This is because, unlike much of Norfolk's coast where the sea stretches to the horizon, Snettisham looks across the square-mouthed estuary of The Wash at the county of Lincolnshire, only 15 miles (24 km) away.

The River Ingol runs to the south of the village, upon which stands the early nineteenth-century Snettisham watermill, now renovated as a holiday let.

The Snettisham Hoard is a series of discoveries of Iron Age precious metal, including nearly 180 gold torcs, 75 complete and the rest fragmentary, found in the area between 1948 and 1973 at Wild Ken Hill.

In 1985 there was also a find of Romano-British jewellery and raw materials buried in a clay pot in AD 155, the Snettisham Jeweller's Hoard.

[7][8] Snettisham has a complex entry in Domesday Book of 1086, where it is divided in ownership between William de Warenne and the Bishop of Bayeux.