Sunday Times Where Was I? Holiday Competition

Near as I can figure it, through the possibly flawed perceptual filters of my own reality tunnel, the most likely answers this week, seem to me to be:


Q1. Castle Rising

Q2. Robert Walpole


The initial clues appear to place us in the village of Burnham Market, in North Norfolk. The village sits around two miles south of the sea and has a Carmelite priory (N.B. some reference sources claim that it is a friary), which seems to have been founded c 1241/42 by Sir William Calthorp and Sir Ralph Hemenhall. Only the gate house remains standing today. About one hundred metres or so west of the priory, stands the church of St Margaret, which from the photographs I saw of it, does indeed appear to have a Saxon round tower.

The first disused airfield is probably Sculthorpe Airfield, which lies about seven miles south south east of St Margaret's church. Some of the references I checked state that it was built c 1943 and that bombers operated from it. Travelling four miles south from Sculthorpe aerodrome, would bring us to RAF West Raynham, which was for a time home to 101 Squadron. RAF Raynham's sigil, is a severed horses head and a blade (Their motto 'Probitate et Labore' can be translated as 'by Honesty and Toil'). During world war two, 101 squadron lost a lot of skilled and very brave personnel on their dangerous electronic warfare missions, at one time they were operating Lancasters fitted with a system called 'Airborne Cigars', which was used to jam the Luftwaffe's night fighter command and control system. Because these aircraft were transmitting jamming signals, they were easy to track and many of them were shot down.

Eleven miles west of RAF West Raynham, lies the village of Castle Rising and it does have an impressive Norman castle which is surrounded by huge earthworks. The earthworks may have had a wall atop them at one time and anybody who managed to struggle up there while wearing armour, carrying weapons and shields, while the defenders hurled spears, rocks, verbal abuse, chamber pots and arrows at them, would have had to clamber over this and then cross open ground to reach the keep, where they would also have been very vulnerable to crossbow fire.

The castle appears to have been built c 12th century by William d'Albini and was at one time home to a fourteenth century regime change expert called 'The She Wolf of France', aka 'Queen Isabella' (born c 1295). She is said to have holed up in Castle Rising after deposing her husband, the nasty old fascist  Edward II, so she can't have been all bad.

The MPs for the rotten borough of Castle Rising were probably Robert Walpole (born c 1676), who went on to become prime minister, the diarist Samuel Pepys (born c 1633) and Sir Charles Bagot (born c 1781), who was at one time governor in chief of British North America.

N.B. Due to the number of people who normally write poison pen letters in green ink posting on his page, the Eastender has moved to moderated comments but rest assured, if you have a non abusive comment or quip related to the puzzle and its solution, he will endeavour to publish them.