THETFORD WARREN. 101 



All the meadows bordering the lighter soil of the Warren appear 

 to have been Lammas Meadows until the Enclosure Act of 1806, 

 when they and the Warren were allotted to private owners. 



Until the early part of the nineteenth century this area was 

 chiefly valuable as arable and pasture land, and possibly the 

 Warren Lodge, a quaint building almost on the highest point of 

 the Warren, was built by the monks to guard their crops in this 

 lonesome spot. The walls of the older part of the building are 

 over three feet in thickness, the only entrance is by a narrow 

 doorway, and the solitary window on the ground floor is a mere 

 slit in the wall. One room contains the apparatus for drying 

 Rabbit-skins, although the process has long been discontinued. 

 Large numbers of traps, nets, and huge lanterns used by former 

 warreners, are also preserved, but the man-traps at one time 

 stored here have been removed. In one corner of the ancient 

 room on the first floor is a stone cell with a niche. A tube 

 about six inches square, in the thickness of the wall, runs down- 

 wards from this room to the porch, presumably for verbal com- 

 munication at night. The spiral staircase is of stone, very low 

 and very narrow, while the ancient well — in what was probably 

 at one time the courtyard — is 103|- ft. deep. 



In the middle of last century the Warren was a treeless waste 

 devoted entirely to Rabbits. Its aspect at that time is well 

 depicted in the second volume of Stevenson's ' Birds of Norfolk.' 

 The scene was sketched on the spot about 1868 by Mr. James 

 Reeve, now the Curator of Norwich Castle Museum, and the 

 Heron, Stone Curlews, Lapwings, and Rabbits were " painted 

 in " by Mr. Joseph Wolf, the noted zoological artist. It is 

 probable that Rabbits have for centuries been more or less 

 common on some parts of the Warren. Mr. J. D. Salmon, 

 F.L.S., crossed the Warren in March, 1837, to see the new stock 

 of Rabbits from Lincolnshire. They were commonly known as 

 "silver-greys" or "silver-sprigs," and their fur was much more 

 valuable than that of ordinary breeds. About 1870 twenty 

 thousand Rabbits were annually sent from this Warren to Lon- 

 don, but the variety is now virtually extinct in the district, and 

 the ordinary grey and black Rabbits have greatly decreased since 

 they ceased to be properly tended in winter. Yet the locality 

 has still an undoubted attraction for Weasels and Stoats. In 



