Diss
Diss is a small town in the South Norfolk district of the county of Norfolk, eastern England. It lies in the valley of the River Waveney, around a lake which has an area of 24,000 m² and a depth of 5 m, with a further 16 m of mud. It is one of the deepest natural inland lakes in England. The town took its name from the Old English term for "lake" or also an old Viking word meaning "village of the Dancing Horse". In 2001 it had a population of 6742.
Diss has a large number of historic buildings, including the parish church from the early 14th century. There is also a museum. Diss railway station is on the Great Eastern Main Line railway from London Liverpool Street station to Norwich.
Famous people from Diss include John Skelton, a former Poet Laureate and Thomas Lord, founder of Lord's Cricket Ground. The English defender Matthew Upson is also from the town. Frequent visitors to the town include actor Dexter Fletcher, who called it "the jewel in Norfolk's crown". Renaissance and Baroque composer John Wilbye was also from Diss. The cartoonist and artist Josh Kirby, illustrator of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, lived in the village of Shelfanger near Diss, where he also died.
Opposite the 14th century parish church of the Blessed Virgin Mary stands a 16th century building known as 'Dolphin House'. It was one of the most important buildings in the town and has impressive oak beams which mark it out as a building of higher status, possibly that of a wool merchant. The building was formerly a pub, The Dolphin, from the 19th century until the 1960s. Today it houses several small shops.
In 1871 notable alterations were made to a house in Mount Street about 100 yards north of the church. Workmen removed the brick floor in one of the ground floor rooms and dug up the earth to put in joists for a fortified floor. That's when they discovered a hoard of coins. Under the bricks they came upon the original hard clay floor, and in the middle of the room, about half a meter deep, they found the remains of an earthen vessel containing more than three hundred coins. Except for two fine gold coins, all the coins were silver.
In March 2006, Diss became the third city in the UK to join Cittàslow, an international organisation promoting the concept of the 'Slow City'.
The city's local newspaper, the Diss Express, was founded in 1864.
Churches in Diss
- Anglican: Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary
- Catholic: Church of All Saints
- Methodists
- Baptists
References
- ↑ Office for National Statistics & Norfolk County Council, 2001. Census population and household counts for unparished urban areas and all parishes (Memento of the original on 11 February 2017 in the Internet Archive) Info:
The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check original and archive link according to instructions and then remove this note. @1@2Template:Webachiv/IABot/www.norfolk.gov.uk (MS Excel; 107 kB). - ↑ Coin Hoard Article (Memento of the original on 13 May 2008 in the Internet Archive) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check original and archive link according to instructions, then remove this notice. @1@2Vorlage:Webachiv/IABot/detecting.merseyblogs.co.uk
- ↑ Cittaslow, 2006. Diss becomes Cittaslow (Memento of the original on 5 October 2006 in the Internet Archive) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check original and archive link according to instructions and then remove this note. @1@2Template:Webachiv/IABot/www.cittaslow.org.uk.
