If a picture paints a thousand words

then why can't I paint you? The world will never know, the you I've come to know...........

No, don't worry, I've not gone totally mad!

I am just thinking about our family photographs and what we do with them. I normally, if I think of it, write on the back, in soft pencil, the name, dates and details of the person concerned.

I have this lovely picture of my great, great, great grandmother, Lydia. She was a wonderful lady, in my mind anyway.

Born in 1812 and married in 1831. She had her first child in 1832, lost her husband in the same year and re-married in 1834. From her second marriage, she added another twelve children to her family, though two died as infants. Her second husband died in 1868 and she went on to live to the very end of the century, laid to rest on the 29th December 1899.

Her photograph shows me an elderly lady, but I know a lot more about this face that looks at me from the C19th. I know her descendants have spread all over this world. They live in Canada, Australia, France and my Mum, her great great granddaughter, still lives in the village that she called home for her entire life.

There is no marker to where she was laid to rest, but her genes live on, who needs a memorial, I'm her memorial!

Glynn

Queues outside the bathroom........

I have had a busy couple of days and today, I have been putting together some information for my book about living conditions in the 19th Century. It is amazing how far we have come in a few years.

This morning, I was in the garden having a coffee with my wife when I saw the bathroom blind go down. I had wanted to get into the bathroom before going into town, but the blind going down signalled that the bathroom was going to be out of bounds for at least 30 minutes as our 17 year-old son had beat me to it! I did some more paperwork and then stood outside the door making a nuisance of myself till a towel-clad teenager appeared, in no particular hurry, "I'll be out in a minute!" door closes and teeth brushing noises, then door opens, big grin and I get in at last!

The reason I'm telling you this is that I have been looking through a newspaper of 1850 and a little part of it is included here. Most 1850 newspapers are very boring, but I find the adverts and specially the property auction adverts, to be fascinating. We only have one bathroom, we have another wc downstairs, but only one bathroom. More and more people are having en-suite bathrooms these days, some houses are being built with all en-suites and I expect one day, it will be only the poor who have the one bathroom for a family to share.

When I was a child, we had a bathroom indoors because my uncle and my Dad had put the bath in, but we had a toilet down the yard, it was bucket under a wooden seat. My grandparents had an outside toilet too, but theirs was very scary to me as it was just a big hole in the ground, a vault that my grandfather had to dig out every so often. At least we had our own toilets.

These poor people in 1850 had to share an outside privy with other houses! You will see, from the advert, that the seven houses shared a privy on the property of No 2, what it doesn't tell you is how many people that included. In 1851 there were people of those names apart from Robert Sadler, all living in the same lane, (Paradise Lane), those people appear to have had to share the same privy, (it could have been more than one seat), how many people were living there in 1851? 47! Yes forty-seven! Yet I am moaning about not being able to get into the bathroom when I want?

How times change!

Glynn

Grey Days

Oh well, some days are good and some days are not so good. You know what I mean, the times you get up and wish you could swap your head over, like Worzell Gummage.

We went for a bike ride today to blow the cobwebs away and it is great to get out into the Norfolk countryside.

This little chap looks ready to meet the world, Teddy at the ready, gosh weren't I sweet?

I must get up in the loft and see if Teddy is OK.

GB

World War II

Like most of you reading this, I am too young to remember the war. I count myself very lucky that I have never known fighting on our own shores, but I am also very aware that there are wars going on around us all the time, our own country deeply involved in them and our own men getting killed.

The thing that has bought this all up today is the local museum which is just up the road from where I live. It has held a "Village at War" weekend and there are hundreds of people there today, enjoying the sunshine and this afternoon we had a Spitfire and Hurricane fly over the house. Even I can recognise the drone of their engines!

I just feel so thankful to those men and women who fought so that we can be here today, in comfort. I don't want to get negative, but I often wonder what they would think if they saw how Great Britain has turned out.

Rain rain go away, come again another day.......

Oh well, I don't suppose it matters to me as I plan to type up a load of notes that I took in the record office last week, but it is a trifle annoying to see the rain again this morning. It is a bank holiday here this week-end after all and so many people and organisations have events planned.





Farmers are having a terrible time this year too, their fields are just mud and the crops are too wet to harvest. The days that they can cut are few and far between and even then, the grain needs to be dried at a very high cost! I see bread going up again in the very near future!





One farmer I know has started to plough, that is sad, brown fields normally signal the end of summer!





My head always pops off to the past and I only have to think of harvest to get the taste of a tomato sandwich and I am back to the harvest fields of my childhood. In those days, in the 1960's, my Dad worked on the local farm and, in the harvest, the only time we saw him, or so it seemed, was when we took him his tea in the field. We used to have tomato sandwiches and that taste still reminds me of the smell of straw, the sun on my back and the scratched legs from the stubble fields.



Back to the real world............................................

G

Some interesting finds.

It is amazing what things turn up in the most unexpected places.

I was looking through the local newspaper the other week, hoping to find some information on a family I was researching. I did find what I was looking for, but the other pieces of information on the same page just prove how important such sources are.

1882

John Ellis Brown, 23 a Blacksmith, pleaded guilty of stealing two fowls, value 3/- (15p), the property of Paul Bollingbroke Johnson, at Carleton Rode, on the 31st of January..... sentenced to fifteen months' imprisonment with hard labour.

John Howlett was idicted for the manslaughter of Nathan Kemp at Swaffham on the 1st of July.

On the night in question, which was a fine, moonlit night, the prisoner, accompanied by his brother and a woman named Lavender, was driving from Swaffham to Cley. It seems, from the article that Mr Howlett was supposed to have been driving furiously and on the wrong side of the road, coming into collision with the cart of the deceased. Mr Kemp was thrown out of his cart and sustained a fracture of the skull.

Kemp's cart was found laying three feet from the bank on the right side of the road. The road was 17 1/2 feet wide. Howlett's cart was very close to the bank on the right side of the road and Kemp was found laying on the bank. It was stated that the prisoner and his brother had called out to Kemp, when he was approaching to get out of the way, other witnesses said that Kemp was driving furiously and had been drinking at a public house in the neighbourhood.

The prisoner was found not guilty and discharged.

Sarah Howell was found guilty of stealing £54 from under the bed of her sick sister at Great Yarmouth, was sentenced to six months hard labour.

It all seems a little unfair when John Ellis Brown got fifteen months for stealing two chickens worth 3/- yet Sarah Howlett stole £54, a fortune in 1882, from her sick sister but only got six months!

Glynn

Norfolk Tours

Hi

As a researcher in family history and local history, I thought I would set up a blog to tell you what discoveries I am making at the moment.

I spend at least a couple of days each week in the Norfolk Record Office and a day in the Forum in Norwich too and I always find interesting snippets of information when I go. This week has been no exception.

In 1831, there was a lot of unrest in Norfolk because of the introduction of machines to carry out the work that farm labourerrs did, the labourers were not very happy, even though their wages were very low and they carried out a lot of damage to the threshing machines.

The Derby Murcury reported that Jonathon Bowman was transported for seven years and Daniel Hannant was transported for two years for damaging a machine, the property of B Chenery.

As this is my first blog, I will leave it there, I don't want to bore you on my first entry!

If you are interested in your family history and need help in Norfolk, or if you are planning a visit to our fine county, have a look at my website and drop me an e-mail, I will be pleased to hear from you.

Glynn

http://norfolktours.110mb.com/