Gingerbread Town

The name Gingerbread Town, nickname of Downham Market, Norfolk, England, has nothing to do with the actual manufacture of that delightful confection, but it is related to the dominance, certainly in years gone by, of an iron-rich sedimentary rock known as carrstone as a building material for buildings in the town. Just as gingerbread can come in a range of colours from brown to a golden ginger colour, depending on the recipe and the bake time, from brown (Yorkshire parkin) to golden (commercial ginger nuts), so too can a carrstone building, depending on the quarry from which it was mined and also the age of the property. Some carrstone will start off being the colour of a golden retriever but darkens over time to reach the colour of a chocolate labrador. Even this property is not uniform and an individual building can have carrstone weathered to a range of colours.

 Carrstone is an iron-rich sandstone or conglomerate laid down in the Cretaceous period. It can be laid in layers like courses or larger blocks can be laid randomly. Such random laying can be reinforced by galleting, which uses small pieces of carrstone pushed into the wider mortar joints to reduce the gaps between stones. In Downham Market both types of carrstone construction can be found but the gingerbread name seems to be more representative of the layered cut carrstone method, which has the carrstone, a relatively friable stone, supported by quoins of pale-coloured local brick or sometimes ashlar stone, imported from outside the area. Particularly when new, such buildings really do have a gingerbread-like appearance. Currently carrstone is quarried in Norfolk at only 3 quarries in 2 villages, Middleton and Snettisham to the south of King's Lynn (about 25 minutes by road from Downham), but in the past several quarries were worked close to the town.

A town trail, highlighting the most important of the "gingerbread" buildings, is available online. Starting and finishing at Priory House (on Priory Road), it takes about 2 hours to complete the trail and it gives a perfect introduction to the unusual architecture of the area. Another published trail starting at the train station highlights the industrial and commercial buildings of the town (https://www.discoverdownham.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Working-Life-trail-online.pdf)

The pin on the map was dropped at the railway station, one of the most attractive carrstone buildings in Downham. It was built in 1846 and has distinctly Jacobean architecture with a possible nod to the architecture of the Flemish immigrants who helped drain the Fens in the 18th century. The front has beautifully curved gables in a fairly dark carrstone with pale brick coping and other details. On the platform side of the building, the carrstone decoration makes a great introduction to the gingerbread architecture for those alighting from the train.