76: Thetford Warren Lodge
In medieval times, it was the business to be in. All you needed was a lodge, a piece of clear land – and some rabbits.
Rabbits?
The ruins of Warren Lodge at Thetford.
Yes or, as people at the time called them, coneys. Just outside Thetford stands a rare survivor of a warreners’ lodge. If you wanted to make money in a luxury niche market, coneys were the animals to invest in. Just off the B1107 road towards Brandon, beyond a golf course, stands the rare remains of a warreners’ semi-fortified lodge. Its significance is such that it was featured during the summer in David Dimbleby’s BBC TV series How We Made Britain.
Why Breckland?
Today large wild warrens can be seen at nearby Grimes Graves and Weeting Heath, and are best seen in the late afternoon and evenings. Rabbits were said to have been introduced to the area by the Normans after the 11th century – although some accounts say the Romans were the first to bring ‘coneys’ to Britain. They were carefully nurtured in special enclosures called warrens (from the French ‘garenne’), also known as ‘conigar’. The largest concentrations of medieval warrens was in the Breckland area of Norfolk and Suffolk. The reason for this is that the area has dry, sandy soil – easy for making burrows. Low rainfall rates and relatively warm summers provided the conditions closest to those of the rabbits’ native Mediterranean. The infertile soil of the Brecks meant there was little competition with profitable cash crops. A medieval chronicler reckoned the area was “of very barren soil nevertheless very good for brede of coneys”. Social animals, rabbits proved ideal for communal living.
Who owned the warrens?
The first Brecks warrens belonged to the Church, a major landowner in medieval times, although castles and country houses such as Castle Rising, near King’s Lynn, boasted their own warrens to feed the aristocratic palates of their inhabitants and guests.
The abbots of Ely and Brandon were first in the market, creating warrens at Lakenheath, Brandon and Mildenhall. The Cluniac monks of Thetford joined in, building their warren on what is now the Brandon road during the 1400s. The warrener, a highly-paid and prestigious individual, had to bore holes to make burrows and provide food such as thistles, dandelions and groundsel. Thetford had 80 acres of turnips for winter feed for the animals. In snow, the warrener would spread gorse and tree boughs as shelter and food. The job also entailed protecting the rabbits from their many predators. He and his family lived in the highest part of the warren, on the second floor. On the ground floor was a storeroom for nets, traps and racks to dry skins and hang salted meats. The rabbits were used both for fur and meat, both of which were expensive, luxury items. Once skins were separated from the carcasses they were scraped to reduce fat and soaked in water. They were stretched on stakes to dry, then treated with a tanning agent.
Popular with the aristocracy?
Groups of rabbit-hunters were quartered at the Thetford lodge. Conditions were rather congenial; the huge fireplace saw to that. Thetford specialised in valuable silver-grey fur, pricier than the natural grey. At Wretham they produced black fur; King Henry VII had nightclothes trimmed with it. Rabbit fur was also used to make hats. Treated with mercuric nitrate, the hatters suffered from poisoning and were often driven mad; hence ‘As mad as a hatter’.
Why was the lodge fortified?
Gangs of poachers were active in the area. They were organised and likely to turn violent, being armed with bows and arrows and sharpened sticks. The warren at Thetford was well-protected; its flint walls were one metre (3ft) thick and had small barred windows. In the Middle Ages it probably had only a ditch round it, but by the 18th century the perimeter bank was eight miles long. Standing in open heathland, the warren would be visible for miles around. It sent out the message that this was private land.
How long did warrening go on?
Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries during the 16th century, the warren was sold to private owners. Business went on; by the 18th century dozens of warrens were built next to each other for miles around, at such places as Eriswell, Santon and Beachamwell. Outbuildings were added during the 19th century, and warrening remained an occupation until the 1950s. During the 1850s it was still a lucrative business with more than 30,000 carcasses a year being sent to market in London. At one time there were two skin processing factories at Brandon. Maharajah Duleep Singh, the Indian prince exiled to Norfolk in the 19th century, acquired the lodge on a 99-year lease, and controversially had trees planted round it. New game laws in the 1880s ended the monopoly of the warreners, and foreign competition undermined local production.
By the time Thetford Forest was planted in the Brecks during the 1920s rabbits were a pest. Myxomotosis was introduced to cull their numbers, although the population has recovered, and they are welcome at sites such as Grimes Graves for keeping vegetation down. A few warreners still exist. Today they trap the rabbits and move them on to other warrens in a bid to control the population.
Anything else?
A legend maintains the lodge was actually a lepers’ house. Sufferers from this highly-contagious disease were kept away from the rest of society, usually at the edge of town. Perhaps two different constructions have been confused, as a lepers’ graveyard has been identified nearby. Nevertheless, the tale goes that a leper can be seen from time to time ‘with burning eyes and a white, almost two-dimensional face, gibbering as it moves’. Mind you, another story tells of the ‘white rabbit’ which haunts the site with huge burning eyes.
Thetford Warren Lodge, an English Heritage building, is two miles west of Thetford –
www.english-heritage.org.uk
Visit Ancient House Museum in Thetford (01842 752599) to learn about warrening.
Further information at www.brecks.org
