BURWELL FINEST

Burwell, which has been my home since 2017, is large village in Cambridgeshire that is close to Newmarket, and is where I have my beautiful rose garden of nearly 400 different roses. These include about 100 roses bred by Colin Dickson, so when Colin was selling off the naming and UK rights to a number of unnamed roses before his retirement in 2024, I took the opportunity to buy some of them.

One of these I decided to call 'The Burwell Rose'. Which is a floribunda rose with deep pink flowers that Colin had bred by crossing Jayne Lesley with a seedling of Rotilia. Growing to 85cm by 75, Colin had originally had give it the breeder's code of DICleff but kindly agreed to change it to DICcarnival to reflect the village's annual carnival.

The carnival, which has a parade that begins in Margaret's FiTeld and finishes at the recreation ground in Hythe Lane, where stalls and fairground rides at located.

As for the village it was originally made up of two separate parishes, St Mary's and St Andrew's. The church of the latter having disappeared from use by 1550, had a round tower and was in ruins by 1741. Today all that remains of it is some of its medieval stonework which can be found at the local village museum.

The village also had at one time three windmills: Steven's Mill, which is a tower mill dating from 1820 and is maintained by the Museum, The Big Mill which was a smock mill and today only the lower part remains and the Busy Bee Mill. The latter being a smock which has long since good.

The village also at one time had a castle, which all that remains to today is its earthworks.