Chris Weston, local historian, writer and broadcaster, has set up a week long exhibition at the Cley Marshes visitor centre from Friday 10 August. Known as the Norfolk History Week, the exhibition will focus on some of the more unusual aspects of Norfolk’s history - including the mystery of why the entire village of Cley once disappeared for a whole night!
The exhibition will run every day from now till next Thursday 16 August, and will feature pictures and artefacts, as well as books specially written by Chris for the occasion. Also appearing is an 11,000 year old “mystery guest” who is very keen to meet visitors. Known as a paramoudra, he is part of the remains of the glacier which left the Cley area at the end of the last ice age, and shaped the area which now makes up the nature reserve!
As Chris Weston explains: “It’s an unusual exhibition and features lots of things that people didn’t know about the local area - such as why most of the village mysteriously and unexpectedly disappeared one night a while back; why Cley had a station master’s house built for the railway which never came; and what life was like in Cley as a port.”
The exhibition comes at an exciting time for Cley, as Norfolk Wildlife Trust is currently running an appeal to raise £1million for the purchase of land adjacent to the nature reserve. It is hoped that this investment will mean that the legacy and history of Cley will be there for future generations to appreciate, not only through exhibitions such as this one, but also through the living landscape of the marshes.