[5] The location is rather isolated, and the main access is a country lane running south-west of Swaffham as Beachamwell Road, looping north-west to join the A1122 east of Fincham which goes on to Downham Market.

Church and pub are connected by The Street, on which are a few early 19th-century houses; the K6 phone box at the east corner of the churchyard is a Listed Building.

The Street continues as a narrow lane, which branches to the neighbouring villages of Barton Bendish to the west and Gooderstone and Oxborough to the south, also Stoke Ferry to the south-west with a connection to the A134.

To the west of Chestnut Walk is another lane passing through the hamlet of St John's with a second ruined church, and in between the two is the deer park of Beachamwell Hall.

[7][8] To the east of the village is the tiny hamlet of Shingham, which used to be a separate parish and which retains its own church building, St Botolph's.

[11] A small menhir of uncertain date, called the Cowell Stone, marks the meeting point of the parishes of Beachamwell, Swaffham and Narborough.

[10] The A1122 to the east of Fincham follows the course of a Roman road that connected the Fen Causeway with Venta Icenorum (the present Caistor St Edmund), and ran through Beachamwell Warren.

[10] A site near the village called Decoy Close revealed a Roman cemetery with five burials, and also a rich assemblage of finds from the Neolithic through all eras into the Mediaeval.

[17] The church of St Mary is described as originally late Saxon,[19] although the listed building description does not commit as to whether any of the surviving fabric is of this date.

Wella had two mills and was around the later church of All Saints, which was not mentioned in Domesday – although a fragment of a Saxon stone cross was found incorporated into later fabric here.

[3] The 1926 revision of the Ordnance Survey documented the beginning of the 20th-century expansion of the village, which lead to a ribbon of housing along the east side of Chestnut Walk as far as the Swaffham Road junction.

This involved the addition of a south aisle, a decorative north doorway with a porch, replacement windows and a new bell-chamber for the tower.

This is due to the fact that the north and west of the four pairs of former sound-holes have triangular heads made of Barnack stone set on their flint jambs.

On the north side, the west corner of the nave has quoins in long-and-short work which is considered an Anglo-Saxon architectural feature.

The north side of the chancel has two large stepped buttresses, one at the corner, and a single, simple two-light window with a triangular top.

Francis Blomefield described this in the 18th century as having originally been two-storey with a stone staircase and a lead roof, but the internal floor of the second storey had been removed by his time.

[59][64] The interior is in white, including the blank plaster vaulted ceiling which covers both nave and chancel despite the difference in height outside.

The main east window commemorates Joshua and Frances Fielden 1936 and in a leadlight style, mostly in clear and gold with quarries in diaper and embellished with roses.

[68] The aisle window is in a more familiar Victorian style showing Christ with disciples, although dated 1902 and installed to the memory of Claxton Billing Mason.

In a north window near the pulpit was a heraldic shield: Azure, a lion rampant or, bearing in his dexter paw a cross crosslet bottony fitché, argent.

They are in a neoclassical style, but each is set beneath a medieval crocketted ogee arch with carved head stops and fleurons.

[70] A statement from the Diocese of Ely contained: "The immediate next steps will be to clear the church of debris, secure the building and determine with expert advice how to protect the walls and the remaining stain glass work.

The north wall has a single two-light window with Y-tracery, and a blocked pointed doorway with a chamfered stone frame.

[81] The ruin is beyond the end of Old Hall Lane, which becomes a byway before it passes close by the church in its field – even though this used to be the village's direct route to Oxborough.

On the façade was a heraldic shield displaying Athow impaling Wingfield and the date 1612, indicating that at least this wall was substantially rebuilt then.

St John's church seems to have been a late medieval foundation, since the first rector (priest in charge) was recorded in 1304 and the surviving fabric is of that period.

A narrower string course runs round at the sill level of the sound-holes, but the stonework of these has been robbed and the top of the tower is missing.

The chapel edifice is on a rectangular plan, with two deep bays in red brick and having a steeply pitched slate roof.

A pair of yellow brick pilasters occupies the corners, supporting the gable and having a single line of decorative beadwork on their imposts.

Originally it stood at the other end of the village green, near the pub, but in the mid 19th century it was appropriated as a boundary marker for the glebe and moved 733 yards (670 metres) north-east.