The same source claims that the Hingham gentry were "so fashionable in their dress that the town is called by the neighbours 'Little London'".

While many Hingham people now work in Norwich, commuting by car or bus, the town has maintained a range of shops and businesses in its historic streets and an industrial estate on Ironside Way.

Despite the influence and attractions of Norwich, an active and independent town life continues to thrive and grow in Hingham.

John Speed's maps of the Kingdom of England during the Jacobean period in 1610 and 1611 showed that the town was near Wymondham (also called Wimundham or Windham).

[14] This town was, at the time, situated in the countryside with diverse terrain, profuse windmills, well-watered soil, a large degree of inland water traffic, and few urban centres apart from Norwich, where a thriving cloth industry boomed.

Robert Peck, the Rector of St Andrew's Church, and his associate Peter Hobart, emigrated to the new colony of Massachusetts with half of his congregation, most likely all of the 133 people on the Diligent, which departed in June 1638 from Ipswich, England.

[22][23] The passengers on the Diligent, working-class people such as shoemakers and millers, a number of ministers, and gentry, were mostly Puritans.

Historians and original documents from the time attest that "physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually" the town was moved from England to New England with the founding of "New" Hingham in 1635, with Peter Hobart and Robert Peck as some the most powerful and well-off individuals in the new town, at the top of the Old Ship Church.

[8] Even with changing prices and inconsistent weather, the town remained agricultural and had a stayed gentry in place into at least the 1740s.

[46] In later years, World War I general Edmund Ironside lived in Southernwood, a house created in the 1700s where he died in 1959, an old windmill continued to turn in the town until 1937, later becoming a "4 storey stump", a radio link between the two Hinghams was established in World War II, and the Lincoln Hall was built in 1922, later rebuilt and extended in 1977.