The A-Z of Curious Norfolk E-Book

Sarah E. Doig

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 250

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Norfolk's spectacular coastline, quaint villages, historic houses, bustling market towns and meandering rivers all provide the perfect backdrop for some of the most curious tales from across the centuries. Which eccentric cleric's final words were 'Did I make the front page?' Which annual race's participants only eat lettuce? Why on earth is there an elephant on one Norfolk village sign? Where is the most accident-prone church in the county? How did a single feather save a monarch? Which of Norfolk's heroes gives his name to an unlucky sporting score? Enthralling to both residents and visitors alike, The A-Z of Curious Norfolk is a perfect book to dip into – unless, of course, you can't wait to turn the page and read more!

Leseprobe

Dedicated to the memory of my father, whofirst introduced me to curious Norfolk.

First published 2023

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Sarah E. Doig, 2023

The right of Sarah E. Doig to be identified as the Authorof this work has been asserted in accordance with theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 414 7

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Great Britain

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

My earliest memories of Norfolk are of family visits to West Acre, just north of Swaffham, to visit the ancestors … in the churchyard! It was, and still is, a village largely untouched by the stampede of time. The old forge, where my great, great-grandfather and his father before him had toiled in the heat, still stands in its prominent position opposite the village pub. The former village school, where my great-grandmother and her siblings learned to read and write, sits looking over the community it once educated. The Church of All Saints, which witnessed countless baptisms, marriages and burials of my forebears, still welcomes the faithful on Sundays. I owe my ancestors a huge debt of gratitude for introducing me to the county of Norfolk.

There is no escaping the fact that Norfolk lacks hills and mountains. The county does, however, more than compensate for this in offering the visitor sandy heathland, fens and navigable waterways, dramatic cliffs, as well as wide, open skies. While seeming to be a landscape with little habitation, it is teeming with villages and market towns, as well as the majestic city of Norwich.

Behind all of this are the people and events that have shaped what Norfolk is today. In researching and writing The A–Z of Curious Norfolk I have, therefore, tried to get under the surface and root out the curious, eccentric and mysterious stories that enrich Norfolk’s story. Inevitably, some of the tales I tell will be familiar to those who have grown up in the county, or who have spent a lot of time immersing themselves in its history.

I have drawn inspiration from many sources, including the plethora of books and articles already written on a wide range of aspects of Norfolk. Where I have used others’ stories as a starting point, I have tried to add something new to these, as well as consulting original sources where possible to check the veracity of the information.

I am extremely grateful to Tony Scheuregger for taking all the new black and white photographs used throughout this book, as well as the colour photograph on the front cover. I thoroughly enjoyed our many photographic excursions to the furthest reaches of the county, which allowed me to breathe the Norfolk air and soak up the atmosphere. Thank you also to Tony – a long-time Norwich resident – for the initial brainstorming sessions that helped shape the book. I am also indebted to Jonathan Plunkett for allowing me to use a number of black and white photographs taken by his late father, George Plunkett. I have also made use of some much older images, for which every attempt has been made to establish a copyright holder. However, if I have inadvertently used copyright material without permission, I apologise and will make the necessary correction at the first opportunity.

Finally, I simply could not have completed this book without the help and support of my husband, Mike. He has cooked, cleaned and washed, as well as mopped my fevered brow while pouring me a glass or two of wine. Mike has also, yet again, provided first-class, critical proofreading skills.

The author and her younger sister visiting their ancestors in West Acre churchyard. (Michael Booker)

ABANDONED

The county of Norfolk seems to be crammed full of abandoned villages and communities (between 150 and 200 of them at last count) if this is not an oxymoron! The decline and desertion of villages across the county started in the mid-1400s and continued over the following few centuries.

The reasons for the disappearance of whole parishes from the county map are many and varied. It is often thought that many of Norfolk’s villages were abandoned at the time of the Black Death in the mid-fourteenth century, when the plague decimated the population countrywide. The only likely candidate for this in our county is Little Ringstead. Many more parishes in Norfolk, however, were lost as a result of so-called emparking, such as Wolterton. Residents of this village, who lived just to the north of St Margaret’s Church, were relocated as part of a redesign of Wolterton Hall and its estate in the eighteenth century, which took over the small community’s land and houses.

Coastal erosion has been impacting communities in Norfolk for centuries and the resulting loss of villages, literally under the waves, has been felt not only on the north coast but also in the east, including the parishes of Keswick, Little Waxham and Whimpwell. One of the best-known victims of the sea in the north was Eccles-by-the-Sea, which was described in White’s History, Gazetteer and Directory of Norfolk 1883 as:

a decayed parish, once a noted fishing town, but so wasted by the incursions of the ocean, that the inhabitants, in their petition for a reduction of taxes, in 1605, complained that they had then only 14 houses, and 300 acres of land, ‘the rest being all destroyed by the sea, together with the church’. It had only 17 inhabitants in 1881, and comprises 253 acres of land divided into two farms. Eccles church was destroyed about 300 years ago; but the tower and part of the walls are still standing. The tower is round at the base and octagonal above, and is about 9 feet in diameter. The remains of the walls of the church are about 6 feet high and 3 feet thick, but were entirely covered by the accumulated sand hills, which had been thrown up by the sea and served as barriers against the encroachments of the tides, till the great storm of November 1862, swept the greater portion of them away.

Eccles church tower stood until 1895, when it finally succumbed to the North Sea.

The desertion of some Norfolk villages has been more recent, and the abandonment by their communities has not been voluntary. The Thetford Forest area had been used by tanks in the First World War but in 1942, during the Second World War, the War Office decided that a battle-training area was required. It therefore evacuated an expanse in the south-west of the county, including the entire villages of Buckenham Tofts, Langford, Stanford, Sturston, Tottington and West Tofts, and rehoused its residents, telling them that they would be able to return after the conflict. The area, known as the Stanford Training Area (STANTA), was used extensively to prepare for the invasion of Normandy. The 7th Armoured Tank Division, nicknamed the Desert Rats, were stationed there from January to May 1944 to prepare for D-Day. After the war, the area continued to be used for military exercises and the villagers were never given the opportunity to return.

The ruined round tower of Thorpe Parva Church is all that is left of this deserted village. (Tony Scheuregger)

STANTA was famously used in the filming of many episodes of the television comedy series Dad’s Army, including the closing credits where Captain Mainwaring is leading his men through a glade of Scots pine. More recently, in 2009, a complete replica Afghan village was constructed at a cost of £14 million. It was used to prepare troops for deployment to Afghanistan during that conflict and was populated by Afghan nationals, ex-Gurkha soldiers and amputee actors who simulated the Afghan National Army, locals and wounded soldiers. Every small detail of an authentic village was recreated, including a market with the smells of Afghan cooking and a mosque from which emanated calls to prayer.

Today, civilians can visit STANTA only as part of limited organised tours. Those who are lucky enough to do so can find the original pattern of country lanes, hedgerows and woods largely untouched. There are also four churches in the training area, maintained by the Ministry of Defence, but apart from an annual carol service in West Tofts for descendants of those villagers who once lived there, the ancient places of worship are silent.

***

By the end of the Second World War, Norfolk had no fewer than thirty-seven major military airfields. The county found itself in the forefront of the air war offensive, primarily because of its proximity to Continental Europe and, of course, due to its flat landscape, which lent itself to the speedy creation of runways. The RAF’s Bomber Command operated out of Norfolk, as did the US 8th Army Air Force.

A few have survived as operational airfields, used either by the RAF or by private flying clubs, and the former US bomber base at Horsham St Faith is now Norwich International Airport! The rest, in various states of repair or disrepair, are commonly referred to as ghost fields. Sometimes, though, this can be a rather accurate description.

RAF Bircham Newton, just south of Docking, had first been used for military operations in the First World War and then, in the 1940s, it was redeveloped for use by RAF Coastal Command, which flew types such as the Lockheed Hudson light bomber and coastal reconnaissance plane. Visitors to the site in recent years have reported hearing ghostly noises of airfield life, as well as sounds of aircraft flying overhead. Some have even heard doors mysteriously closing and a ball being hit against the walls of the former squash courts. It is believed that three crewmen who crashed their plane at the base, and who were keen players of the racquet sport, now haunt the courts at Bircham Newton.

Seething was one of Norfolk’s airfields that was specifically constructed for the US 8th Army Air Force and the control tower is now a museum. (Tony Scheuregger)

At RAF Thorpe Abbotts, just east of Diss, the control tower was restored in the 1970s and now houses the 100th Bomb Group Memorial Museum, which is dedicated to US soldiers and members of the US 8th Army Air Force. The tower appears to have a friendly ghost who has been there for many decades.

Visitors to the museum have reported hearing noise of aircraft and radio ‘chatter’, as well as glimpses of a man dressed in flying gear. Sometimes he is seen standing at one of the upstairs windows at night. But it seems that Eddie, as the ghost is known, first appeared to US servicemen in early 1944, when he was seen walking through their quarters.

Stories of this ghost persisted and many of the airmen seemed spooked by it; so much so that the base commander banned all mention of Eddie under threat of court martial. Eddie is believed to be the spiritual manifestation of one of the pilots who died in ‘Black Week’ in October 1943 when the 100th Bomb Group suffered a large number of casualties and was almost entirely wiped out.

ANGELS

Slap bang in the middle of the Norfolk countryside, a few miles from Aylsham, stands one of the most eccentric churches, wholly designed by an equally eccentric Victorian clergyman. In fact, Edwin Lutyens, the distinguished architect, said the church was ‘very naughty but built in the right spirit’.

Reverend Whitwell Elwin, a descendant of John Rolfe and his wife, the Native American woman, Pocahontas, was Rector of Booton from 1849 until his death in 1900. Not content with preaching in a rather ‘bland’ medieval parish church, he encased it in a fantastical Gothic creation of his own choosing, borrowing elements from various other places of worship.

The west doorway was inspired by a door at Glastonbury Abbey, the trefoil window above the chancel arch may have been copied from Lichfield Cathedral, and the hammerbeam roof, resplendent with angels, is said to have been based on that of St Botolph’s Church in Trunch, also in Norfolk. The exterior of the Church of St Michael the Archangel in Booton is quite remarkable, with two slender towers at the west end, set diagonally to the main structure with a minaret-looking pinnacle in between.

The undoubted stars of the show inside are the host of angelic musicians depicted playing various instruments of the Bible, such as the harp and cymbals, as well as those from the Middle Ages like the vielle (or medieval fiddle) and the psaltery. Other angels are singing or reading and are shown in the company of saints and other female figures holding flowers. If you look closely, it is obvious that many of the girls’ and angels’ faces must have been drawn from real life. It is thought that they are portraits of ‘Blessed Girls’, as Reverend Elwin called his succession of young female friends and to whom the clergyman was, as the very diplomatic guidebook used to say, ‘the affectionate, almost intimate, counsellor’.

***

Of the almost 170 medieval angel roofs that survive in England and Wales, Suffolk boasts the largest number, closely followed by Norfolk. These angels are to be found in parish churches high above our heads and all were constructed in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Before Henry VIII broke with Rome in the 1530s, our churches were filled with carved and brightly coloured images ranging from rood screens with Christ and the saints to vivid wall paintings and stained glass depicting Biblical scenes. While many of these were destroyed, defaced or whitewashed over either during the English Reformation or in the Puritan purge a century later, many of the stunning carved-angel roofs survived, merely because they were out of reach.

These heavenly angels are often depicted playing musical instruments, such as at St Nicholas’ Chapel in King’s Lynn. Featured here are two lutes, a psaltery, a tabor, a rebec and a recorder. At Burlingham St Andrew there is a wonderful painted angel playing one of the louder instruments of the Middle Ages, the shawm.

Norfolk goes one better than Suffolk, and in fact the rest of the country, when it comes to stained glass featuring medieval musical angels. Examples pop up in churches across the county, including in East Barsham (where there are angels playing a shawm and a harp), Ketteringham and Shelton.

It is believed that the angel musicians, which often appear in the top part of the windows, as at Shelton where they can be seen to be playing instruments including a portative organ and a vielle, represent a heavenly presence over the characters depicted below. They demonstrate the importance of music as part of medieval worship.

A visitor to Norfolk’s medieval churches should beware, though; not all the musicians are angels. At St Peter’s in Ringland, near Norwich, there is a delightful, fourteenth-century roundel with a beautiful depiction of a centaur – a half-man, half-horse – with a forked, vine-leafed tail, playing a vielle!

This unusual fourteenth-century roundel is one of several delightful medieval treasures in Ringland Church. (Tony Scheuregger)

BARDS

Remarkably, there are two surviving medieval guildhalls in King’s Lynn; the Guildhall of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, which is now the headquarters of the King’s Lynn & West Norfolk Borough Council, and the Guildhall of St George. St George’s Guildhall, currently owned by the National Trust, but leased and managed by the local borough council, is the oldest and largest complete medieval guildhall in England. It also boasts a long history of theatre production, with the earliest recorded play having been performed there in January 1445.

Recent academic research has backed up long-held claims that William Shakespeare played here with the Earl of Pembroke’s Men in 1593 when the London theatres were closed due to the plague. One of Shakespeare’s leading comic actors and a major influence on the bard’s writing, Robert Armin, was born in King’s Lynn. He was the first Feste in Twelfth Night, the Fool in King Lear and Autolycus in A Winter’s Tale.

Other men from Norfolk are themselves immortalised in Shakespeare’s plays. Sir Thomas Erpingham is a minor character in Henry V, where he lends the king his cloak with which to disguise himself, and he is mentioned (but does not appear) in Richard II. Sir Thomas served three generations of the House of Lancaster and had a military career that spanned four decades. In 1415, at around the age of 60, Erpingham was in command of the archers at the Battle of Agincourt at which the English under Henry V defeated the French.

In later life, the knight was a significant benefactor to the city of Norwich, funding the rebuilding of the Church of the Blackfriars (now known as St Andrew’s Hall and Blackfriars’ Hall or the Halls) following a devastating fire. In 1420, he also had the so-called Erpingham Gate constructed, which stands opposite the west door of Norwich Cathedral giving access into the Cathedral Close. The gate’s style matches the west front of the cathedral and bears the family coat of arms. It also features a small statue of Sir Thomas, which is thought to have been located originally on his tomb in the cathedral and placed on the gate in the seventeenth century.

Sir John Falstaff appears or is mentioned in no fewer than four plays by William Shakespeare. In both of the Bard of Avon’s plays about Henry IV, Falstaff is a companion of Prince Hal, the future Henry V. Here, and in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is primarily a comic figure; a fat, vain, cowardly knight who spends his time drinking and living on borrowed or stolen money.

This character’s name almost certainly derives from the real-life Norfolk landowner Sir John Fastolf, and although there are said to be some comparisons in the real and fictional knights’ lives, scholars believe that Falstaff’s character is an amalgamation of several people with whose lives Shakespeare would have been familiar. That said, Sir John Fastolf, who lived at Caister Hall (later Caister Castle), was a soldier who served in the Hundred Years’ War and during which he was accused of cowardice, having previously been recognised as a loyal and distinguished military man. In Henry IV, Part I, Falstaff delivers the now-famous phrase, ‘The better part of valour is discretion’.

***

The life and achievements of one farmer from Little Dunham near Swaffham would have gone completely unnoticed by anyone other than his family, and perhaps his descendants, had it not been for a chance find. Even then, had it not been for the determination of the discoverer of this real gem to publish an account of her find in the East Anglian Magazine, we would still be none the wiser.

The parish register entries, census returns and electoral registers for Little Dunham allow us to flesh out the bare bones of Thomas Thompson’s life. He was born in 1813 into a labouring family and by 1841 he was a shepherd. Thomas became a tenant farmer, farming some 11 acres.

It is a small entry in the Lynn Advertiser of 29 September 1883 that provides just a bit more colour to his story. This is an auction notice for all live and dead farming stock, as well as the household furniture, of Thompson who, the advert says, ‘is leaving the county’.

So, where did Thomas go? Well, this is where the discovery of part of a printed poetry anthology by Thomas Thompson comes in. At the back of this volume is an illuminating biographical snippet that begins, ‘The Author of these verses at the age of 70 left his native village, Dunham in Norfolk, for Tasmania on a visit to his children December 10th 1883, and arrived in a sailing vessel on the 4th April of the following year.’ It continues with details of his return to England, as well as dates of a further voyage to Tasmania, finally returning to this country in May 1891. It is probable that despite his assertion that ‘he contemplates going out again’, he was, sadly, never to make a third visit to his family; his burial is recorded in Little Dunham in 1896.

It is Thomas Thompson’s poems, though, that give us an insight into the farmer’s soul, including his mixed feelings at leaving his home village for Australia, for he writes:

Farewell to old England I am going from home,

I’m going to leave you and going from home;

I’m going across the salt sea for to roam,

Far far from old England, far away from my home.

Farewell peaceful cottage, farewell happy home,

Where I once was so happy, so happy at home;

But friends have forsook me and caused me to roam,

So I never more shall be happy at home.

Farewell, Little Dunham, the place of my birth,

For of all other places tis thee I love best;

I’d a few friends in Dunham, I once loved sincere,

But they most have forsook me, so I could not stay there.

BATS

The Paston family of north Norfolk are best known for the surviving collection of letters dating from the fifteenth century, written to and by family members. They provide historians with an amazingly detailed insight into many aspects of upper-class life in medieval England.

The Pastons rose from humble origins into one of the four largest landowners in the country during the Tudor era. One member of this great family who used his wealth to the benefit of others was Sir William Paston, who established a Free Grammar School in North Walsham. He also founded the almshouses in the village of Paston, where he lived in Paston Hall. Although the hall has long since disappeared from the landscape, the nearby thatched Great Barn, built by Sir William in 1581 as a grain store and threshing barn, still stands and is the only complete building remaining from the Paston Estate. It is a grand building, approximately 70m long and 16m high and has been designated a Grade II listed building by English Heritage due to its architectural and historical importance.

Paston’s sixteenth-century Great Barn offers a haven for wildlife today. (George Plunkett)

Over the centuries, the Great Barn has played host to many farm animals but today it is home to one of the few colonies of barbastelle bats in the country. The barbastelle is distinguishable by its short, upturned nose and has long, silky blackish-brown fur. The scientific name Barbastella comes from the Latin for ‘star beard’ and refers to the white tips on the bat’s fur.

Although there are a handful of other colonies of barbastelle bats in England, the Paston colony are the only ones who roost in a building, the others being in trees. The barbastelles mostly roost in the large crevices in the timber lintels over the barn doors.

Seven other species of bats have been recorded in and around the Great Barn, including the Nathusius’ pipistrelle and Natterer’s, as well as the common and soprano bat. Because of the protected status of the bats, the barn and the surrounding area has been designated a Biological Site of Scientific Interest, as well as a Special Area of Conservation. There is, understandably, no public access to the Great Barn, which is currently leased from the North Norfolk Historic Buildings Trust by English Nature.

***

Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson is, unarguably, Norfolk’s most celebrated son. He was born into a relatively prosperous family in Burnham Thorpe, where he was the sixth of eleven children of the local rector. Nelson attended the grammar school in North Walsham founded by Sir William Paston, and then King Edward VI Grammar School in Norwich.

His highly successful naval career began at the age of 12 in 1771 and the young Horatio discovered that he suffered from seasickness, a complaint he experienced for the rest of his life. By 1793, Captain Nelson was on HMS Agamemnon and it was while in command of this sixty-four-gun ship, which battled the French Navy in Corsica, that he was struck in the right eye by debris. Many people mistakenly believe that he lost his eye completely but although he regained partial sight in his damaged eye, by his own account, Nelson could only ‘distinguish light from dark but no object’.

Four years later, the newly promoted Rear Admiral Nelson fought against a Spanish fleet in the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, when his right arm was hit by a musket ball. The arm was so badly shattered that it had to be amputated.

A Nelson in cricket is a term applied to a score of 111 or its multiples (known as double Nelson, triple Nelson, etc.) and is thought to be extremely unlucky. One explanation of such a strange term for this cricketing superstition is that it refers to the one eye, one arm and one leg that Nelson is said to have lost. This is clearly not accurate, as he never lost a leg. Other sources quote the fact that the term applies to Nelson’s three major naval victories (won, won, won). It is, however, more likely that 111 merely refers to the shape of the game’s wicket without its bails and therefore clearly represents misfortune for the team batting.

***

Like many other Norfolk villages, Old Buckenham has its own cricket club, which fields several men’s, women’s and youth teams. However, in contrast to other village clubs in the county, Old Buckenham’s ground has a rather distinguished past. It was created by a wealthy industrialist called Lionel Robinson as part of a larger expansion scheme at his home in Old Buckenham Hall. Robinson, who made his fortune as a stockbroker and financier during the mining boom in Australia and then on the London Stock Exchange, was known to entertain lavishly on his Norfolk estate, which he had purchased from Prince Frederick Duleep Singh in 1906.

As well as being a successful breeder and owner of racehorses, Lionel Robinson also enjoyed cricket. He reportedly used turf specially brought over from Australia to create the two pitches at Old Buckenham Hall and he employed former England captain Archie MacLaren as cricketing manager. Robinson’s personal team went on to play several first-class cricket matches, including against the touring South Africans in 1912, Cambridge University in 1913 and Oxford University a year later.

In 1919, the first international cricket match played in England after the First World War was played at Old Buckenham, between the home team and the Australian Imperial Forces.

Lionel Robinson died of cancer at Old Buckenham Hall in 1922 but not before he had managed, in 1921, to attract the touring Australian test team to play a three-day game at his cricket ground against an almost full-strength England side playing as L.G. Robinson’s XI.

BLACK

We could probably all have a stab at naming an author who wrote a one-hit wonder, where the writer has become well known on the strength of just one work. Norfolk has its own one-hit wonder of the literary world – and what a wonder it is, having sold over 50 million copies worldwide, as well as having had several film and television adaptations made.

The narrator of the book is not a human but a horse, the novel’s full title page reading ‘Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions. The Autobiography of a Horse. Translated from the original Equine by Anna Sewell.’

The author was born in Great Yarmouth in 1820 and, although her parents moved the family to London shortly afterwards, Anna Sewell and her brother were frequently sent to their grandparents’ farm in Buxton, near Aylsham. It was here that she learnt to ride a horse. However, at the age of 14, Anna had a fall and severely injured her ankles. For the rest of her life, she could not walk very far or stand without using a crutch. She therefore used horse-drawn carriages to get around, which contributed to her love of the animals, as well as her concern for the humane treatment of horses.

Jarrolds flagship department store is now one of Norwich’s well-known landmarks. (Tony Scheuregger)

Sewell’s Black Beauty was her only published work, which, in fact, came out just five months before she died. Although it is usually considered to be a children’s book, this was not her intention, more that she had a special aim to ‘induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses’. It was the Norwich publisher Jarrolds who published Black Beauty on 24 November 1877, having paid Anna Sewell a single, one-off payment of £40. In 2015, Jarrolds produced a hardback reprint of the 1912 edition of the novel with colour illustrations by British artist Cecil Aldin.

***

The colour black is, of course, associated with mourning for a deceased loved one. Mourning crêpe (or crape) was the fabric of choice for clothes worn for this. The meaning of the word ‘crape’ is to curl or to crimp and the crimp in the wool was obtained by twirling the thread by hand before it was woven, causing the fabric to shrink in hot water.

Before the seventeenth century, mourning crape was made from wool, particularly worsted wool manufactured in Norfolk. Then in the early 1600s, Norwich manufacturers started making a lighter crape fabric using silk in the warp instead of wool. This was known as bombazine and, for many years, Norwich had an almost monopoly of this trade. By the 1800s, mourning crape was made entirely from silk.