Santon Downham:Grimes Graves DCNN3031 – Norfolk/Suffolk fierce rivalry? Pull the other one! {A lengthy investigation.}

52.4787  0.66822  Met Office CIMO Assessment N/K Allegedly installed 1/1/1958 Closed 31/12/1988 But all this could be wrong!

Followers of the Surface Stations Project will know I have already covered the “The Topsy-Turvy weather capital of the UK” at Santon Downham in Suffolk and in fact the late Tim Channon also covered that same atrocious site in great detail. However, this is not an addendum or revisit, rather a review of the “other” Santon Downham which may, or quite possibly may not, be in Norfolk or Suffolk depending on which side was trying to outdo the other over the years. Confused?…..you will be because I was too!

In the beginning there was a weather station known as Santon Downham:Grimes Graves in Norfolk with its position noted in the archives as the headline map. These are its details

Grimes Graves is definitely in Norfolk and is currently addressed as “Lynford, Thetford, Norfolk, IP26 5DE “. Santon Downham has always been in Suffolk so it does seem odd that the Met Office should choose such naming. However, in trying to confirm the exact location at Grimes Graves I delved into the old manual archives to become yet more confused.

The pre-digital archives are sorted by old county names which can be very confusing with counties subsequently renamed especially in Scotland and Wales. For example it was new to me that Threave in Dumfries and Galloway would be filed under “Kirkcudbrightshire”! The Norfolk archives showed this extract.

This was encouraging and also indicated data from before the quoted start date in Norfolk and intriguingly no mention of “Grimes Graves” I opened up 1943 and found this

Not only was there no mention of Grimes Graves but this set of readings was listed as Suffolk under the handwritten county address – the observer would obviously be local and unlikely to consistently make that mistake. All years up to and including 1948 also show Suffolk but then the remaining last manual for 1958 shows Norfolk

What of the coordinates given in 1943 for the “Norfolk listed” site – these equate to 52°27’30″N 0°40’30″E (52°271/2″N 0°40’1/2″E) and hey presto come to almost exactly the Santon Downham site in Suffolk where the modern day site is located within the Forestry Commision Works.

However, according to the archives the new site was not there then and only came into existence in 1960 – really?

It appears that there may well be mis-attribution of readings between the two sites. The digital archived temperature readings stop for Grimes Graves on 31/10/1988 and only start the following day 1/11/1998 at the current site with no overlap whatsoever shown despite it looking almost certain that the Suffolk site (from at least 1943) predated the Norfolk one which only appeared to have readings starting in 1958……or did it?

This might just look like an administrative error or bluntly a “cock-up” in record keeping which is very common with the Met Office attributing data to the wrong sites quite often as at Valley, and others. However it does pose some interesting questions as the Met Office has claimed daily all time national highs for both sites ……..and it was on investigating these that even more confusion arose.

I chose to look at the TORRO records for both the national highest and lowest recorded temperatures for every day of the year. The Santon Downham sites recorded between them the UK highest reading on 10 separate days of the year as follows.

23/2/1990 – 19.4 °C Santon Downham (SD) , 29/2/1960 17.8 °C Grimes Graves (GG) , 29/3/1968 25.6 °C (GG), 6/4/2011 23.9 °C (SD), 10/5/2008 28.1 °C (SD), 20/5/2020 29.5 °C (SD), 18/7/2002 38.2 °C (SD), 2/10/2011 29.3 °C (SD) 26/12/2011 15.7 °C (SD) and 30/12/2021 also 15.7 °C (SD)

It is worth bearing in mind that all the Grimes Graves readings were taken using Liquid in Glass Thermometers but that the Santon Downham modern site was transferred to PRT recording on the 16/4/2009 with all but 2 of its high points being recorded by the latter instrument type.

Another separate point I noted whilst studying these data pages was that certain other sites listed appeared under different names at different times. Below are typical examples from firstly October and secondly August .

This struck me as very odd simply because Faversham and Brogdale are one and the same place with the Faversham screen location being Brogdale Farm. Why the same place should be recorded under two separate names seemed a remarkable variant on the Santon Downham situation where two different sites were largely sharing the same name and the apparent mis-attribution of data I noted above. This became even more relevant when I looked at national daily minimums recorded at the Santon Downham sites.

Whilst the modern Santon Downham site held no national daily records for minimum temperatures, the Grimes Graves variant held no fewer than 15 days out of the 365 possible in a dataset quite naturally dominated by northern sites principally in Scotland. So far these two sites have appeared for no fewer than 25 days of the year’s national daily records. However, what intrigued me even more was a site I had never come across before (Lynford) also often appearing like this.

Norfolk, it seems, is a very cold county in spring with Lynford appearing a further 6 times in the overall year. I quickly looked up its details to find that there were no archived digital records for Lynford and furthermore the archives also indicated that Lynford was only ever a rain gauge site with no temperature readings ever having been noted. (DR = “Daily Rain”)

This became even more confusing so back to delving in manuscript copies filed under Norfolk.

Suddenly “Lynford” was showing data from 1932 to 1957 which was coincidentally up to the year end before Grimes Graves manual readings appeared for just one year then on being in the digital archive. So what were Lynford’s very extensive but seemingly completely overlooked readings like? Clearly there were full temperature readings taken.

And then the penny finally dropped for me. I tried locating Lynford on this archive CEDA interactive map which suddenly showed the Santon Downham Grimes Graves site with the name of “Lynford” shown just a few metres away to the north east! Checking out the approximate coordinates and altitude given for Lynford led me straight to Santon Downham:Grimes Graves….where else!

From all this it becomes apparent that Grimes Graves started operations from 1932 (and even possibly earlier) plus together with the Suffolk Santon Downham site now held 30 days of national “extremes”. Worth noting though is that the long defunct Grimes Graves/Lynford site holds mostly cold records stopping at 1988 whilst the current Suffolk Santon Downham site holding the high records from 1988 onwards and all but two of those since automation. A simple upward trend when comparing the data from two sites that is, rather typically of the Met Office, seamlessly bonded into one continuous record from 1960 onwards. Which site’s data is this drawn from? ……..Well an upcoming review of the latest Met Office response to how these figures are theoretically derived will be an even greater source of confusion than this post – coming soon.

The meteorological point is why are either of these sites recording so unseasonably cold and often so hot in such a “topsy-turvy” manner. Importantly neither site sits in any sort of correlation with neighbouring ones. As an example on the 7th September 1985 when Grimes Graves was entering the record books recording a minimum of -1.6°C, nearby RAF Honnington recorded 5.3 °C warmer at +3.7°C, both RAF Marham and March recorded +3.9°C whilst Morley St Botolph registered +4.4°C. Every single minimum record is way out of kilter with other nearby sites that can be verified from the map below and the CEDA archive records.

And the answer is relatively simple – it’s in the soil. As every GCSE science holder, gardener, horticulturalist even your “Granny” knows, it takes a lot of energy to warm up water, it takes much less to warm up most other products such as sand. And by the same token having absorbed so much heat in warming up, water retains heat long after other products have lost it. Any type of soil which freely drains water away will (in water’s absence) heat up much more quickly and similarly cool down rapidly.

And for those who prefer AI for confirmation (seemingly a prerequisite to convince certain people on X/Twitter!)

“What is the soil type around the Met Office Santon Downham weather station site in Suffolk/Norfolk England?”

Sandy soil (specifically, free-draining sandy soils or sands/cover sands).

Santon Downham lies in the Breckland (or Brecks) region, which straddles the Norfolk-Suffolk border. This area is well-known for its light, nutrient-poor, free-draining sandy soils derived from wind-blown cover sands deposited during the last Ice Age. These soils heat up and cool down quickly, which contributes to the station often recording temperature extremes (hot days and cold nights/frosts).

Key characteristics:

• Texture: Predominantly sand or loamy sand, low in clay and organic matter.
• Drainage: Very well-drained (excess water percolates rapidly).
• Fertility: Naturally low, historically challenging for arable farming without inputs.
• Local series: Often associated with soils like the Newport series (deep, well-drained coarse sands) common in Breckland.

This matches reports about the Met Office station and surrounding area, where the sandy nature explains both rapid warming and frost hollow behaviour.“

Ultimately what the Met Office are doing, and have done, here is record an extreme micro climate currently rated as CIMO Class 5 and thus completely unregulated. The relocation to the new more sheltered site is probably ameliorating the worst of the cooling effects whilst enhancing the warming effects. Both sites are/were blatantly unsuitable for supplying data toward a national historic climate record, however, that is exactly what they are/have been used for in what is shown to be a highly selective manner.

In fairness to the real meteorologists at the Met office they are experts and will fully understand the problems posed by this micro climate site. It is, however, those of the ill defined “Climate Science” field that are most certainly ideologically driven (and indeed may not even be particularly well qualified in meteorology) who are willing to use any alleged data and even deliberately modify its production to “prove” a theory. This misuse really needs to be stopped.

Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2026/06/02/santon-downhamgrimes-graves-dcnn3031-norfolk-suffolk-fierce-rivalry-pull-the-other-one-a-lengthy-investigation/