Downham Market
IndustrialCommercialInert
Downham Market is a historic (closed) landfill site recorded by the Environment Agency near Downham Market, Norfolk. It received industrial, commercial and inert waste between 1946 and 1974, covering about 1.26 hectares. Reference EAHLD00731, October 2025 data revision.
Full record
| EA reference | EAHLD00731 |
|---|---|
| Site name | Downham Market |
| Address | Downham Market, Norfolk |
| Site operator | Downham Market Urban District Council |
| Licence holder | Not recorded |
| Licence issued | Not recorded |
| Licence surrendered | Not recorded |
| First waste input | 31 December 1946 |
| Last waste input | 1 April 1974 |
| Area | 1.26 ha |
| Gas control | Not recorded |
| Leachate containment | Not recorded |
| Licensed site | Not recorded |
| EA area | Central AN |
| Grid reference | 560400, 303900 |
Source: Environment Agency Historic Landfill Sites dataset, October 2025 revision.
Boundary map
What these waste types mean
- Industrial:
- factory and process waste. Contents vary widely — some benign, some not; the site's operator and era are the clues.
- Commercial:
- waste from shops and offices — paper, packaging, food. Similar profile to household waste, usually less of it.
- Inert:
- builder's rubble, subsoil, concrete, brick. Doesn't decompose or generate gas; the lowest-concern category.
What this data does — and doesn't — cover
- Licensed-era records only. Waste licensing began in 1974. Older tips — especially small pre-war ones — are incompletely recorded, so absence from this data does not mean no landfill ever existed here.
- Not the contaminated-land register. Councils hold a separate register of land determined as contaminated. A historic landfill entry is not a contamination determination, and vice versa.
- Boundaries are indicative. Digitised at 1:10,000 scale; some are buffers around a point rather than surveyed edges.
- Not a substitute for a formal environmental search. If you're buying, your conveyancer's environmental search checks this and several other sources.
EA Historic Landfill dataset, October 2025 revision. More on the methodology page.