Foulden /ˈfaʊldən/ is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village is located 12 miles (19 km) north west of Thetford and 29 miles (47 km) west of Norwich, along the River Wissey.

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Foulden's name is of Anglo-Saxon origin and derives from the Old English for a hill with an abundance of domesticated birds.

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In the Domesday Book, Foulden is listed as a settlement of 64 households located in the hundred of South Greenhoe. In 1086, the village was divided between the East Anglian estates of Alan of Brittany, William de Warenne and Walter Giffard.

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Foulden Hall is a sixteenth-century moated manor-house located within the parish boundaries. The house was updated with a Victorian facade in the nineteenth century

 

Foulden's parish church, All Saints, was heavily restored in the nineteenth century, with the original church tower collapsing at some point during the eighteenth century. The interior of All Saints' dates to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with a fifteenth-century dado that was vandalised in the sixteenth century by Puritan iconoclasts.

 

Foulden Common is a 139-hectare (340-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Downham Market in Norfolk. It is a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade 2, and part of the Norfolk Valley Fens Special Area of Conservation.

 

This common has a mosaic of habitats, such as acidic and calcareous grassland, birch woodland, rich fen and open water. Flora in the fen grassland include purple moor-grass, black bog rush, purple small-reed and blunt-flowered rush.

 

There is limited public access to the common.

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*Source - Wikipedia

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