Swaffham is a market town as well as civil parish in the Breckland Area and also English area of Norfolk. It is located 12 miles (19 kilometres) eastern of King's Lynn as well as 31 miles (50 kilometres) west of Norwich. The civil parish has a location of 11.42 sq mi (29.6 km2) as well as in the 2001 census had a population of 6,935 in 3,130 houses, which increased to 7,258, in 3,258 families, at the 2011 census. For the purposes of city government, the parish falls within the area of Breckland. On the west side of Swaffham Market Place are numerous old buildings which for years housed the historical Hamond's Grade school, as a plaque on the wall of the primary building describes. The Hamond's Grade school developing more recently concerned function as the sixth form for the Hamond's High School, yet that usage has because stopped. Harry Carter, the grade school's art teacher of the 1960s, was accountable for a great number of the sculpted village signs that are now found in a number of Norfolk's towns and also towns, including Swaffham's very own indicator honoring the legendary Pedlar of Swaffham, which is in the corner of the marketplace area simply opposite the old-fashioned's gateways. Carter was a far-off cousin of the excavator and also egyptologist Howard Carter that invested much of his youth in the town.