Agriculture in Norfolk

Agriculture in Sprowston has waned considerably in the past 200 years, changing from something which was the predominant employer of population either directly or in support capacity. Agriculture within our archive also includes horticulture and smallholdings that fulfilled the role of market gardens suitable for supplying the burgeoning market within the City of Norwich. The inexorable march of the Norwich housing as a ribbon development towards Wroxham was soon displacing what had been agricultural land. With so much housebuilding the demise of agriculture in the area was accelerated by the discovery and exploitation of the necessary mineral deposits from brickmaking. This relentless march towards Wroxham has continued until we have now reached a point in 2015 where a few arable fields on the periphery of the Wroxham side of Sprowston are all that remain of true agriculture within Sprowston.