It lies approximately 6½ miles (10½ km) south-east of Norwich on the south bank of the River Yare between Bramerton and Rockland St Mary.

A campaign has been launched by local villagers to save the site from further deterioration and to make it safe for visitors.

Surlingham Community Primary School currently caters for around 80 children in four classrooms, two in the original Victorian building and two more built in a similar style completed in 2006.

One of the central lakes, Bargate, is connected to the Yare by two dykes; the area is known as the 'wherry graveyard' as 13 wherry hulls have been sunk here.

[6] It was in the Yare valley and in particular on Surlingham Broad in the 1950s that Dr Joyce Lambert, helped by schoolboys from the City of Norwich School, began taking peat borings which led her to conclude that the Broads were the result of human activity, peat digging.

[8] From 1928 to 1956 Ellis was Keeper of Natural History at Norwich Castle Museum, but aged 47 he resigned to focus on his work as a naturalist.

[9][10] A naturalist with a national reputation whose painstaking research was respected and admired by the academic world, he communicated his enthusiasm to a wide audience through his writing and broadcasting.

[11] David Bellamy compared the significance of Wheatfen Broad to that of "Mount Everest or the giant redwood forests of North America".