When you drive from Ely to Little Thetford look out for the sign to Braham Farm. On it is the symbol below. It is a Swan Mark.

It is recorded in Bishop Cox  MS in the Parker Library. The Swan Mark was given to the Manor of Brame. It is the only manorial mark in Fenland. There are numerous in Broadland. Brame Manor was purchased by Alan of Walsingham for the Priory of Ely in 1334. Sir Richard Cox, the Bishop’s son, owned it at the beginning of the 17th Century.

On Dennis Bedford’s 60th birthday, a group performed a simulated Swan Upping at Braham Farm.

The custom or practice of marking the upper mandible of a swan, on behalf of the crown, of Oxford University, and of several London companies or gilds. The mark is made with a cutting-instrument, and the operation is still annually performed upon the swans of the river Thames. Also called swan-marking. The taking of swans, performed annually by the swan companies, with the Lord Mayor of London at their head, for the purpose of marking them. The king’s swans were marked with two nicks or notches, whence a double animal was invented, unknown to the Greeks, called the swan with two necks. A MS. of swan marks is in the library of the Royal Society, described in Arch. xvi. Upping the swans was formerly a favorite amusement, and the modern term swan-hopping is merely a corruption from it. The struggle of the swans when caught by their pursuers, and the duckings which the latter received in the contest, made this diversion very popular.