No problem in just being Swaffham
So the town council at Hunstanton have been considering whether being officially known as New Hunstanton makes sense these days.
It is considering an idea of returning to the original name, Hunstanton St Edmund. This is supposed to give it a Victorian feel but, as the St Edmund in question lived a couple of hundred years before the Norman Conquest, it seems to me to make the place sound more medieval than Victorian. However, it did make me wonder if Swaffham could benefit from a name change.
There is no obvious saint that we could add to the name of Swaffham so, perhaps, we should become Swaffham Guader after a Lord of the Manor from around the same time as St Edmund. I can't say it appeals.
Far more impressive might be to become King's Swaffham. We have the appropriate royal connections. It was in 1509 that the manor reverted to the crown when Henry VIII gained the throne. It doesn't work for me. It sounds too much like trying to copy Lynn.
Those brown tourist signs, which you see as you approach the town, claim its market town status. As it got its charter to hold its market in 1215, Swaffham Market has an appropriate pedigree.
But there's already Downham with Market tacked on the end, so that would seem like copying as well. I suppose we could be a little different and become Swaffham Fair. A fair might be just another word for market, but we also use it to describe something attractive, so that has a little more to offer.
What about its physical location? Obviously, we can't be "on Sea" in the way that Hunstanton considered in the 1920s, but you must have noticed how far you can see when you leave town going towards Lynn. It makes you realise that High Swaffham would be very appropriate.
The trouble with that one is that outsiders would just think it a joke. I don't think we've any chance of destroying the image of all of Norfolk being flat and practically under water.
I suppose we can be grateful that we don't live in a Victorian creation like Hunstanton. The Victorians had a tendency to do horrible things to names. Once I lived on the outskirts of Northampton. Nearby was a village known by its hideous Victorian name of Boothville. I reckon its previous name had much more charm, Buttocks Booth.
In truth, it's a relief that Swaffham really doesn't have any problem with just being Swaffham.
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Weather for King's Lynn
Monday 28 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 10 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
Wind direction: North
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 9 C to 16 C
Wind Speed: 12 mph
Wind direction: North east
