From the synopsis of the novel on Wikipedia:
I love the detail about him coming from Norfolk (and the sly dig about the incestuous marriage). Because, as any fule kno, there is a cline running across the southern half of Britain from the mountainous (or at least hilly), Celtic, mystical West to the flat, stolid, productive, Anglo-Saxon East. Topographical height maps to spiritual loftiness. At one extreme you've got Ynis Mon, the last redoubt of the druids, and menhir-studded, fougou-riddled Cornwall; at the other, the rational, utile, huge flat fields full of wheat and vegetables in East Anglia, where the religion isn't merely Protestant but actively Puritan. (The Plymouth Colony pilgrims had nothing to do with Plymouth in Devon and came from Lincolnshire, Rutland and Nottinghamshire; most of the educated ones were Cambridge men.) These two tendencies cross over in the Midlands, where you have all those practical, industrious potteries and breweries, but also the Rollright Stones.