Thetford town sign
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Thetford town sign by Adrian S Pye as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Thetford town sign
Image: © Adrian S Pye Taken: 22 Nov 2020
Thetford’s town sign portrays two personalities from its distant past. King Sweine or Sweyn, otherwise known as Forkbeard, who became the first Danish king of England after a lot of effort. Forkbeard, who led the Viking raids against Thetford and destroyed the town which at the time was the capital of Saxon East Anglia. The other side of the sign portrays Thomas Payne who was born on January 29, 1737 and educated at Thetford Grammar School. He emigrated to America in 1774 where and finished up causing so much anti-British feeling over there, that his action started the American Revolution and War of Independence. He is even credited in some quarters with being the true author of the American Declaration of Independence. One who burnt the town to the ground, and another who incited a war, I wonder whose idea it was to celebrate these two?
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
52.410601
Longitude
0.739926