With another Kett Day planned for this month it’s worth looking back to Saturday 10th July 1999, when a magnificent day of events marked the 450th anniversary of Robert Kett’s famous Norfolk uprising. The main photograph was taken just after Brenda Ford, a former town mayor and a descendent of Robert’s brother Thomas, unveiled the commemorative plaque on Beckett’s Chapel, watched by many visiting Ketts, among them some from Australia, America and Canada.

Brenda is standing between Joe Mooney, the then town mayor, and David Bullock, the Norwich town crier, who announced events throughout the day.

More than twenty organisations, including Robert Kett and Wymondham High Schools, were represented on the committee planning the activities. The Kett ’99 Committee had been working on the planning the previous two years. Events covered wildlife, art and heraldry, as well as Tudor dancing and music. Re-enactments saw Lord Sheffield and his soldiers, who had come to put down the rebellion, confront Robert Kett and his followers.

A genealogy exhibition, which included archive photographs, letters and transcripts, proved popular. The Wymondham Heritage Museum played a part, with historian Adrian Hoare, an authority on Kett and whose book “An Unlikely Rebel” came out around the same time, was on hand to chat to visitors, while his wife Anne helped to put on a Tudor Fair. But there was much more.

As Alan Kett, visiting from The States, remarked: “It’s absolutely wonderful.”