From the 1st of April , Santon Downham gets a new and improved bus service.

The 80/80a Service starts on the 1st of April. The new bus times make it possible to get to Brandon without leaving at the crack of dawn, and even go to Norwich for lunch. As always this timetable is subject to change. Please check the live timetables at Coach Services before attempting to travel!!

To Thetford

From Theford

Note – the Parish Council approved the installation of EV chargers.

The parish council is seeking feedback on the proposal to install two (four) 11kw EV (electric vehicle) chargers in the car park for the village hall and the club.

(to put this in context an 11kw charge would take approx 1 hour to add 40 miles of range for a medium size EV such as a VW ID.3)

The proposal has been under discussion for nearly a year now and details of this can be found in the minutes of the Parish Council meetings.

Please send feedback to Chairman, Parish Clerk or any of the Parish Councillors

The consultation and site plan are below. Not the site plan isn’t to scale it is only indicative of the location of the chargers not their actual footprint.

While the rest of the country was suffering the adverse effects of Storm Bert, Santon Downham as usual had to be different.

Sky News (and the BBC) reported

“Particularly mild air within the system has allowed temperatures to climb, we’ve already reached above 18C in Santon Downham in Suffolk today, which looks to be a record for this date, 24 November.”

The Beeb quoted 19C and our own weather station read 18.4C. A bit of a change from -4.7C on the 21st!!!

In October 2024 we were sent a copy of a painting by Frederick Waters Watts (1800-1870).

Ivan Cane sent us this image in the hope we might be of help identifying it.

He is trying to look at all of the pictures of staunches and name/identify them this is of a  staunch on the Little Ouse, which has turned up in a few places on canal websites.

It has been suggested that the picture in question could be of Santon Staunch with the lock house and St Helens Church in the background.

He is attempting to see if it could be a pre 1820’s picture.

However, no staunch pictures show such a primitive structure as in this painting by. This could be for one of two reasons, first, artistic licence (Constable was good with that when painting River Stour lock lintels!) to simplify things. Second – and this is the more exciting, and hopeful outcome, that this was a painting of the first staunch at Santon, i.e. pre-1820.  Although there are records that Little Ouse Staunches were built in the eighteenth century, there is no record of their construction, nor pictures/drawings so this could be a picture of such a structure.

One aspect that may be of use is that of the house ,also in the picture. (map attached from 1881) . What was this house – and of more importance – when was it built? The map may suggest that it was related to the navigation.

Many postcards are “variable” in their accuracy e.g. a couple are labelled Brandon – but they are of different staunches – one of which is believed to be Santon.

If you have any thoughts/clues to this mystery please contact us.

The end of September saw Breckland Club running it’s first ever Oktoberfest.

Thanks to everyone who attended and helped make it such a great success.

In what is hoped will become an annual event the Oktoberfest saw both new faces and old enjoying a large selection of German (and Belgian) beers.

Put a note in your diary for next year and keep an eye on this website and the clubs facebook page.

Thanks to the relevant TENs license the Club was able to welcome non-club members to the event. They obviously enjoyed it as over 25 new members signed up.

The opening weekend also featured a bouncy castle and a German style BBQ. (thanks Dot and Eleen and all who help out).

Some really entered into the spirit of the event and turned up in full Bavarian costume.

Contrary to popular belief the annual Munich Oktoberfest doesn’t really occur just in Obtober but in fact runs for three weeks and ends on the 1st Sunday in October.

Our beers were

Apologies to those who were drinking the Kriek/Cherry beer – we got the ABV wrong – it should have been 5.8% not 5%!!.

A German style Oktoberfest is coming to Santon Downham.

Breckland Club are running an Octokberfest from Friday 27th September to Sunday 13th of October

A selection of German beers (and some Belgian) will be available and a German style BBQ will take place on the Saturday (Sept 28th) ~ 4pm.

Normal Club opening hours apply during Oktoberfest.

ALL WELCOME – The Breckland Club is a members only club and events are normally only open to members and their guests. However Oktoberfest 2024 is open to all. Please enquire at the bar if you’d like to become a member.

Car Boots are resuming in Santon Downham from May

These are being run by the village hall

for further details please contact the village hall

The main road between Brandon and Thetford is closed overnight tetween 7pm and 5am (7ht to 8th of Feb)

Access only may be allowed (i.e. to Santon Downham) but long diversions seem to be in place for through traffic.

Details can be found here

10:30 to 12:00 at the Village Hall

The dates for the 2024 Coffee Mornings are as follows

Wednesday

24th January

7th February

21st February

6th March

20th March

3rd April

17th April –LAST OF THE YEAR

Yes it was cold last night.

No surprises as my garden weather station had recorded an overnight low of -6.6C.

It wasn’t till much later in the day that Dan Holley was able to say the official weatherstation confirmed it (they even agreed with my numbers).