Beachamwell is a village and civil parish in the Breckland district of Norfolk, England about south west of Swaffham and east of Downham Market. It has four ancient churches, two of them in ruins. The former parish of Shingham has been annexed. Name The name as spelt is the official one, but the alternative Beechamwell is found in modern publications as well as in historical sources. The correct spelling was a source of dispute in the village, until a parish council meeting in 1977 decided the matter. Geography The village is at the northern extremity of the Breckland and so its soil is light and sandy, free-draining and easily losing its fertility. This made traditional farming difficult, and so the north of the parish is occupied by Beachamwell Warren, once one of the most important mediaeval rabbit warrens in the Breckland. Some of the boundary earthworks can still be traced. However, the historical heathland here has mostly been lost, and the parish land use is now mostly either modern arable farming or conifer plantations (50% each for the Warren), with a few semi-natural woodland areas – especially along a brook marking the southern boundary of the parish. The topography is flat. The location is rather isolated, and the main access is a country lane running south-west of Swaffham as Beachamwell Road, looping north-west to join the A1122 east of Fincham which goes on to Downham Market. The core of the village itself is south of this lane, around a rectangular village green at the far end of a connecting street called Chestnut Walk, with the church of St Mary at the west end and a pub at the east end. Church and pub are connected by The Street, on which are a few early 19th-century houses; the K6 phone box at the east corner of the churchyard is a Listed Building. The former post office is just beyond the church, at 24–25. The Street continues as a narrow lane, which branches to the neighbouring villages of Barton Bendish to the west and Gooderstone and Oxborough to the south, also Stoke Ferry to the south-west with a connection to the A134. Chestnut Street continues south of the green as the dead-end Old Hall Lane, to the ruined church of All Saints. South of St Mary's churchyard is a row of houses called The Green, with the former school at the west