Swaffham is a market community as well as civil parish in the Breckland Area and English county of Norfolk. It is positioned 12 miles (19 kilometres) eastern of King's Lynn and also 31 miles (50 kilometres) west of Norwich. The civil parish has a location of 11.42 sq mi (29.6 km2) and also in the 2001 census had a population of 6,935 in 3,130 families, which raised to 7,258, in 3,258 families, at the 2011 census. For the purposes of city government, the parish drops within the area of Breckland. On the west side of Swaffham Market Place are a number of old buildings which for years housed the historic Hamond's Grammar School, as a plaque on the wall surface of the primary building discusses. The Hamond's Grammar School building latterly involved work as the sixth form for the Hamond's High School, yet that use has actually since ceased. Harry Carter, the grade school's art teacher of the 1960s, was responsible for a great number of the sculpted town indicators that are currently discovered in most of Norfolk's communities and also towns, consisting of Swaffham's very own sign commemorating the famous Pedlar of Swaffham, which remains in the corner of the market place simply opposite the old school's gates. Carter was a distant relative of the archaeologist as well as egyptologist Howard Carter who spent a lot of his childhood years in the town.