You are buying or selling somewhere in Norfolk and want to know what to expect.
Flint-and-brick cottages
The county’s signature, and mostly found on the coast and in the north. Small rooms, thick walls, deep window reveals and stairs that are steep, narrow and often boxed in.
The recurring problem is that rooms are reached through other rooms rather than off a landing, so a large item has to clear two doorways and a turn rather than one.
Thatched cottages, mostly in the south
Here the constraint is height, not width. Door heads are low, beams cross openings at head height, and upstairs ceilings slope away to almost nothing at the eaves.
Tall furniture is measured against the door head. Wardrobes that clear the frame comfortably still meet the beam behind it.
Converted barns
Enormous ground-floor volume, which makes them feel easy, and then a mezzanine or first floor reached by one open flight with no turning room at the top.
Anything substantial going up there comes apart, goes up in pieces, or does not go. Worth establishing before it is packed rather than after.
King’s Lynn and the market towns
Georgian and Victorian townhouses on streets laid out long before vehicles. King’s Lynn’s old town in particular has lanes a full-size vehicle simply cannot enter, and the answer is a shuttle and a planned carry rather than an argument on the day.
Broads chalets and bungalows
Single storey or near it, easy to load, and frequently with a ground floor that has flooded and will again. The valuable things usually live upstairs where there is an upstairs, and the stair to it is often closer to a ladder than a staircase.
- Measure the door head, not just the door width, on anything pre-Victorian.
- Photograph the stair from below and from the landing above.
- Open every outbuilding before the survey — Norfolk properties have more of them than you remember.
- Say if a ground floor has flooded. It is common, and it changes the loading plan.