Longham is a village situated in the Breckland

Breckland (district)

Breckland District is a local government district in Norfolk, England. Its council is based in East Dereham.Breckland District derives its name from the Breckland landscape region, a gorse covered sandy heath of south Norfolk and north Suffolk...

 District of Norfolk

Norfolk

Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...

 and covers an area of 540 hectares (2.1 square miles) with a population of 219 in 100 households as of the 2001 census

United Kingdom Census 2001

A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK Census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194....

. Longham lies 5 miles (8 km) north west of Dereham

Dereham

Dereham, also known as East Dereham, is a town and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. It is situated on the A47 road, some 15 miles west of the city of Norwich and 25 miles east of King's Lynn. The civil parish has an area of and in the 2001 census had a population of...

 and 11 miles (17.7 km) south of Fakenham

Fakenham

Fakenham is a town and civil parish in Norfolk, England. It is situated on the River Wensum, some north east of King's Lynn, south west of Cromer, and north west of Norwich....

.

Longham is served by St.Andrew & St.Paul church in the Benefice of Gressenhall.

Robert Howlett

The Victorian photographer Robert Howlett

Robert Howlett

Robert Howlett , was a pioneering British photographer whose pictures are widely exhibited in major galleries. Howlett produced portraits of Crimean War heroes, genre scenes and landscapes...

 grew up in the parsonage at Longham from circa 1840 until 1852, the second of four sons of Reverend Robert Howlett and Harriet Harsant. He is renowned for his iconic photograph of Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS , was a British civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges...

. Circa 1845, the parsonage in Longham had an electrical telegraph

Electrical telegraph

An electrical telegraph is a telegraph that uses electrical signals, usually conveyed via telecommunication lines or radio. The electromagnetic telegraph is a device for human-to-human transmission of coded text messages....

 link to the local Manor House, this was only eight years after Samuel Morse filed his telegraphy patent in America.