Brakefield Green

Breckland is a local government district in Norfolk, England. Its council is based in Dereham, although the largest town is Thetford. The district also includes the towns of Attleborough, Swaffham and Watton, along with numerous villages and surrounding rural areas. The district derives its name from the Breckland landscape region, a gorse-covered sandy heath of south Norfolk and north Suffolk. The term "Breckland" dates back to at least the 13th century. The neighbouring districts are King's Lynn and West Norfolk, North Norfolk, Broadland, South Norfolk, Mid Suffolk and West Suffolk.

Mattishall Moor is a 5.5-hectare (14-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Dereham in Norfolk.This area of calcareous fen and marshy grassland has a rich variety of flora. Black bog-rush, blunt-flowered rush and purple moor-grass are common in the fen areas, and purple moor-grass is also abundant in the grassland, together with other plants such as yellow rattle and marsh pennywort.The site is private land with no public access.

Thuxton is a railway station in the village of Thuxton in the English county of Norfolk. The station is served by heritage services operated by the Mid-Norfolk Railway on the line from Dereham to Wymondham. When re-opened by the Mid-Norfolk Railway in 1997 the station was initially used as a request stop, but was returned to full stopping status on 16 June 2002.During fundraising for the opening of the MNR, a station was proposed for the nearby village of Garveston, and the local council purchased a small parcel of land for use as a car park at the proposed site. No platform was provided, and the station has never been developed.

Garvestone (or Garveston) is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Garvestone, Reymerston and Thuxton, in the Breckland district, in the county of Norfolk, England. It is located 3.8 miles (6.1 km) south-east of Dereham and 7 miles (11 km) north-west of Wymondham, on the upper reaches of the River Yare.

In England, Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) are designated by Natural England, which is responsible for protecting England's natural environment. Designation as an SSSI gives legal protection to the most important wildlife and geological sites. As of May 2020 there are 163 SSSIs in Norfolk, out of which 123 are biological, 25 are geological and 15 are both biological and geological. Sixty-one sites are Special Areas of Conservation, forty-four are Special Protection Areas, thirty-two are Ramsar sites, forty are Geological Conservation Review sites, thirty-five are Nature Conservation Review sites, eighteen are national nature reserves, ten are local nature reserves, twenty-eight are in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, one is on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens and three contain scheduled monuments. Twenty-two sites are managed by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, one by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, three by the National Trust, one by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and one by the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust. Norfolk is a county in East Anglia. It has an area of 2,074 square miles (5,370 square kilometres) and a population as of mid-2017 of 898,400. The top level of local government is Norfolk County Council with seven second tier councils: Breckland District Council, Broadland District Council, Great Yarmouth Borough Council, King's Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council, North Norfolk District Council, Norwich City Council and South Norfolk District Council. The county is bounded by Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Lincolnshire and the North Sea.

Norfolk is a county in East Anglia. It has an area of 2,074 square miles (5,370 square kilometres) and a population as of mid-2017 of 898,400. The top level of local government is Norfolk County Council with seven second tier councils: Breckland District Council, Broadland District Council, Great Yarmouth Borough Council, King's Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council, North Norfolk District Council, Norwich City Council and South Norfolk District Council. The county is bounded by Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Lincolnshire and the North Sea.Local nature reserves (LNRs) are designated by local authorities under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. The local authority must have a legal control over the site, by owning or leasing it or having an agreement with the owner. Local nature reserves are sites which have a special local interest either biologically or geologically. Local authorities have a duty to care for them, and can apply local bye-laws to manage and protect them.As of October 2018, there are 27 LNRs in Norfolk, seven of which are Sites of Special Scientific Interest, three are Special Areas of Conservation, three are Special Protection Areas, one is a Ramsar site, one is a Geological Conservation Review site, one is a Nature Conservation Review site, one is a Scheduled Monument, two are managed by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust and one by the Suffolk Wildlife Trust.

Thuxton is a small village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Garvestone, Reymerston and Thuxton, in the Breckland district, in the county of Norfolk, England. It is 6 miles north west of Wymondham and 5 miles south east of Dereham. In 1931 the parish had a population of 83. The village retains a church, St Paul's, which has a monthly service and special events. On the 1st of April 1935 the parish was merged with Thuxton to form "Garveston", later the parish was renamed to "Garvestone, Reymerston and Thuxton".The village is located just off the B1135 Wymondham to Dereham road, and is served by a station on the Mid-Norfolk Railway heritage line. The railway station waiting rooms have been converted into holiday accommodationThuxton is also listed as a deserted medieval linear village, with twenty-nine tofts having been located.

Rosie Curston's Meadow is a 2.3-hectare (5.7-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Mattishall in Norfolk.This unimproved calcareous clay meadow is managed by cattle grazing. It has over sixty grass species and a rich variety of herbs, including green-winged orchid, adder's tongue, bee orchid, twayblade and yellow rattle.The site is private land with no public access.

Whinburgh and Westfield is a civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. It covers an area of 7.56 km2 (2.92 sq mi) and had a population of 307 in 134 households at the 2001 census. 10 years later it has a population (including Brakefield Green) of 342 according to the 2011 census. For the purposes of local government, it falls within the district of Breckland. The civil parish is located south of the nearby town Dereham and is formed from the two ancient parishes which centred round the churches of St Mary's Whinburgh and St Andrew's Westfield, and until 1894 the churches performed all the functions of local government. Norfolk was a county of small villages and parishes. The County of Norfolk Review Order, 1935, sought to rationalise this, and under this Westfield Parish was 'abolished' and merged with Whinburgh Parish. The name of the resultant parish was not changed from Whinburgh. For many years nothing was done about the parish's name, but on 2 August 1995, at the request of the Parish Council, Breckland Council sealed a 'Notice of the Change of Parish Name' and the parish then became Whinburgh and Westfield.

The Wymondham to Wells Branch was a railway built in stages by the Norfolk Railway, Eastern Counties Railway and Wells and Fakenham Company between 1847 and 1857. The railway ran from Wymondham in the south, through Dereham and Fakenham to the coastal town of Wells-next-the-Sea; more specifically, the line ran from Wymondham South Junction, where it met the present-day Breckland Line. Passenger services along the line lasted until 1969; the railway continued to be used for freight until 1989. The southern section of the railway now forms the Mid-Norfolk Railway, with part of the northern section serving as the narrow gauge Wells and Walsingham Light Railway.

The Mid-Norfolk Railway (MNR) is a 17+1⁄2 miles (28.2 km) preserved standard gauge heritage railway, one of the longest in Great Britain. Preservation efforts began in 1974, but the line re-opened to passengers only in the mid-1990s as part of the "new generation" of heritage railways. The MNR owns and operates most of the former Wymondham-Fakenham branch line of the Norfolk Railway. The branch opened in 1847, was closed to passengers in stages from 1964 to 1969 as part of the Beeching cuts, and was finally fully closed to goods traffic in 1989. (The northern section of this line, to Wells, was built by the Wells and Fakenham Railway and part of this has been operated by the Wells and Walsingham Light Railway since 1982.) Regular steam and diesel services run 11+1⁄2 miles (18.5 km) through the centre of Norfolk between the market towns of Wymondham and Dereham via Yaxham, Thuxton and Kimberley Park, and occasional sightseer services continue north of Dereham passing the nearby village of Hoe, where there is no station, to the limit of the operational line at Worthing. The line is periodically used for commercial freight operations and staff instruction for mainline railway companies. The company owns the line to a point just beyond County School railway station, which will make it the third longest heritage railway in England once restoration is complete. The MNR is owned and operated by the Mid-Norfolk Railway Preservation Trust (MNRPT, a charitable company limited by guarantee), and is mostly operated and staffed by volunteers. The railway is listed as exempt from the UK Railways (Interoperability) Regulations 2000.

Badley Moor is an 18.3-hectare (45-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest east of Dereham in Norfolk. It is part of the Norfolk Valley Fens Special Area of Conservation.This area of spring fed fen and grassland in the valley of the River Tud has tufa hummocks formed by the deposit of calcium carbonate. It has an exceptionally rich fen community with a carpet of moss on wet slopes with many unusual plants. There are overgrown dykes with flora including narrow-leaved water-parsnip and water dropwort.There is access by a short track from Dumpling Green.