The Norfolk Coast: Background information when reading The Crossing Places

The Norfolk Coast

This article relates to The Crossing Places

Norfolk is a largely rural county, located on the east coast of England, in an area known as East Anglia, about a 2 hour train ride from London. Its 43-mile coast along the North Sea is defined by a range of wide beaches, chalky cliffs, sand dunes, and salt marshes that house world-famous bird reserves. The area was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in 1968, with over 450 square kilometers (173 square miles) of undeveloped coastal landscape. The villages display a mixture of Victorian and Edwardian architecture, and over 650 medieval churches remain throughout Norfolk county.

An Iron Age Celtic tribe called the Iceni inhabited the area of Norfolk between the first century BC and first century AD. The land is rife with archeological evidence of their daily life, including recent discoveries of over 800 coins and headbands similar to the ones worn by Iceni Queen Boudica, believed to have been made about 2000 years ago.

East Anglia is made up of two counties, Norfolk and Suffolk. The sidebar to Meg Rosoff's What I Was explores Suffolk, Norfolk's neighbor to the south.

Filed under Places, Cultures & Identities

This "beyond the book article" relates to The Crossing Places. It originally ran in January 2010 and has been updated for the September 2010 paperback edition. Go to magazine.