of rainfall in the previous 6
months to activate the surplus water in the saturated chalk aquifer to surface through
natural outflows. In principle this is correct, but the full story is very much more
complicated and I think forever changing. |
The chalk underlay, formed millions of years ago when the whole of Norfolk was
covered by tropical seas, is entirely of marine origin. The greater proportion being
of minute planktonic algae, which is why it is so fine and smooth and chemically pure
calcium carbonate. All this sediment was laid down horizontally over hundreds of
thousands of years and gradually hardened into a porous rock. Later, movements of
the earth began to tilt the chalk, along with earlier rocks beneath, from west to east so
that at Hunstanton the chalk forms the top of the cliffs and at Weybourne the bottom and
at Yarmouth it lies 500 feet below sea level.The escarpment thus formed
along its western limit is made up of a series of sedimentary deposits. Basically
forming one continuous construction, diagonally through to the Chiltern and further.
However, Norfolk was subjected to hundred of thousands of years of glacial action
which scoured the surface smooth and level. |
The Fishpond on the Burnham Westgate Hall estate behind the doctors surgery, from
where the Goosebeck flows behind the church and on through the Market Place.
Photo c.1941
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So one can see it may be perfectly feasible for water samples, taken from the Beck
in the 1990's and declared to be quite different from any produced locally, may well have
Chiltern connections.From wherever the water originates, it erupts
through a spring situated west of the Whiteway Road and runs into the Fishpond. The
overflow is channelled into the beck via a wide brick-lined neck , a relatively modern
construction c.1800, for use as a sheep-wash prior to shearing, and also for cutting ice
blocks to 'fuel' the ice house on the estate.
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From the earliest Neolithic farmers (4500-2400 B.C.)
the basic requirement for settlement was water for themselves, their livestock and for
growing crops. They tended to favour river valleys and maybe there was a more
permanent source in earlier times. Certainly it would have been heavily wooded and
quite unrecognisable for another millennium to the familiar village pattern of Norfolk
today. There is a legend that the pond has 7 springs and flows every 7th year.
Whether its proximity to the barrow (a schedules monument - see plan) is of any
significance, one can only speculate; but springs were highly revered by earlier
settlers. I have found settlement waste whilst field-walking in the 1980's, when the
park was agricultural land, from every era Neolithic - 20C. My finds are now held
for use with the Burnham primary children in conjunction with their activities in studying
local history from the contents of the soil under their feet. Plan
shows the Fishpond in 1919, before the Surgery and houses were built in Church Walk.
It is still there, unseen, as the source of the Goosebeck |
| Most people will be totally unaware that we all owe a very big
thank you to a handful of good citizens who live around the Post Office Green in Burnham
Market. Armed with garden rakes, they have frequently retrieved mountains of
vegetative debris to ensure the Goosebeck flows unimpeded through the grid into its
manmade diversion underground, thus averting floods and untold chaos in the Market Place. 
Rising again beyond Ulph Place, Goosebeck is channelled on its way along the Overy
Road to Union Mill where it joins the River Burn
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