The Sand, Gravel and Marl Pits Charity

Before the introduction in the 1700s of Turnpike roads, of which the A140 Ipswich Road was one, each parish was responsible for maintaining the roads within its boundaries. The materials required would have been excavated from the common land or waste around the village, and under the Enclosure Award in 1818 the two stone pits then in use were granted to the Surveyors of the Highways. One pit was in Marl Bottom, and the other, in Low Road, has become Burrfeld Park, Burrfeld or Borough Field being the old name for the open field stretching from Low Road up to the Tasburgh hillfort, called Churchfyld.

It would appear that by 1840 the Low Road pit had been worked out, because in the Tithe Apportionment Award that year, the land is described as an allotment let to William Wright, a market gardener, who lived in one of semi-detached cottages on Flordon Road, now Mill View and Waterloo Cottage, but also owned both what is now Old Post Office Cottage and Thatched Cottage in Low Road. Following the Local Government Act of 1894, responsibility for the highways in Tasburgh passed to the Depwade Rural District Council which took over ownership of the two pits. In turn, following the 1972 Local Government Act ownership passed to South Norfolk District Council, which eventually decided to return the pits to the village.

Under a Scheme drawn up by the Charity Commission in 1981, the two pieces of land were transferred to the trustees of a new charity called the Public Sand Gravel and Marl Pits charity "for the general benefit of the inhabitants of the Parish of Tasburgh". At the time the land in Low Road was let to Jean Lammas, who ran the shop at Commerce House opposite and used the land for chickens, but after she retired, trustees applied for planning permission in 1989 to build a house on the site. Refusal of permission was upheld on appeal and the land continued to be let and the rent used to make grants to various village organisations but the pit in Marl Bottom was too deep and overgrown to attract any tenant.

In 2003 the last of the lettings on Low Road expired and the land was in danger of also becoming overgrown, with the old asbestos chicken sheds posing a problem, so the trustees proposed that the Parish Council might be willing to fund some landscaping with trees and seats and maintain it as a public amenity. To enable the Council to apply for grant money they were given a ten year lease of the site for £25 a year and the project to create what is now Burrfeld Park finally got under way in 2007, but in due course the trustees and the Parish Council felt that the terms of the lease, which required the trustees' approval for changes to the site, were making difficulties. Accordingly, in 2014 the trustees agreed to change the rules of the governing Scheme, so that instead of the trustees having to be the same as the trustees of Tasburgh United Charities, the Parish Council itself became the trustee with responsibility for the future of Burrfeld Park and the old pit in Marl Bottom.