West Norfolk – Norfolk Tales, Myths & More!

Norfolk: The ‘Bread or Blood’ Riots of 1816

By Haydn Brown.

Background:
During the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) it became difficult to import cheap grain into Britain which resulted in the price of bread increasing. Because wages failed to increase correspondently, many agricultural labourers were plunged into poverty. Then, following peace, the Tory government of the day, under Lord Liverpool, passed the Corn Laws to keep the price of grain artificially high. The consequences were that great social unrest quickly grew on the back of industrial and agricultural depression and high unemployment. The government had, effectively, increased taxation on imported wheat and grain to help pay for the costs of the Wars. Poor Laws had been designed to help alleviate financial distress of the poorer communities, but this system actually helped in keeping wages artificially low; the farmers knowing that labourers’ wages would be supplemented by the system.

Then there was the weather of 1815 when East Anglia suffered disastrously. After an “extremely changeable” January, came February which was “unseasonably warm and moist” which, in effect, lifted hopes that the season’s crops might recover. Some blame for this bad weather was attributed to the extraordinary eruption of Mt Tambora a ”super-colossal event”, the ash of which reduced the earth’s temperature by one degree; the years 1810 to 1819 were reckoned to have been the coldest since the 1690s. May and June of 1815 suffered heavy rainfall which in turn had the effect of ruining the harvest. Yet newspapers reported that both industrial and agricultural workers were already in “extreme distress”. The price of wheat increased by 33% between March and May and labourers were incapable of affording the prices of food.

As a consequence, rioting broke out in parts of East Anglia by the April and May of 1816. Areas particularly affected were in West Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. Apart from the significant disturbances in Littleport and Ely between Wednesday 22 and Friday 24 May 1816, riots had also broken out in Bury St Edmunds and Brandon in West Suffolk and Hockwold, Feltwell and Norwich in Norfolk on the previous Wednesday, 16 May of the same year. In fact, one of the first instances of rioting was on 17 April when a crowd assembled in Gedding and smashed some farming equipment. After that, Wattisham, Hitcham, and Rattlesden experienced disturbances on 24 April; Needham Market and Swaffham Bulbeck on 7 May; Bury St. Edmunds on 14 May; Brandon on 16-18 May Norwich on 16-20 May; Hockwold on 17 May; Feltwell on 18 May; Hockham on 19 May; Downham Market on 20-21 May 1816.

Rioting:
It was on the morning of 20 May when a meeting was held in Southery, Norfolk and a group, including a Thomas Sindall, left there and marched some eight miles or so through Denver to Downham Market; there they met with the magistrates at their weekly meeting at The Crown Inn. The mob of some 1,500, mainly men but some women, besieged the public house and, it was said, the magistrates of Pratt, Hare and Dering just about escaped with their lives by hiding. Circumstances, one way or another, allowed them to reassemble and agree for a deputation of eight rioters to be allowed inside in order to make their pleas; namely, demands for work and two-shillings (£8) per day. The magistrates readily agreed; unfortunately for the rioters, the authority had already called for troops from Upwell. Captain William Lee’s Upwell Yeomanry Cavalry arrived at around 5 o’clock in the afternoon on what was the first day of the riot, and though heavily armed the troops behaved in a disciplined way; as a result, no lives were to be lost. The Riot Act was duly read by Reverend Dering, but instead of calming down the atmosphere further tussles broke out, which only stopped after arrests were made. A subsequent newspaper report stated:

”On Saturday morning seven persons were fully committed for trial; and on Sunday and Monday last many more prisoners were brought in, what have not been examined. The Upwell troop were ordered to Wisbech on Saturday morning to meet the March and Whittlesey troops, the magistrates and inhabitants being fearful of outrages; but all is at present quiet there.”

The Observeron of 26 May 1816 reported the following:

“NORWICH, MAY 22. —A Court of Mayoralty was, held on Friday morning, when strong measures to preserve the peace were determined on. At sun-set a Captain’s guard of the West Norfolk militia were marched into the Hall; the Norwich Yeomanry cavalry under Capt. Hudson, assembled at the Swan Inn; a detachment of the 1st Royal Dragoons were under arms at the Horse Barracks; and the magistrates, constables, and a number of the respectable inhabitants, at the same time were assembled at the Hall. These demonstrations had, to a considerable degree, the desired effect; nevertheless, a large mob collected, who shewed a bad disposition, by breaking a number of lamps, windows, &c. The Magistrates and their assistants therefore proceeded in a body to the Market-place, and the Riot Act was read: several of the mob having surrounded them and behaved in a disorderly manner, three were taken into custody, and the rest refusing to disperse, after some had been allowed to do so, the military were called in, and were on their appearance received with volleys of stones, and their horses alarmed by throwing a large fire ball; they, however, succeeded in driving their assailants out of the market and dispersing them in every direction; several who resisted were committed to the gaol, and before eleven o’clock, everything was quiet. We are sorry to add, that several of the Yeomanry Cavalry received cuts and bruises from the stones, and one gentleman was thrown from his horse, and the animal falling upon him he was severely injured, but is now in a convalescent state. On Saturday the Magistrates issued a Proclamation, and having the same forces ready for preserving the peace, the market and streets were cleared at an early hour, without any damage being sustained. On Monday morning the persons who had been taken into custody were brought up for examination, when two were committed to gaol, and several bound over to take their trials at the Sessions and Assizes.”

A long article on May 27th dived into the economics of the issue. The Times, for instance, concluded that the government should not intervene in such a matter, and suggested that protestors were merely using high prices as a “pretence” for violence. However, The Times then placed the blame for “much of the disorderly conduct” on the Poor Laws. The paper suggested that the laws had led the poor to expect handouts, and when they did not get what they wanted they became unruly.

On 24th August 1816 the local papers had a field day on the back of their billboard announcement:

“This day is published A REPORT on The Trials of the Rioters at Downham and Feltwell. At the late Norfolk Assizes. To be had of the Printers of this Newspaper and all their Agents.”

Downham Riots 1816 (Vicary-Gibbs) — “Gibbs’s unpleasant voice, disagreeable temper, and jejune pedigree presented formidable handicaps at the start of his career. He initially employed himself as a special pleader, in which capacity he developed a good professional reputation, and was called to the bar in 1783. He proved successful, if acidulous, as an advocate, and powerful in marshalling evidence”. Born in Exeter son of an apothecary 1751, educated Eton, Cambridge. Retired 1818, died 1820. Source: Wikipedia; DNB

Many column inches were devoted to the trial before Lord Chief Justice Gibbs:

“William Bell, Amelia Lightharness and Hannah Jarvis were indicted for having on the 20th inst. together with various other persons riotously and tumultuously assembled at the parish of Southery from whence they proceeded to acts of theft and violence in the town of Downham …….Frances Wiseman stated that she kept a pork and sausage shop: that in the afternoon of the 20th a mob assembled in front of her house: that she observed the prisoner Amelia Lightharness, looking in at the shop window, and that immediately afterward the same prisoner opened the latch of the door and brought in several of the mob , telling them ‘this was the shop for good pork’. The witness further stated that her shop formed part of her dwelling house: that Amelia Lightharness was the first that entered and at her instigation the mob ransacked the shop of the witness taking away forcibly a quantity of pork and sausages. The shop window was broken by the violence of the people.”

“Maria Palmer, William Buxton and Zachariah Stebbing severally corroborated the first witness and the latter proved that all the above-named prisoners entered the shop of Mrs Wiseman and concurred with the acts of violence there committed. Bell and Jarvis severally produced evidence of good character. Verdict – All Guilty.”

“Thomas Thody, Charles Nelson, Daniel Harwood, the same Hannah Jarvis, Elizabeth King, Margaret Jerry and Elizabeth Watson. These prisoners were indicted as forming part of the same unlawful riotous assembly at Southery as before mentioned and for proceeding to assault William Spinks, at Downham aforesaid, and stealing from his person a certain quantity of meal and flour. William Spinks stated that he was an apprentice to Mr Baldwin, a miller at Downham and at the time of the riot had charge of his mill. That on 20th May at about two in the afternoon , he saw a large number of persons approach the mill whilst he was on the road alone about a furlong off ; that upon his coming up to them , they demanded of him the key of the mill , which he delivered to them through the impulse of fear ; that the persons so assembled had sticks and cudgels ; that upon him delivering the key , they proceeded to lay violent hands on the meal , flour and sacks found therein , some part of which they threw about and destroyed and the other part they carried away with them . This witness together with George Gillingham, Susan Stebbing, Pleasance Laws, and William Baldwin or some of them identified the persons of all the prisoners, and proved that Charles Nelson was the first who entered the mill. Verdict – All Guilty.”

“The same Thomas Thody , the same Daniel Harwood, the said Amelia Lightharness, William Youngs, Edward Mellon, and William Galley were indicted as part of the same unlawful and riotous assembly at Southery and having proceeded to Downham, for breaking open the dwelling house and shop of Samuel Bolton, a butcher there, and stealing therein and carrying away a certain quantity of pork the property of the said Samuel Bolton, the said Samuel Bolton and another being in the house and being put in fear . Samuel Bolton stated that on the said 20th May he had given the mob some meat, in the hope of pacifying them; that about five o`clock in the afternoon of the same day, they came in a large body to his house and demanded more which he said he was unable to give them. Upon this occasion Thody, Harwood and a man named Fendyke who is still at large, appeared to be the ringleaders. Harwood said if witness did not give them more, they would have all there was in the shop. To this menace uttered by Harwood the witness replied, ‘he would be damned if they should’, and immediately closed and bolted the door, and went toward the kitchen for the purpose of finding two guns, with which he meant to defend his property. Before he had reached his guns however, the mob forced open the door and stripped the shop of all meat to the value of £5 or £6.”

“These prisoners were all identified as taking an active part on this occasion by the concurrent testimony of the last-named witness and Thomas Bolton, Zachariah Stebbing, and Ann Springfield. Verdict – All Guilty.”

”The same Thomas Thody, the same Daniel Harwood, Frances Porter , John Bell and John Blogg were indicted as parties to the same unlawful and riotous assembly, and for breaking open the dwelling house of John Parkinson in Downham aforesaid, no person being therein, and feloniously stealing and carrying away a quantity of flour and various articles of wearing apparel found therein. Hannah wife of the said John Parkinson who is a tailor and baker and keeps a general shop at Downham, stated that being terrified at the appearance of the mob, they had, on the said 20th May last, shut their shop, and retreated to the house of a neighbour. The mob did proceed to Mr Parkinson’s house and shop as was expected and after they were gone away, the witness with her family returned, upon which they found the house had been broken open and they missed from the shop there, waistcoats, shawls, shoes, flour and other articles.”

“The evidence of the last witness corroborated by her daughter Charlotte Parkinson, Richard Gamble, Thomas Mallett Bailey, Wm. Gamble, Charles Smith, and James Weston, was sufficiently clear to establish the charge against all the prisoners except John Bell who had not been seen in the house but had been afterwards met with a ham under his arm. The latter prisoner was therefore acquitted and the others found – all Guilty.”

”John Stearne was indicted for larceny only , he having on the said 20th May , demanded cheese of William Oakes of Downham. William Oakes stated that the prisoner came with a mob and demanded cheese, which he delivered to him through fear, observing at the same time that he himself wanted it as much as they did. Samuel Johnson, landlord at the Crown Inn, at Downham stated, that on the same day the prisoner Stearne brought a cheese to his house and divided it amongst the mob. Verdict – Guilty.

“The same John Stearne, the same Thomas Thody, and John Pearson, were indicted for breaking open the Crown Inn, in Downham, with other persons, for assaulting the said Samuel Johnson, the landlord, and for stealing from his person, meat, flour and other provisions. Mr Johnson identified the persons of the prisoners Thody and Pearson as having been the foremost of the party who first broke in by force, but the prisoner Stearne was not observed by him until he (Stearne) produced the cheese, which was sometime after the forcible entry. Stearne was therefore acquitted. The other prisoners were both found Guilty.”

“In addressing the Jury upon the several indictments for riot , the Chief Justice very clearly explained the law to them, that in tumultuous assemblies of this nature, not only the parties which commit any acts of violence are answerable to the law, but likewise all persons who by joining a mob give sanction to their unlawful proceedings were in the eye of the law equally guilty of any outrage which was committed by any of such mob…….… In allusion to the good characters which most of the prisoners adduced in their favour, with respect to the honesty and peaceable habits of their lives, the Judge emphatically observed, that nothing could more clearly show the necessity of suppressing such disorderly and mischievous proceedings as were subject of these trials. Persons who had heretofore acted honestly and had been good members of society, had now by deluding one another in the vain hope of redressing those grievances which their proceedings only tended to aggravate, evinced their peaceable dispositions by unlawfully assembling to the terror of well-disposed persons, and their honesty by forcibly seizing the property of others.”

“Having convicted the ringleaders at Downham, sufficient had been done to answer the purposes of the prosecution on the part of the Crown, which could only be to show persons who were disposed to join in such tumultuous proceedings, that these transactions cannot take place with impunity, for a day of reckoning must come sooner or later.”

The Chief Justice then proceeded to pass sentence of transportation for seven years on John Stearne who had been indicted and convicted of larceny only. ……the charge against him not having been laid capitally.

“This being done the following prisoners , who had been capitally convicted of rioting, 16 in number (viz, William Bell, Amelia Lightharness, Hannah Jarvis, Thomas Thody, Charles Nelson, Daniel Harwood, Elizabeth King, Margaret Jerry, Elizabeth Watson, Lucy Rumbelow, William Youngs, Edward Mellon, William Galley, Frances Porter, John Blogg and John Pearson), were called before his Lordship to show cause why sentence of Death should not pass against them to die according to Law. The Chief Justice, then, in a very impressive manner passed that solemn sentence against them. His Lordship stated that on account of the good characters which some of them had borne, it would afford him high satisfaction if circumstances should appear to justify him in recommending their cases for a relaxation in the severity of their punishment. Nevertheless, he wished them not to be deluded into any ill-founded security. There were among them some who had excelled their fellows, and had stood foremost in the execution of their misguided and wicked actions. To these he could hold out no hope. His Lordship concluded by exhorting them all to use well the short time which might remain to them in this world, and to make their peace with Him before whom they must soon appear in the next.”

“Of the above 16 prisoners who received sentence of death, only two were left for execution, viz. Thody and Harwood“. All the others were reprieved, but being reprieved is not the same as being acquitted or discharged. After the ringleaders had been tried and convicted the following minor offenders were discharged on giving security for their good behaviour, viz. John Jerry, Harrison Bone, and John Bowers.”

Apart from these minor offenders, the remaining 14 sentenced to death and reprieved, were dealt with quickly and harshly. Of the Hilgay rioters William Young received one year’s hard labour. The Southery two Stearne and Bell got 7 and 14-years transportation. Of the Downham rioters Lucy Rumbelow received 6 months hard labour, Elizabeth Watson, at the age of 49, received a year`s hard labour, as did Margaret Jerry and Elizabeth King. The harshest sentences were given to Amelia Lightharness aged 23, Hannah Jarvis, aged 36, widow, and Charles Nelson, all of whom were sentenced to ‘Transportation for Life’.

Referring specifically to the Downham Market riots and the subsequent trial, Elizabeth Howard, principal contributor to the Downham Market History site, writes: “At the end, on that hot August Saturday, on Norwich Castle hill, there was a delay. A rumour of a reprieve – “and the execution not taking place until half past one, gave strength to that rumour.” But no urgent galloping horse, no urgent running man brought a reprieve. The due process of the law continued inexorably. A cynic might believe that a public hanging as late as half past one on a summer Saturday afternoon would guarantee to attract a bigger public audience, the better to educate them in the ways of the law versus the law breaker. Castle Hill was crowded with the curious and the ghoulish and the thrill seekers.

Downham Riots 1816 (Norwich Castle) — Norwich Castle and Prison. Image: Public Domain.

Daniel Harwood faced the hangman and “suffered with firmness the dreadful sentence of the law”. The Cambridge Chronicle went on to say that Harwood aged 22, “had been led away by bad example and in a moment of intoxication.” Harwood “was to have been shortly married, and that the unhappy object of his choice is now pregnant by him.” Thomas Thody the second of the Downham rioters held in Norwich Castle “when brought out, evinced great fear, which he expressed by convulsive shrieks and was obliged to be supported by several men.” He left a wife and two children.

Downham Riots 1816 (Coke)1 — William Coke of Holkham 1817.

There had been at least two attempts to halt the executions. Thomas William Coke of Holkham had written to Chief Justice Vicary Gibbs suggesting that the men, Thody and Harwood had been of previous good character and would certainly regret their actions and return to a quiet life. Pathetically, Daniel Harwood’s father Thomas had written to suggest that this was a tragic case of mistaken identity; his boy had been christened Dan, as the parish register of Gooderstone would show, not Daniel. He would get the parish register to the Chief Justice to prove it. And there was a long 70-plus signature petition from the townspeople of Downham asking for clemency. Privately, Chief Justice Vicary Gibbs reported to Coke of Holkham that these two had to hang, but the other rioters would be reprieved. It was reasonable. It was exemplary. No blood had been shed, but the townspeople had been terrified and their property had been stolen and severely damaged. The two would act as a deterrent to others who might consider rioting and smashing up and stealing the property of law-abiding citizens. The acquitted would go home and feel lucky to be alive.

Transportation:

Downham Riots 1816 (Prison Ship) — Prison Ship

The transportation of convicts to Australia was big business and many shipowners contracted their vessels to the Government. Ships of the Royal Navy used as transports tended to be in the final seaworthy years of their lives. Charles Nelson sailed out on the HMS Shipley with John Pearson He was fortunate and sailed from Woolwich on 20th November 1816, just a matter of months after the August sentencing in Norwich. They may well have been held in a prison hulk on the river Thames during that 3-month waiting period. For the women Amelia and Hannah, they had to wait before they were embarked on the ludicrously named ship ‘HMS Friendship’. They are reported removed from Norwich Castle in June 1817 and put on board the Friendship” now at Deptford awaiting orders to sail to the Bay.”

Downham Riots 1816 (Convict Ship) — An illustration of an 18th century British Convict Ship.

The convict ship Friendship departed England on 3 July 1817 – not to be confused with the First Fleet ship of 1788 of the same name, which had been beached for want of healthy crew to operate her. While off the coast of Madeira Captain Armet of the Friendship received on board six Spaniards and an American sailor who had almost perished being in just a small boat. They were pirates from South America and were later transhipped to an American vessel to be landed at Bonavista. After departure the ship then, on the night of 22nd September 1817, anchored off the coast of Africa. During the next morning, the cable parted from her anchor and the ship was in danger of being driven on to the breakers. This accident was averted and on the 15th October she arrived at St. Helena where she remained for a week before departing again for New South Wales, where it arrived in Port Jackson on 14 January 1818 with one hundred and ninety-seven female prisoners aboard; three women died on the passage – Ann Beal, Sarah Blower and Martha Thatcher. Jane Brown also died having thrown herself overboard.

The Shipley had a very smart crew and master and for Charles Nelson and John Pearson, a good ship`s surgeon in George Clayton who managed to get all convicts to Australia in reasonable health and without too many punishments. In fact, he writes in his journal that he was able to release most of the convicts during the journey of one and then both leg irons. Nevertheless 176 days with or without leg irons was a daunting prospect for convicts and guards alike. Charles Nelson and the HMS Shipley arrived at Sydney on 20th August 1817 and the last sight of him is in 1844 when he finally got his pardon. Twenty-eight years after his conviction and sentencing in Norwich, he was finally a free man again.

Downham Riots 1816 (Governor) — **Major General Lachlan Macquarie, (1762 – 1824)**
was a British Army officer and colonial administrator from Scotland. Macquarie served as the fifth and last autocratic Governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821, and had a leading role in the social, economic and architectural development of the colony. He is considered by historians to have had a crucial influence on the transition of New South Wales from a penal colony to a free settlement and therefore to have played a major role in the shaping of Australian society in the early nineteenth century. Wikipedia

Bad luck followed Amelia and Hannah all the way to Australia, where they arrived on 14th Jan 1818. Governor Macquarie wrote in his journal that Friendship “arrived 7th Jan re-quarantine on suspicion of contagious diseases.” and “re-arrival with female convicts with reports of prostitution on board”, also “26th Feb charges were brought against Capt. Armet and Peter Cosgreave the surgeon.” By 20th Feb Amelia and Hannah were embarked on the Duke of Wellington for yet another voyage into the unknown, this time and finally to Tasmania.

Downham Riots 1816 (Gov-Macquaries-Journal) — A page from Governor Macquarie’s Journal

Downham Riots 1816 (Aus. Newspaper)2a — The paragraph is taken from an Australian colony newspaper of 1817 and reads: “Yesterday morning, 28 of the female prisoners arrived in the Friendship were landed; 16 of whom having husbands in the colony were allowed to join them, and the remaining 12 went as servants into various families. Thirteen others who were afflicted with scorbutic diseases were sent to the General Hospital; and 56 were transhipped from the Friendship to the Duke of Wellington to be conveyed to Hobart Town together with 28 artificers and mechanics, sent from this settlement to be employed on the Government works there.” Image: Public Domain

There were four further sightings of Amelia Lightharness. Firstly, she married in 1820 a Samuel Cash in Hobart. Female convicts in the female Factories were offered to the men of the colony who could drop a handkerchief or similar at the feet of the female convict they had chosen. But then her ticket of leave was taken from her in 1823 because of “immoral conduct and living in a disorderly house.” Clearly her marriage to Samuel Best was not long lasting nor a success. Her ticket of leave was finally restored in 1832 and she died in 1834. She would have been about 40 years old. Hannah Jarvis did a little better. Internet posted family histories in Australia indicate that her two children born circa 1801 and 1804 in Norfolk finally joined her in Tasmania. She died in the newly named New Norfolk, in 1853.

Downham Riots 1816 (Aus. Newspaper)1a — From the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW: 1803 – 1842), Saturday 17 January 1818, page 3. Source: National Library of Australia. http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article 2177693

For the women who rioted, the punishment was vastly disproportionate to the crime. They never again achieved their freedom and had to endure one of the longest, hardest voyages of any having to call in at St Helena for desperately needed water and supplies before sailing on to Sydney. And as if that was not the worst, their captain and surgeon were capable of acts of abuse against a captive group of women. Is it any wonder that Jane Brown “threw herself overboard and was drowned?” Despair was the most likely reason not as given in the Ship News,” from a sudden irritability of temper.” If Chief Justice Gibbs and the law of the land believed that hanging was the worst punishment, they should have researched the lives of those transported, for women for the most part it was a far worse punishment than death.

And of the rest? John Pearson who travelled with Charles Nelson on the Shipley to Australia, does not appear again in any record. The two, John Stearne and William Bell both from Southery, who were sentenced to seven and 14-years transportation seem not to have made it on to a ship. Australia`s wonderful convict database has no sighting of either of them. Perhaps their sentences were commuted to imprisonment here. Of the other names, Lucy Rumbelow seems to have survived to 1861 still living locally; Elizabeth King, Elizabeth Watson and Margaret Jerry are glimpsed in the first census living locally quiet poor lives. Of the men, John Shinn appears in the 1841 census living in Downham. Harrison Bone is a shepherd living in Brancaster, Spencer Rayner, William Galley, and William Youngs live in the villages around Downham, heads down, unremarked and unremarkable.

Downham Riots 1816 (Sydney Harbour)1 — ‘View of Sydney Cove from Dawes Point’ by Joseph Lycett, c.1817/1818. Image: Greg Beeforth

The riots had unsettled the Government and over the next twenty years, a gradual humanising of the law and ideas of welfare for the poor started to emerge. By 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act had been passed. The destitute poor were to be housed in Union workhouses, but they were also to be fed, sheltered, clothed, to have a rudimentary education for children, some medical care, and protection and work. By the mid-1840s the dreadful Corn laws had been repealed, but not before nearly one third of the population of Ireland had died of starvation or been lost to emigration; in fact, parishes all over the country had forcibly emigrated their largest and poorest families.

Downham survived the mob of the “insurgent fenmen” and, in modern parlance, maybe lessons had been learned, maybe a distant memory of the sudden terror of an armed mob in the town inclined the magistrates and property and landowners to be a little more understanding in the future. And in a small way the tradesmen could hold their heads up in pride for having created a petition signed by 70-plus of them asking the Chief Justice for clemency. Perhaps the ordinary man in the street knew not only about being hungry, but about the terrors of transportation and the loss of freedom, the inescapable exile.

THE END

Sources:
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Ely_and_Littleport_riots_of_1816www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/poorlaw/speen.htmhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws
https://www.historicalclimatology.com/blog/bread-or-blood-climate-insecurity-in-east-anglia-in-1816
www.downhammarkethistory.co.uk/downham-riots-1816/
http://www.downham.blogspot.com/2013/04/downham-riot-1816.html

May 1816: Disturbances in Norfolk, Suffolk and Devon

https://www.jenwilletts.com/convict_ship_friendship_1818.htm
National Archives , Kew
British Newspaper Archive : AJ Peacock , Bread or Blood , 1965: National Portrait Gallery, London : National Archives of Australia : TROVE.
“Disturbances in Norfolk And Suffolk.” The Times, May 23, 1816, pp. 3. The Times Digital Archive
“Monthly Agriculral Report.” The Observer, Feb 04, 1816, pp. 4, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer.
“Monthly Agricultural Report.” The Observer, May 05, 1816, pp. 4, ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer.

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A Murderer Amongst King’s Lynn School’s Staff!

By Haydn Brown.

The subject of the gibbet has become a topic of correspondence of late. Amongst the names of those who were so called ‘gibbeted’ for a crime is a Eugene Aram of Knaresborough in the County of Yorkshire. He suffered this fate in 1759.

Here, it should first be said that Eugene Aram was born in 1704 in the village of Ramsgill, near Harrogate to a family of labourers, his father being a gardener. But Aram was bright; his intellectual energy and quick mind enabled him to gain an education and to discover and develop a particular gift for languages, especially ancient ones. He was therefore, not the typical eighteenth-century murderer, for he had become an educated professional, a published author of works of philology who, at the time of his arrest at the King’s Lynn Grammar School, was working on his comparative lexicon of Latin, Greek and Celtic.

A note of Eugene Aram’s appointment as an usher at King’s Lynn Grammar School in February 1758, as it appears in the minutes and memoranda of the King’s Lynn Town Council. King’s Lynn Borough Archives, Hall Books, KL/C 7/13.

But before then, and after spending some time without success in London, he returned to Knaresborough and became a teacher, marrying and fathering seven children whilst at the same time gradually running up debts. Matters became particularly sour when he made the acquaintance of a shoe-maker, Daniel Clark, whose wife was a woman of means. Clark was spending lavishly and running up debts with local traders. Then, on 7 February 1744 he vanished. This set tongues wagging and by April 1745, Aram was starting to feel insecure; he abandoned his wife and children, moving from town to town before he was appointment as an usher at King’s Lynn Grammar School in February 1758. At that time the school was housed above the 14th-century Charnel Chapel, alongside St Margaret’s Church on Saturday Market Place. Later it was to become a Workhouse.

A pre 1914 view of the ‘New Shambles’ (meat market downstairs and King’s Lynn Grammar School upstairs) once stood near the site of the Saturday market place until 1914. Eugene Aram taught in the grammar school. Wikipedia.

The Plaque showing the site of the former St John’s Charnal Chapel between 1364 and 1779. In front was a row of butcher’s Shambles. Above, for a time, was the King’s Lynn Grammar School in which Aram’s taught until his arrest.

At first it was thought Aram had run away to escape his debts; his friends assuming that he had also fled with a quantity of valuable goods he had acquired illegally. At the same time Daniel Clark remained unaccounted for, even a ‘no questions asked’ reward of £15 (more than £3,000 in today’s money) was offered for information, but there were no takers.

Thirteen years later, the discovery of bones in St Robert’s cave. just outside Knaresborough led to speculation that Aram and another man, Richard Houseman, had conspired to kill Clark and steal his possessions. Aram was traced and arrested; this came about when a visiting horse trader to King’s Lynn recognised him, and the wheels of justice began to turn. In the same year, a skeleton was discovered in St Robert’s Cave near Knaresborough which did not do any favours for Aram. At some point his property was searched and some of Clark’s booty was found in Aram’s Garden as well as those of other friends. Aram was later to say that Clarke had left the goods there. Also, Houseman, who seemed by some to be far more suspicious, was to turn King’s Evidence and testified that Aram had murdered Clark.

St Robert’s Cave, Knarsborough in which bones were found. Mark Pallant.

The saying “hell hath no fury……” seems to have been appropriate for Mrs Aram, Eugene’s abandoned wife; she was quick to accuse him of the murder of Daniel Clark. Added to this was the rumours going around of an affair between her and Clark, which added more fuel to the fire. Aram was taken back to Yorkshire and tried for murder.

At his trial, in August 1759, Aram decided, unwisely as it turned out, to conduct his own defence. He questioned the identification of the bones and asserted his own good character but did not challenge the shaky, inconsistent and unreliable evidence of his former friend, Houseman. Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, Aram was convicted and sentenced to death. Accordingly, Aram was executed at York Castle, after an unsuccessful attempt to end his own life in prison, and his body returned to Knaresborough, where his gibbet was erected close to the scene of crime, overlooking the river Nidd; his body remained there, gradually decomposing, for at least 25–30 years.

There was great public interest in Aram’s crime and trial. The association between the apparently gentle and scholarly man and violent murder for material gain was unusual and, combined with the instability of the evidence on which he was convicted, resulted in a widespread belief that the wrong man had been executed. His biographer, Norrison Scatcherd, even described the riots and threats with which Houseman was greeted on his own return to Knaresborough.

Historical image of Eugene Aram

Historical image of Eugene Aram and the incident.

Aram’s story was irresistible to cultural producers of the period. Bulwer-Lytton’s novel ‘Eugene Aram (1831)’, giving Aram a beautiful and brilliant lover, romanticised the story. Bulwer-Lytton’s Eugene Aram, though involved in the death of Clark, was the victim of circumstances and no murderer. The novel was adapted for the stage and had a successful run with Henry Irving in the title role. Thomas Hood’s narrative poem “The Dream of Eugene Aram” (1829) was recited by generations of schoolchildren. PG Wodehouse even has Bertie Wooster quoting Hood’s poem in proper Wooster style – (something along these lines): Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tumty-tum, I slew him, tum-tum tum! (PG Wodehouse, Jeeves Takes Charge, 1916) Hood’s Aram, though guilty, was thoughtful, penitent and intelligent: a sympathetic hero. Bulwer-Lytton’s novel and Hood’s poem are the best known of Aram’s literary incarnations, but there were many more – forty-one, including a stage play and at least three films.

Gustave Doré’s engraving of Eugene Aram. Photostock.

At some point, probably before the end of the eighteenth century, a doctor called Hutchinson, then practising in Knaresborough, decided to augment his private cabinet of curiosities with the skull of Eugene Aram and managed to remove it from its gibbet cage. But why was Hutchinson so keen to acquire Aram’s skull? Maybe it was simply that he wanted it as a curiosity because of its association with a significant local event—and one which had attracted national attention – who knows!

The skull resided in Hutchinson’s personal museum until he died, when it passed to his widow’s second husband, and his former assistant, Mr Richardson, a surgeon from Harrogate. When, in 1837, the young Dr James Inglis, burning with phrenological zeal, took up a post as physician at the public dispensary in neighbouring Ripon, it is probable that he found out about Aram’s skull from Richardson, as a fellow medical man working in a neighbouring town. It was Inglis who presented the skull to the Newcastle meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1838.

5. Aram’s skull. Norfolk Museums Service.

The skull then passed from Dr Richardson to his step-grandson, John Walker, in whose private collection it remained, first at Malton in Yorkshire and then at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, when Walker moved house. He presented the skull to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1869, by which date it had become something of a strange embarrassment to its owner, an Anglican minister, who therefore sought to place it in a museum. The skull was included in Sir William Flower’s catalogues of the Royal College collections in 1879 and 1907 and remained in that museum until 1993 when it was given to King’s Lynn Borough Council and passed to the Old Gaol House Museum in the town.

Today, and for anyone who is interested, there are three last bits to this story. In the Stories of Lynn Museum there are exhibited in the old gaol cells: Aram’s skull, a fragment of Clark’s skull, and a small pill box made of the wood from the gallows on which Aram was hung.

THE END

Sources: Tarlow S. (2017) The Afterlife of the Gibbet. In: The Golden and Ghoulish Age of the Gibbet in Britain. Palgrave Historical Studies in the Criminal Corpse and its Afterlife. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60089-9_3. Link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/978-1-137-60089-9_3 Also: https://norfolkrecordofficeblog.org/2019/03/12/a-murderer-in-the-school-the-case-of-eugene-aram-of-kings-lynn/
https://web.archive.org/web/20151224161853/http://lifeloom.com/Eugene_Aram.htm

Banner Heading Image: This is the Caxton Gibbet, which is on the old Ermine Street Roman Road where it crosses the Cambridge to St Neots Road. Wikipedia.

Miss Savidge’s Version of ‘Moving House’!

By Haydn Brown.

The story of Miss May Savidge is not new; it has done its rounds on television via ‘Bygones’ and the Antiques Roadshow, YouTube, newspapers, social media and local history groups. But it does have an endearing theme which makes it readable with all who discover it for the first time. For that reason, I am ressurecting the detail in the hope that a fresh audience will find it. And, where better to start her story than where it reached its final conclusion – at Wells-Next-The-Sea in Norfolk. This was where the love of her life – Ware Hall House, ended up!

But first, let’s establish its actual location, which is not an easy task as the house, from one direction at least, is hidden down a pathway and behind a curved wall. It is, however, not too far from The Buttlands and if one exits that place by walking down the hill from its south-west corner, Ware Hall House come easily into sight. It is, in fact, a medieval house which was originally built some 100 miles from Wells-Next-The Sea, at Ware in Hertfordshire. Why, you may well ask, would a house of that vintage need to find an excuse to move its roots?

Well, this particular part of May’s story continued from the 1970’s when the house was brought, in many parts, to Wells by Miss May Savidge and rebuilt over a period of 23 years, first by her and then finished by her niece, Christine Adams, after May had died. What follows is very much about May and her determination to see off death-watch beetles, rats, developers, bureaucracy, planners who threatened to demolish her historic cottage under a road-building project – and even her eventual failing health – and accompanied only by her faithful dog, Sasha. But who was May, and why did she move her 15th-century Ware Hall House from one County to another!

Born in Streatham, South London, in 1911, May Savidge was just ten when her father died of heart failure, plunging the family into poverty. As soon as she was old enough to go out to work for a living, she found a job with the Ministry of Aircraft Production where she trained to become a draughts-woman; as thing were to work out, this skill was to hold her in good-stead years later.

At a relatively young age of 16 years, May met an older man, his name was Denis Watson; he was a gifted Shakespearean actor and they had planned to marry; however, after they became engaged Denis died prematurely in 1938. It was said that May never completely recovered from this blow and continued to wear his signet ring on her wedding ring finger. She also retreated into herself for a time, that is, until she entered into a 17-year courtship with a man she believed would marry her. His name is not known, but from letters found amongst her many belongings discovered after her death many years later, he wrote a devastating letter to May in 1960. In it he revealed to her that he has simultaneously found God and fallen in love with his cousin, stating:

‘I have, thanks to God, seen my dear cousin Iris in a new and wonderful light……I know this will hurt you as I know only too well how you feel towards me. I pray to the Lord that you, too, may experience this most wonderful love…….I should like nothing better than for you to regard us as a new sister and brother. I would like to bring Iris to see you when you feel like it, I know you, too, will love her – everybody does!’

Clearly cut to the quick, May wrote back:

‘It surprises me that anyone so dear and lovable as your Cousin Iris should have thought it right to come between us, after 17 years. My heart is not made of stone. You often spoke of our marriage. Is it surprising that I thought you really cared? I hope you will be more faithful to Iris than you have been to me. Goodbye.’

Next to these letters was a photo of her former fiancée, Denis, playing Hamlet! From that moment on May wrapped her broken heart in a parcel, tied it with string and hid it at the back of her attic to be discovered years later. She became a loner, a spinster – but not through choice.

May Savidge’s 15th century house in Ware, Hertfordshire.

Then in 1947 she bought a house with the intention of restoring it. The address was No. 1 Monkey Row, Ware, Hertfordshire, a house built around 1450 for a wealthy monk as a ‘hall house’, a medieval arrangement in which the living space was attached to an open hall overlooked by a minstrel’s gallery. At the time of May’s purchase, the remainder of the house was still being used as a bakery. Encouraged by her wish to renovate it, the Local History Society launched their own research exercise into the property, soon finding they could date it even further back, to 1415, when Monkey Row was used daily by monks, and named Monke Road.

As a self-taught home improvement enthusiast, May set about exposing the heavy oak beams of the house, each bearing the marks of medieval carpenters, and she lifted crumbling lino to reveal wide, hand-cut floorboards which needed to be preserved. She employed a builder to repair the roof, but for all the rest of the work – including brick-laying, carpentry, re-glazing and stripping plaster from the ceilings and 20 layers of paper from the walls and re-plastering – she did with her own hands.

Then in 1953, having spent so much of her time renovating her house, the Council told May that they had planned for it to be demolished to make way for a road sometime in the future! In her eyes, that was nothing less than vandalism, forcing her to declare her form of outright war! May dug her heels in and resolved to save the building and for 15 years, she fought the Council’s plans, writing to them at one point:

‘If this little house is really in the way, I would rather move it and re-erect it than see it destroyed.’ She also separately commented: ‘I just won’t have such a marvellous old house bulldozed into the ground……. I’ve got nothing to do all day, so I might as well do the job myself.’

By 1969, when she was 58 years of age, but before the bulldozers were primed to advance, May effectively embarked on a 23-year labour of love and life of hardship. Dressed in a workman’s apron and her greying hair tucked beneath a headscarf, she single-handedly began first to number each beam, tile and pane of glass so that her home could be reassembled like a giant jigsaw puzzle. She then organised the dismantling of the heavy oak timber frame, held together with tapered wooden pegs; this was both difficult and dangerous and a team of local demolition contractors offered to help. Thousands of hand-made Hertfordshire peg tiles from the roof were piled high on the ground and huge timbers were laid out in a set order and in various and appropriate sizes. She had no electricity and worked by the light of Victorian paraffin lamps. She used an alarm clock to set herself targets each day; even noting how many nails she had extracted from oak beams per hour, as she dismantled the house and prepared for rebuilding. May even traced over a sample of brickwork using greaseproof paper and crayons so that she would know which bond to use and how thick to lay the mortar. Eventually, all these materials would all be loaded on to a lorry alongside Tudor fireplaces, Elizabethan diamond leaded glass and more, for a rebuild she might not have already realised, could span the rest of her life.

May cataloging and storing the house materials prior to transporting to Norfolk.

But doggedly, she pressed on and continued to live in the house as it was being taken down, sleeping beneath the stairs – even in the freezing cold. All this time, charitable local reaction continued to build up and even leading to complete strangers offering help to May. Some sent her money to help with the inevitable expense and many became life-long friends. One was said to have commented: ‘Yours is the spirit that once made Britain great!’ May even woke up one morning with an idea which she considered to be a brainwave. On the basis that ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’ she hastily wrote to the R.A.F; she simply asked if they could possibly supply a helicopter and ‘lift and move the house for her’; they, unsurprisingly, sent a negative reply, saying unfortunately, the load was too big and they felt, much too risky. Even if they could, the journey would need to be painfully slow, given the age and structure of what they would be moving; it was a diplomatic way of saying No!

But this was the point when May already knew where she and her entire house would be going, and she had already found a site on which the house would sit; it happened to be in the seaside town of Wells-next-the-Sea in Norfolk. Taking the next step, May had also secured the necessary planning permission to re-build, and went as far as to employ a Wells builder to lay the foundations. All it needed was for a lorry to make 11 round trips, between Ware in Hertfordshire and Norfolk, every part and section of May’s dismantled house.

Back in Hertfordshire, the dismantled parts had been stacked up and stored around the garden, ready for their long journey. Visibly, the scene resembled a builder’s yard, in which everything was arranged with strict military precision. All bricks were placed together as were roof tiles in neatly stacked rows and seemingly innumerable piles of wooden beams, roof joints and more. Screws, nails, hinges, door handles, hooks, door knobs, nuts & bolts; cabling, dozens more items and maybe a few other possessions as well all had their own place, box or container. This neat arrangement even suggested that May would immediately know if any single item had been the least bit disturbed!

And when the day came for the first load to leave for Wells, three men and a lorry made the first of eleven round trips to Norfolk, to ensure every single part of the house – regardless of size or type – was moved. With the completion of this manoeuvre, May’s 20-year reconstruction programme continued; her temporary home at Wells being a former holiday caravan. Conditions there would often be unbearably cold, but she remained doggedly determined to press on; her niece, Christine Adams told the Fakenham Ladies Circle Club in 1971:

“My mother brought us up to believe there’s no such word as can’t” and this possibly fuelled her determination to continue and succeed.”

Two years later, the main framework had been fixed to the foundations by a local carpenter and May had also started to infill the brickwork; her still somewhat limited experience of this skill had been honed during her previous repair of the same house at Ware, that skill would be honed further over the coming years; but she was determined to lay every single brick perfectly – and it might still be another eight years before the roof tiles were put in place and the property made watertight.

By her 70s, May had almost moved in as the house now stood proudly in its new surroundings. Each old oak beam had been correctly placed, the brickwork nearly completed and most walls plastered. Despite her age, she still continued to build, climbing the layers of scaffolding daily to reach the upper floors, top windows or whatever else required her attention. By 1986, the Queen had heard of May’s incredible project and immediately invited her to a garden party at Buckingham Palace. But now it seemed, May was running out of steam and in 1992 she installed a small wood-burner stove to heat the ‘new’ house, while already having difficulty climbing ladders. She also found cement work ‘a bit heavy’. Her failing health sometimes required home visits from the local doctor but reputedly, such conversations were only exchanged through the letterbox!

During 1993, May Savidge passed away peacefully, in the Wells Cottage Hospital just before her 82nd birthday, with the house still unfinished. The walls were up and the roof was on, but overall, it was still little more than a shell. However, in her Will the property had been left to members of her family and after May’s death, they subsequently finished it over the ensuing 15 years. Still standing not far from The Buttlands it is now the home of May niece, Christine Adams – and a B&B.

Footnote:
But there’s still one more story to tell about Miss May Savidge; she was, on the side, a collector extraordinaire and perhaps even a hoarder. It was a fact that May had filled her home to possibly resemble an overstocked curiosity shop. In the garden, were nine side-saddles, as relics of a bygone age. Boxes of unworn wartime nurses’ bonnets and May’s Service Medals lay inside heavy trunks, stacked to ceiling height. She kept packets of old-fashioned soap powder, Omo and Oxydol, alongside bottles of J Collis Browne’s Mixture, the Victorian cure-all.

There were thousands of train, bus and trolley bus tickets, milk bottle tops and notes left by the milkman. She reputedly kept old matchboxes, confectionery wrappers and still more which today, might be items eagerly sought by collectors or dealers. And in 440 diaries, she had listed every daily action carried out, revealing life in a Britain now lost – e.g., the use of farthings, florins, half-pennies, half-crowns, shillings, three-penny pieces, milk churns, chains, furlongs, yards, ounces, telegrams and typewriters on a much longer list. It was much of these memorabilia that was sold in order to raise funds to complete the renovation project left by May after she died.

She clearly had much dogged determination to pursue a passion that existed long before conservation became fashionable. May Savidge had decided to move her home lock, stock and barrel across Britain from the busy Ware High Street in Hertfordshire to peaceful Norfolk around 100 miles away. What a remarkable lady and such an incredible task she undertook!

THE END

Sources:
A Lifetime in the Building: The Extraordinary Story of May Savidge and the House She Moved, by Christine Adams with Michael McMahon, published by Aurum.
Christopher Weston, Norfolk Archive 2021.
Images: Courtesy of Christine Adams.

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Norfolk in Brief: The Bale Oak.

By Haydn Brown.

The village of Bale can be found just off the A148, which runs from Fakenham towards Cromer. There is some history here, not so much for being mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086, but for it’s famous ‘Bale Oak’, once an enormous tree with a trunk 36 feet in circumference. The Bale Oak is said to have been a gathering place for pagan worship before the coming of Christianity. Indeed, it is said the 14^th century church of All Saints was built beside the oak, in a place already considered sacred. By the early 18^th century, the oak was hollow and it was said that ten men could stand inside its trunk. The then Norfolk historian, Rev. Blomfield, added to the information by recording:

“A great oak at bathele near the church, its hollow so large that ten or twelve men may stand within it and a cobbler had his shop and lodge there of late and it is or was used for a swinestry.”

Bale Oak3 — Sir Willoughby Jones © Norwich Civic Portrait Collection

However, in 1795, the oak was severely damaged and was heavily pollarded, with the removed bark and some of the wood sold to the Hardy’s of Letheringsett for tanning. The tree never recovered and was deemed dangerous by the local populace; it was also subjected to abuse and this led to its removal in 1860 on the orders of the Lord of the Manor, Sir Willoughby Jones. There was said to have been much local mourning as the remains of the oak was taken in a cart to Cranmer Hall at Fakenham.

Bale Oak4 — Cranmer Hall. Photo: Pinterest.

The site was replanted with a grove of 12 Holm Oaks (Quercus Ilex) and may have been planted to commemorate the Bale Oak, although there is a record of oaks being planted there in 1617. The trees have been National Trust property since 1919, and are now ‘listed’ by that body as a ‘Place of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty’. A wooden sculpture now marks the approximate position of the original Bale Oak tree, and the trees that surround it have now grown to maturity and form a screen between the church and the road.

Bale Oak1 — The Bale Oak Site: © Copyright Humphrey Bolton

THE END

Norfolk’s George Townshend: Army Officer and Caricaturist.

By Haydn Brown.

George Townshend was born on 28 February 1723/24, the eldest son of Charles (3rd Viscount Townshend) and his wife Audrey Harrison. The Townshend family-owned extensive estates in Norfolk and elsewhere, but their ancestral home was Raynham Hall in Norfolk.

Townsend (Raynham Hall) — Raynham Hall, Norfolk. © Historic Houses.

George was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge, leaving there in 1742 to become a volunteer to the British Army in Germany, attached to the staff of Lord Dunmore, one of the general officers. He was present at the battle of Dettingen (16 June 1743) and also apparently at that of Fontenoy (30 April 1745), though a letter of Horace Walpole’s says that he was too late for any action!

Townsend (Battle of Dettingen_NAM) — The Battle of Dettingen was fought during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) in the area which is now southern Germany. When his retreat was cut off, King George II (1683-1760) successfully led a multinational force of British, Hanoverians, Dutch and Austrians against the French under the Duc de Noailles, inflicting heavy losses.
This was the last occasion when a reigning British monarch led his troops in person on the battlefield. As Duke of Cambridge, the King had already fought under Marlborough’s command at the Battle of Oudenarde in 1708. Although he displayed great personal courage, the King had little flair for higher military command and wisely left the conduct of the campaign to his generals. His victory at Dettingen brought him much popularity at home.

In May 1745 Townshend was appointed a captain in Bligh’s Regiment (later the 20th Foot). On the outbreak of the Jacobite rebellion in that year he returned to Britain, joined his regiment, which fought at the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746; during this battle, the Bligh’s casualties were 4 killed and 17 wounded. Afterwards, Townshend went back to the Continent, having been appointed an aide-de-camp to the Duke of Cumberland. In this capacity he was present at the battle of Laffeldt on 21 June 1747 and carried Cumberland’s dispatch back to England. Then on 25 February 1748, he was appointed to a captaincy in the 1st Foot Guards, which carried with it the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Townshend (Duke-of-Cumberland-1745) — Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Culloden 16th April 1746: Image: David Morier

When the War of the Austrian Succession ended in 1748, Townshend returned to England and became a MP in the House of Commons for the County of Norfolk – which he continued to represent until he succeeded his father as 4^th Viscount in 1764. But before that, he famously fell out with the Duke of Cumberland; attacking him in parliament, and making him a victim of his notable powers as a caricaturist.

Townsend (Cumberland) — Duke of Cumberland 1750s by George Townshend. © National Portrait Gallery, London

George Townshend, you see, had a mercurial personality that did not suffer fools gladly and was never shy about criticising those whose competence he questioned. Not surprisingly perhaps, this was the reason which led to the open hostility between Townshend and his military superior. At the end of 1750 Townshend resigned from the army and identified himself with the cause of militia reform; largely as a result of his efforts an effective new militia act was passed in 1757.

Townshend had always exhibited a knack for drawing, and during his military tenure used it effectively to sketch topography, fortifications, and maps. But beginning around 1750, he began to draw caricature sketches of people–officers, clergy, fashionable women. He was soon covering every scrap of available paper with caricature portraits of friends and enemies and circulating them among his friends and correspondents. But it was in 1756-57 that Townshend began embedding his portrait caricatures into dramatic and narrative frames to make a political point, and thereby creating the prototype for satiric political caricature that would later be followed by others. The Recruiting Sergeant, for example shows Fox acting as a sergeant gathering a pathetic group of recruits to create a new ministry while the Duke of Cumberland (for whom the ministry would be formed) appears ironically exalted in the Temple of Fame.

Townsend (The Recruiting Sargeant) — The Recruiting Sergeant 1757 by George Townshend. © Trustees of the British Museum

In the same year Cumberland ceased to be Commander-in-Chief, being succeeded by Sir John Ligonier. Townshend now returned to the service, being commissioned as Colonel on 6 May 1758 – but without a regiment, a point which prompted him to write to William Pitt asking for active employment against the French. In December he was summoned to London and appointed to command a brigade in the expedition under James Wolfe which was being organized to attack Quebec by way of the St Lawrence.

This appointment displeased Wolfe very much; he had asked Ligonier to let him choose his own subordinates – and he had not asked for Townshend! The “Proposals for the expedition to Quebec” in Pitt’s papers suggest that the three brigadiers were Robert Monckton, James Murray, and Ralph Burton. Unfortunately, Burton, a particular friend of Wolfe’s, was squeezed out to make room for Townshend – a man with more influence! Wolfe wrote Townshend a welcoming letter in which he said:

“Your name was mentioned to me by [Ligonier] and my answer was, that such an example in a person of your rank and character could not but have the best effects upon the troops in America; and I took the freedom to add that what might be wanting in experience was amply made up, in an extent of capacity and activity of mind, that would find nothing difficult in our business.”

This reflects the feelings of a hard-working middle-class career officer confronted with the heir to a viscountcy who has always had things made easy for him. It would be strange if Townshend did not resent the reference to inexperience, especially as he had seen a good deal of active service. Here perhaps is the origin of later trouble!

Townshend, junior to Monckton but senior to Murray, was third in command of the expedition. He crossed the Atlantic with Wolfe in Vice-Admiral Charles Saunders*’s flagship Neptune. It may have been during the voyage that he made the water-colour drawing of Wolfe which the general’s biographer Robert Wright called “the most convincing portrait of Wolfe I have ever seen”; it is certainly the best portrait extant. In the last week of June 1759, the British fleet and army arrived before Quebec, and Wolfe began his long struggle with the problem of bringing the Marquis de Montcalm to battle.

Townshend (Fleet Landing Wolde's Troops) — Drawing by a soldier of Wolfe’s army depicting the fleet, under Saunders’ command, disembarking Wolfe’s soldiers. This 1797 engraving is based on a sketch made by Hervey Smyth (1734-1811), General Wolfe’s aide-de-camp during the siege of Quebec. A view of the taking of Quebec, 13th September 1759. Library of the Canadian Department of National Defence

During 9 and 10 of July, Townshend’s and Murray’s brigades landed on the north shore of the St Lawrence, below Montmorency Falls, and entrenched themselves there. By this time Wolfe’s relations with his brigadiers, and particularly Townshend, had deteriorated. On 7 July Wolfe had written in his journal:

“Some difference of opinion upon a point termed slight & insignificant & the Commander in Chief is threatened with a Parliamentary Inquiry into his Conduct for not consulting an inferior Officer & seeming to disregard his Sentiments!”

The “inferior Officer” was presumably George Townshend; and matters got worse after the unsuccessful Montmorency attack on 31 July, an operation which the brigadiers had disliked. On 6 September Townshend wrote the rather famous letter to his wife in which he said, “General Wolf’s Health is but very bad. His Generalship in my poor opinion – is not a bit better; this is only between us.” Townshend’s wickedly clever caricatures of Wolfe which have survived tell a great deal about their relationship.

Townsend (Wolfe) — Image: George Townshend’s caricatures of Wolfe. © McCord Museum, Montreal.

On or about 27 August Wolfe, then recovering from a severe illness, consulted the brigadiers formally for the first time. He sent them a memorandum begging them to consult together as to the best method of attacking the enemy. He himself suggested three possible lines of attack, all variants of the Montmorency operation which had already failed. After discussion with Admiral Saunders, the brigadiers politely rejected the Commander-in-Chief’s suggestions and recommended a quite different line of operation, bringing the troops away from Montmorency and landing above Quebec:

“When we establish ourselves on the North Shore, the French General must fight us on our own Terms; We shall be betwixt him and his provisions, and betwixt him and their Army opposing General [Jeffery Amherst] [on Lake Champlain].”

For the first time, the essential strategic weakness of the French position was pointed out and exploited: Quebec, and the French army outside Quebec, were dependent on provisions brought down the river, and if this supply line were cut, Montcalm would have no choice but to fight to open it. Wolfe accepted the brigadiers’ recommendation, and thereby made possible the victory on the Plains of Abraham; though the decision to take the risk of landing at the Anse au Foulon, close to the town, was Wolfe’s own. The brigadiers had favoured landing further up the river.

In the battle of the Plains, Townshend commanded the British left wing. Wolfe was mortally wounded and Monckton disabled, and Townshend unexpectedly found himself commanding the army. In these circumstances it is not surprising that his direction of the last phase of the action and its aftermath was not particularly effective. His first task was to deal with Colonel Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s belated intervention from up the river; this was easily done. But the beaten French field army made good its escape to the west. Townshend prepared to besiege and bombard Quebec, bringing large numbers of guns up the cliff to the Plains of Abraham. But the city surrendered to him on 18 September and in return was offered relatively lenient terms in order to get possession of the town as soon as possible.

Townsend (Quebec) — The surrender of Quebec on 18 September 1759.

Townshend returned to England before the winter and was rewarded with the colonelcy of the 28th Foot and the thanks of Parliament. On 6 March 1761 he was made a Major-General, and took command of a brigade in the British contingent of the allied army in Germany. The following year he was sent to Portugal with the local rank of Lieutenant-General, and took command of a division of the Anglo-Portuguese army which was protecting Portugal against the forces of France and Spain. No important operations took place here before the conclusion of peace.

In 1767 Townshend was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and held this post until 1772. Traditionally, Townshend in Ireland has been remembered chiefly as a person who was adept at manipulating the Irish parliament by corrupt means and was considerably disliked. Later research, however, reveals him as an effective and resolute administrator whose financial measures broke the power of the local oligarchy and transferred it to a party in parliament controlled by the government in Dublin Castle.

From 1772 to 1782, and again for some months in 1783, Townshend was master general of the Board of Ordnance. He was promoted general in 1782 and field marshal in 1796. He was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk in 1792, and also held the office of governor of Jersey. In 1787 he was made a marquess.

Although Townshend had been so bitter against Wolfe in 1759, time softened his feelings, and in 1774 he discouraged Murray from making an attack on the memory of the dauntless hero. Townshend and his fellow brigadiers have been much abused by Wolfe’s admirers; but there is not the slightest doubt that they gave him sound advice at a moment when he was floundering badly, and that it was they, with the support of Saunders, who set Wolfe’s feet on the path to victory. Townshend had important artistic abilities; he has been called “the first great English caricaturist.” An obituary in the Times said, “In his private character he was lively, unaffected, and convivial.” His portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds and by Thomas Hudson.

Townshend was one of the favoured people who in July 1767 received 20,000-acre grants in St John’s (Prince Edward) Island, being awarded Lot 56 in the east end of the Island. In 1770, embarrassed by his Irish expenses, he was trying unsuccessfully to sell this land. Like so many of the absentee proprietors, he seems to have done nothing to settle or develop his grant. In 1784, however, he gave up one-quarter of it to “American Loyalists and disbanded troops,” and some settlement then took place.

Footnote:
On the domestic front, and away from all the awards during an illustrious career, George Townshend married Charlotte Compton in 1751; she was Baroness Ferrers of Chartley in her own right. By her, four sons and four daughters were said to have been delivered before she died in 1770. Three years later he married Anne, daughter of Sir James William Montgomery; this marriage is said to have produced six children.

George Townshend, 4th Viscount and 1st Marquess Townshend, army officer and caricaturist died at Raynham Hall, Norfolk, England on 14 Sept. 1807.

THE END

Sources include:
P. Stacey “TOWNSHEND, GEORGE, 4th Viscount 1st Marquess TOWNSHEND,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 5, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed February 6, 2021, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/townshend_george_5E.html.

James Gillray: Caricaturist: George Townshend (james-gillray.org)

Heading Image: George Townshend, 4th Viscount and 1st Marquess Townshend, attributed to Gilbert Stuart, circa. 1785 Photo: Wikimedia Commons

‘Bad’ King John’s Lost Treasure!

By Haydn Brown

In school we were told that King John lost his jewels in the Wash; fact they said- and we believed it for we were not in a position to think or judge otherwise! Now it’s a case of thinking ‘Maybe he did, – maybe he didn’t’; certainly there has been much speculation and probably arguments for generations ever since – with no sign of the debate ending in the foreseeable future!

For the purposes of this blog, let’s keep things calm and simple by starting with The Wash, the place which played host to this interesting and somewhat speculative incident in our history. Then we will combine this with the year of 1216, when King John was said to have lost England’s Crown Jewels somewhere in the murky waters of quite a sizable estuary which is still fed by the rivers Witham, Well, Steeping, Nene and the Great Ouse at the point where they enter the Wash.

Even a cursory look at a map will show that the Wash is a large bay on the East coast of England; lying as it continues to do, between the Counties of Lincolnshire and Norfolk. The Wash collects somewhere around 15% of Great Britain’s water and is host to the Country’s second largest inter-tidal mudflats, clearly in evidence when the tide is out.

People have lived on the surrounding fertile land for centuries and it was this stretch of water that the Vikings used as a major route to invade East Anglia between 865 and the start of the Norman Conquest. Schools also continue to tell children that The Wash was given the name of Metaris Aestuarium, (meaning the reaping/mowing/cutting off estuary) during the first century, by the Roman astrologer and mathematician, Claudius Ptolemy. Also, that the Romans built large embankments that protected the land and prevented flooding, but they had all but disappeared by the end of the fifth century. However, in 1631, a Dutch engineer, by the name of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden (1595 – 1677), began a large-scale land reclamation to drain the Fens of East Anglia with the building of the Horseshoe Sluice on the tidal river at Wisbech……. So much for today’s geography and history lessons; we must proceed with the circumstances surrounding ‘Bad’ King John and the apparent loss of his Crown Jewels.

In a nutshell, King John was not popular – probably still an understatement. Nevertheless, previous to this, his latest of unfortunate ‘incidents’ in his life, he had the misfortune of losing much of England’s lands in France; he’d been excommunicated and maybe worst of all, he was forced to sign the Magna Carta. However, the following year John, being John, broke his word; this action was the starting point of the First Barons’ War. John travelled around the country to oppose the rebel forces, directing a two-month siege of Rochester Castle. Later he retreated north from the French invasion, taking a safe route by circumventing the marshy area of the Wash and thus avoiding that rebel held area of East Anglia. It is known, for example, that on 2 October John travelled to Grimsby, apparently to arrange for military equipment and stores to be shipped to Bishop’s Lynn – now King’s Lynn. Originally, the town was known as `Linn’, and it is thought that the name derived from the Celtic word for a lake or pool, and it is recorded that a large tidal lake originally covered that particular area.

King John also went to Spalding before possibly using one of the Sutton Wash crossing points to arrive back in Bishop’s Lynn on 9 October. It was in Lynn where he finally succumbed to dysentery and had no option but to stay awhile in order to recover; it may have been somewhat fortunate that Bishop’s Lynn happened to be a town where the King was well liked – in view of the fact that he had previously granted the place a Royal Charter. He was still in Lynn on October 11. According to Kings Lynn’s Borough Council records, the King stayed until the 12 of October 1216 when he left, taking a different route to his baggage.

King John (Will Nickless) — Image: Will Nickless.

We are told that he sent it, together with the jewels, on what he thought was a quicker route across one or other of the rivers thereabout. On this, there is a problem for today’s speculation and argument is about the place where the treasure was actually lost. We know that the Wash was much wider centuries ago, and the sea then reached as far as Wisbech and the inland town of Long Sutton was a port on the coast. But it is much more than that; journalist, Bruce Robinson, as recently as 2014 speculated:

“…… Was it near Fosdyke, close to the mouth of the river Welland, as some modern revisionists have suggested; or as most Long Suttonians have long believed, on the Sutton Wash estuary of the river Nene? And what was the treasure? Gold and silver, or ancient books and legal documents? Or was there never any ‘treasure’ in the first place, as some have speculated, because the King was largely bankrupt?

There are more questions than answers for the precise details of John’s daily movements are unknown, and there has been much speculation as to how the schedule was achieved. John may have gone directly from Lynn to Wisbech, crossing the Nene by the town bridge before heading for Spalding and then to Swineshead Abbey. Or he may have crossed the estuary and ridden to Wisbech before awaiting the arrival of his baggage train. It was all, without doubt, a hard schedule for a very sick man. Understandably, it is the movement of the baggage train which has excited most curiosity, for its attempted crossing of the estuary using the Cross Keys to Sutton route apparently at a time when the tide was about to turn can only suggest either that the baggage train was in a desperate hurry, or that someone must have ignored or over-ruled the advice of local guides. Either way – and it might have been both – and assuming the event did take place here and not Fosdyke, it was a foolhardy decision.”

We are told that up to three thousand of the King’s entourage were carrying the royal wardrobe and the whole of the kingdom’s treasury. At low tide the conditions of any causeway would have been so wet and muddy that the wagons would have moved slowly, with the inevitable result that they would have sunk into the mud, thus engulfing the King’s most valuable possessions. The men of the train would certainly have struggled with the trunks, whilst others equally struggled with the horses in an attempt to encourage movement – but with no avail; everything would have been eventually covered by the incoming tide!

As for the King; he continued to Swineshead Abby, near Boston in Lincolnshire, where his health deteriorated once again. Here we have yet another legend about the loss of the treasure. This one tells us that he was poisoned by a monk called Brother Simon, who stole the jewels and made his way out of England, his destination was somewhere in Europe – and the stories did not stop there. Another interesting take is that the treasure was not lost at all! – instead, the John used its value as security, arranging for its ‘loss’ before they would have arrived at their destination, using the Wash as a ruse. But, there appears to be no written proof to give credence to these two tales – so they remain as possible myths!

In the end, however, we are led to believe that a story which began with the King’s run from the Barons came to a head with the loss of the kingdom’s ‘treasury’, and may well have been the last straw with the John’s health and possibly his state of mind. But, apparently, he was not to hear about his ‘loss’ until after he had left Sleaford Castle for Newark Castle. It was here where the so-called ‘Bad’ King John died – either the 18 or 19 of October 1216 – and we are all here to pick up the pieces!

King John (Newark_Castle,_2008_David Ingham) — Newark Castle today. Photo: Wikipedia.

Epilogue:
John was an English king who has suffered from bad press over the centuries. He was no hero, he was vengeful and untrusting; is it any wonder when we are told that, as a child he received no support from warring parents, he received no support from a self obsessed brother and, as King, he saw little or no support from his people so, what chance did he have? W L Warren, in his book ‘King John’, seems to sum up fairly accurately the cause of John’s troubled reign.

“talented in some respects, good at administrative detail, but suspicious, unscrupulous, and mistrusted. His crisis-prone career was sabotaged repeatedly by the half-heartedness with which his vassals supported him—and the energy with which some of them opposed him.”

There are also two contemporary accounts, one by Roger of Wendover, an English chronicler who died in 1236 and one by Ralph of Coggeshall, an English monk and chronicler who died in 1227. Both were writing at the time of the loss. Roger of Wendover writes rather melodramatically and calls it a major disaster, he writes:

“…….the ground opened up in the midst of the waves, and bottomless whirlpools sucked in everything”

Ralph of Coggeshall, on the other hand, refers to it as more of a ‘misadventure’, stating that it was not the whole of the royal baggage train that was lost but the vanguard that carried household items, church and holy relics. However, and on balance, it seems pretty certain that some valuable items belonging to King John did get lost in the Wash, but not a treasure trove as we would imagine it to be. There was no large chest overflowing with coins, necklaces and gold goblets, only kitchen equipment and finery collected from churches. As Coggeshall suggested, maybe the real treasure was in a second train that never began its journey across the Wash, but ended its days thrown in amongst the new King Henry III’s treasury?

Two final myths: Firstly, in the mid-14th century a certain local Norfolk gentleman, by the name of Robert Tiptoft, became suddenly very wealthy; according to folklore this was because he found the Kings treasure – but did not hand it back to the Crown!

The other is, again, from journalist, Bruce Robinson:

“The whole King John episode has sparked some odd investigations over the decades, none stranger than one shortly before the Second World War when an ‘expedition’ to find the jewels excited interest and suspicion, so much so that years later……. a story was still current that the searchers were not archaeological experts looking for treasure but ‘Nazi spies’ mapping the fieldscapes in preparation for later landings by paratroopers……..Interestingly, in 1940 and 1941, during the ‘invasion scare’ period, defensive preparations for enemy paratroop landings were high on the list of local military priorities.”

There lies further stories!

THE END

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The Tale of a Publican and a King!

This is the story of non-other than Mucky Porter, the Fenland publican who saved King Charles 1 on one occasion. It was written originally by Gordon Phillips, who based it on different tales contained in the books “Tales from the Fens” and “More Tales from the Fens”, written by Walter Barrett, with illustrations by Percy Garrod; the stories were edited by Enid Porter. Walter, or Jack as most locals knew him as, grew up in Brandon Creek and most of his tales were adapted from those told by the legendary fen man and storyteller, Chafer Legge. This story, by Gordon Phillips, previously appeared on the Enid Porter Project website. Read on:

In the fens of the past there was a secret brotherhood and sisterhood of the Grey Goose Feather. True fen landers would carry a feather from the fowl who overwintered in the watery places and when in need they only had to produce the feather and all true fen landers would help them.

Mucky Porter (Goose Feather)1 — A Goose Feather.

At the time of the English Civil War there lived in the village of Southery, on the Norfolk border of the great wilderness, a publican by the name of Mucky Porter. One evening he was counting out his money, his takings for the day of which there was very little, when there came a knock at the Inn door. Mucky Porter looked outside and saw two very fine-looking gentlemen with two extremely beautiful thoroughbred horses outside in his yard. He wondered what such affluent looking folk could want with him and hurried to the door.

Mucky Porter1 — The Old White Bell at Southery, formerly ‘The Silver Fleece’ where Mucky Porter was landlord.

“Are you the man they call Mucky Porter?” They asked. “I might be, it depends on who wants to know”, he replied letting them into the pub parlour. The strangers sat down and quickly came to the point.

“Mr. Porter could you tell us what you think of Old Noll?” – This, by the way, is an epithet applied to Oliver Cromwell by his Royalist contemporaries.

“Well, I don’t think much about him except he’s the reason that my takings have been rather low recently. Nearly all my regulars have gone to fight in his army as he says that he’ll put an end to the draining of the fen and interfering with their way of life,” he replied.

“And what about the King, Mr. Porter?”
“Well, I don’t think much about him neither.”
“Would you be prepared to help the King Mr. Porter?”
“Well, it depends what was in it for me.”

At this one of the strangers took out of his pocket a bag of gold coins. Mucky Porter’s eyes lit up. The strangers continued:

“Mr. Porter we have heard that you are one of the few people who know the way across these accursed marshes and bogs. The King has been pursued across Norfolk by Oliver Cromwell’s men and needs to get to Huntingdon where his forces are waiting to escort him to Oxford. If you could guide him across you would be rewarded with this bag of gold.”

Mucky Porter (Charles I) — Portrait of Charles I of England by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1628. Photo: Wikipedia

It took Mucky Porter at least three seconds to decide and later that night he was brought before the King himself at Snore Hall near Downham Market, where he was being hidden. Some of the King’s attendants were dubious that this raggedy looking local could be trusted with the fate of the monarch and Mucky was asked for some proof that he was trustworthy. At that Mucky Porter drew from his pocket a grey goose feather. He took out his knife and cut the feather in half.

“Your lordships,” said Mucky Porter with all the dignity he could muster, “I am a fen lander, a true fen lander. All true folk of this area carry this token and if in need are sworn to help, unto even their own death, another who carries a grey goose feather.” He put one half feather in his pocket and handed the other to the King. “Now, by my honour, I can do nothing but aid His Majesty.”

This seemed to satisfy the members of the court and the following morning Mucky Porter of Southery and King Charles 1st of England set out across the last great wilderness of Southern Britain. At first, they passed through populous areas and Mucky Porter was concerned that their presence was being noted by those they came across.

“Your Majesty,” he said, “I am worried that these great huge horses make us stand out. I think we need to take a detour.”

Mucky Porter (Southery_Oliver Dixon) — **Common Drove, Southery**
A bend in the Drove, alongside a drain. Photo: © Copyright Oliver Dixon

The detour took them to Southery and the inn where they stabled the thoroughbreds they were riding and took to two sturdy fenland ponies instead. Mucky Porter also got a couple of old sacks to put over their clothes and as they passed out through the village streets, they went unnoticed.

Mucky Porter was indeed an expert at finding his way through the fen and they passed through areas that few knew and even fewer dared themselves to visit. Thus, they came eventually to the other side, to the ford in the river just outside Huntingdon. There, however, their hearts sank as it was strongly manned by Roundhead troops.

“Halt, who goes there?” called the sentries.

At this Mucky Porter put his hand into his pocket, took out the split grey goose feather and held it aloft. The troops turned their gaze on the King who put his hand in his pocket and did the same.

“Quick, come across, and then away with you”, said the guards who were, of course, themselves true fen landers. There Mucky Porter handed the King over eventually to his own men and returned by his secret route towards the pub. In his pocket, which he kept tapping, was the bag filled with gold coins and in his stable back at the pub were the two fine horses, the like of which had never been seen in Southery.”

And that might have been the end of the story for Mucky Porter, but not, of course, as we know for King Charles. Eventually the forces of Oliver Cromwell were victorious and Charles was forced to stand trial. As is well known, he was found guilty and was sentenced to death. It is said in the fens that on the night before the execution, Cromwell was sitting with the rest of his generals near to the place of execution when there came an emissary from the King. He stood before the generals and said,

“The King does not ask for pardon for he is God’s anointed monarch and knows that the Parliament has no authority to do what they intend to do to him. All that His Majesty asks is that he is afforded that due to one who holds this token.”

At that the courtier drew from his pocket the split grey goose feather and placed it on the table before Cromwell. Cromwell’s face went white and he dismissed all those who were gathered with him. Long he sat into the night, staring at the feather. For Cromwell too was a fen lander and knew what he should do. But when morning came, he did not intervene and Charles 1st was beheaded. It is said that when they heard about this the fenland members of his army refused to follow him. They threw their goose feathers at his feet and returned to their homes.”

Mucky Porter Execution) — Execution of Charles I. Illustration for Young Folk’s History of England (McCarthy, c 1890). Credit: Look & Learn.

And what of Mucky Porter, back in the inn at Southery? Perhaps he shed a tear when he heard of the execution of the King, we do not know. He was still landlord many years later when he heard of the death of ‘Old Noll’ and it unlikely that he was very upset at that. One day, when Mucky Porter was getting very old but still landlord at the pub there came a knock at his door in the early morning. He went to the window and saw a number of fine-looking gentlemen out in the yard. He went outside and greeted them.

“Are you Mucky Porter?” one of the fine gentlemen asked. “I might be, it depends who’s asking”, was his reply. “I am looking for a man called Mucky Porter”, said the most flamboyantly dressed visitor. “When I was young, I heard many times the story of how a publican of that name helped my father to escape from Cromwell’s men across the wilderness. I have always wanted to reward him for the deed.”

Mucky Porter very quickly realised who the visitor was and within a few minutes had agreed to accompany Charles 2nd and his courtiers out into the newly drained lands. The company was amazed when the old fen lander emerged from his stable riding a fine thoroughbred horse, the descendent of the two horses he had obtained all those years ago.

Mucky Porter (Charles II) — Charles II. Photo: Wikipedia.

They rode out on to the fen where the newly drained land shone with fecundity in the bright fenland sunlight. After they had ridden for a while Charles said to Mucky Porter, “Well here we are Mr. Porter. You can have, as a reward for the service that you gave to my father, as much of the land as you would like. Come now, specify the boundaries of your new domain.” Mucky Porter stared around him.

“Well, Your Majesty”, he said, “I think I’ll have from that barn over there, to that ditch right over there, to that tree in the distance. How much do you think I’ve got?”

“Mr. Porter, I think that you must have several acres there.”

And ever since that day the land on Methwold Fen has been called the Methwold Severals which, ever since, has been farmed by a Porter.

Mucky Porter (Methwold Severals) — Neat rows of young salad crops destined for supermarkets on fertile peat fenland soil. Photo:© Copyright Rodney Burton

THE END

Source:
Enid Porter Project | Bringing folk traditions to life in five Cambridgeshire villages

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A Champion of the Agricultural Labourer.

By Haydn Brown.

Joseph Arch was not born and bred in Norfolk, but he did play a key role in unionising agricultural workers of the County and championing their welfare, along with becoming the Liberal MP for the North West of the County in 1885.

Joseph Arch (Spy-cartoon) — Arch caricatured by Spy in Vanity Fair, 1886. Image: Public Domain.

Joseph Arch, in fact, came from the Warwickshire village of Barford where he was born on 10 November 1826. His ancestors were also Barford bred and for three generations, at least, had owned and lived in their own cottage there since the 18th century. After only three years of schooling, he started work as a labourer at the age of nine and his first job was as a bird-scarer, working 12 hours a day for a wage of 4d per day – so, he knew from bitter experience, the problems that faced the poorly-paid, ill-educated rural labourer of the time. From being a bird-scarer, he progressed to become a plough-boy, then a skilled hedge cutter before mastering just about any other farming skill one could find on the land. Such qualifications enabled him, in time at least, to move around the Midlands and South Wales, earning quite a reasonable wage in the process. At the same time, he could not fail to observe the terrible conditions in which the majority of his agricultural labouring colleagues lived. These were later described by the Countess of Warwick in the introduction she wrote to his eventual 1898 autobiography:

“Bread was dear, and wages down to starvation point; the labourers were uneducated, under-fed, underpaid; their cottages were often unfit for human habitation, the sleeping and sanitary arrangements were appalling …… In many a country village the condition of the labourer and his family was but little removed from that of the cattle they tended.”

Joseph Arch (Countess of Warwick) — Countess of Warwich

Following his return home to his Warwickshire village from his travels, Joseph Arch married in 1847 and, over time, had seven children. He also became a Primitive Methodist preacher which, apparently, did not go down well with the village parson and his wife who discriminated against the Arch’s’ as a result – there again, Joseph’s family had always been at odds with the parson. Nevertheless, during this period, Joseph also managed to educate himself politically by reading old newspapers and, in time, became a supporter of Liberalism.

Joseph Arch (Portrait_Elliott & Fry) — Joseph Arch (1826 – 1919) Agricultural Campaigner. Photo: Wikipedia.

It was therefore to him, as a well-respected and experienced agricultural worker, that his destitute fellow workers turned for help in their fight for a living wage. Called to address an initial meeting held on 7 February 1872, in the Stag’s Head public house in Wellesbourne, Joseph expected an attendance of fewer than thirty. Instead, he found on his arrival that over 2,000 agricultural labourers from all the surrounding area had arrived to hear him speak. The meeting was therefore held under a large chestnut tree opposite on a dark, wet, winter night, with the labourers holding flickering lanterns on bean poles to illuminate the proceedings.

Joseph Arch (The Square_Wellesbourne_chestnut,_1905) — The Wellesbourne Chestnut Tree in 1905 (see below). Photo: Public Domain.

The right man in the right place at the right time:
From this initial gathering, further meetings were called and from one of these a committee was elected which met at John Lewis’s old farmhouse in Wellesbourne. Its endeavours eventually resulted in farm workers, from all parts of South Warwickshire, meeting in Leamington on Good Friday, 29 March 1872, to form the Warwickshire Agricultural Labourers Union. From this, and in light of much agitation up and down the country, the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union was established, and Joseph Arch was elected as its President. The Union’s first action was to withdraw their labour, and farmers and landowners soon found out that the reprisals they tried to apply were ineffective; the result was, for a time, a temporary rise in the workers’ wages. This seemed to satisfy the Union members to the point where they ceased to organise themselves further. Inevitably, farm owners fought back and came to ‘locking-out’ union members, an action which became so widespread that the Union finally collapsed in 1896. It would, however, be replaced a decade later by the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers in 1906.

Joseph Arch (Union Banner) — Image : Spartacas Educational.

But this was the time when Joseph Arch became identified with what was clearly a very popular cause. He travelled all over England, speaking in stirring language at countless village meetings; inspired no doubt by his deep faith in his cause. Rural workers everywhere welcomed him as one of their own and from the walls of many small cottages’, portraits of his strong bearded face looked encouragingly down. He also became the subject of such rallying songs as:

Joe Arch he raised his voice,
’twas for the working men,
Then let us all rejoice and say,
We’ll all be union men.

Joseph Arch (Ham Hill demo) — Joseph Arch (standing centre) addressing the sixth annual demonstration of agriculural labourers at Ham Hill, Yeovil on, Whit Monday 1877. Photo: Public Domain.

In 1873 the Canadian government invited him over to examined the suitability of the country for British emigration. Impressed by his report, his Union helped over 40,000 farm labourers and their families to emigrate both there and to Australia over the next few years.

Joseph Arch also turned to agitating for the widening of the voting franchise, which until then only included property owners, and this resulted in the passing of the 1884 Parliamentary Reform Act. In the ensuing 1885 General Election, he was elected as the Liberal MP for North West Norfolk, the first agricultural labourer to enter the House of Commons. He did lose his seat when William Gladstone was defeated in June 1886; however, Arch was re-elected to the same constituency in Norfolk in 1892, when he was one of twelve working-class MPs in parliament. Though he was appointed as a member of the Royal Commission on the Aged Poor in 1893, he seldom spoke and his former supporters came to perceive him as pompous and out of touch. Now they sang about him

Joseph Arch he stole a march,
Upon a spotted cow.
He scampered off to Parliament,
But where is Joseph now?

Then, on 25 July 1894, the Norfolk Chronicle reported:

“Mr. Joseph Arch, M.P., at a meeting held at New Buckenham, delivered to the agricultural labourers his famous address which was quoted throughout the country for some time afterwards. “You poor, craven milk-and-water fools,” said the hon. member for North-west Norfolk, “why, you button up your pockets at the thought of paying 2¼d. a week when you are told by a lot of lying scampery and scandalism that I have run away with your money. . . . Professor Rogers once said when speaking of the tenant farmers, that their heads were as soft as the mangolds they grew. I think some of the labourers’ heads are as soft as the mangolds they hoe.”

In 1898, Arch published what was considered to be ‘a pugnacious and opinionated autobiography’, upon which The Spectator newspaper commented at the start of its long review that:

“One cannot help wishing that this book was more of an autobiography, and less of a polemic against Mr. Arch’s adversaries, political and social.”

Joseph Arch (Signed Photo_1900) — Joseph Arch autographed photograph 1900 . Photo: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive.

Retiring from Parliament before the 1900 General Election, Arch returned to spend the last years of his long life in his tiny cottage in Barford; the place where he had been born. He died there on 12 February 1919 at the age of 92 years.

Joseph Arch (outside-cottage) — Joseph Arch as an old man outside his cottage. Photo: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Library and Archive.

Footnote – The Legacy:

(1) The Wellesbourne Tree: This tree died in 1948 but the spot was marked by a commemorative stone at the old meeting place, now renamed Chestnut Square. In 1952, the National Union of Agricultural Workers erected a bus shelter there and set up inside it a commemorative plaque which still remains. A replacement tree was also planted where every year union representatives once gathered on 7 February and then went on to Barford to lay a wreath upon Arch’s grave. The unions do not, apparently, do this anymore, but the Wellesbourne Action Group organises a walk from Barford to Wellesbourne in June each year, along the footpath known as the Joseph Arch Way. There is now also a Joseph Arch Road in the village which runs off the A439 roundabout, while in Barford the old coaching inn has been renamed the Joseph Arch pub.

(2) The Joseph Arch Inn:

Joseph Arch (Pub_Barford) — The Joseph Arch Inn at Barford. The pub is named after Barford’s most famous son. Photo: © Philip Halling

(3) Plaster Casts:

The Museum of English Rural Life has a Joseph archive; included in which are curious plaster casts of his hands and wrists. Unfortunately, nothing is known about these plaster casts, except that they were made during the last quarter of the 19th century when Joseph Arch was no longer a practising agricultural labourer – else, they would be heavy, calloused and weather-beaten. Also, the exact reason why the casts were made is unknown. Maybe they were part of a statue; even though no other parts of the statue have been found. Another possibility is that such plaster casts were created because, during the 19th century, they were used to improve art and for teaching and research purposes. However, there seems to be no written record which could explain exactly why these casts were created – only speculation remains.

THE END

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Arch
https://www.barfordheritage.org.uk/content/people/joseph-arch/joseph-arch-1826-1919

Banner Heading: ‘The Mowers’ by George Clausen, 1892. Painting: Usher Gallery, London

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East Anglian Agricultural Gangs of the Past.

By Haydn Brown.

During the first half of the nineteenth century many acres of waste land throughout Norfolk and East Anglia were brought into cultivation as part of a national development which followed in the aftermath of the French wars when the price of grain was high. This was a time of need land owners of light uplands cleared them of gorse, thistles and coarse grass and ploughed them to plant such crops as wheat and barley. Later in the century Fen landowners did something similar by using steam pumping engines to drain hitherto intractable marshlands, such as Deeping Fen a few miles north of Peterborough, and made them fit for cultivation.

Agricultural Gangs (Farmers on a Hillside_STRAFFORD NEWMARCH_Public Domain)2 — Painting of an Agricultural gang on a hillside by Strafford Newmarch. Image: Public Domain

However, most of this ‘new’ land was some distance from existing settlements, and farmers working it found themselves short of labour. They were reluctant to build permanent houses for their farm workers, because they feared that the inhabitants might later qualify for poor relief, and so become a burden on the rates. In similar circumstances in the 18th-century, farmers might well have found room in their own homes to accommodate their labourers, but by the middle of the 19th century the social gap between master and worker was far too wide for this to be an acceptable solution. Feelings on the subject were, in 1865, expressed more fully by one particular farmer’s wife whose husband was employing four young labourers:

“It is very objectionable having these men in one’s own house…. it is so bad for the female servants.”

The Establishment of Gangs:
Apparently, this particular wife overcame the problem by making the foreman take in the labourers – but many farmers favoured a more radical solution. They, in fact, dispensed with full time labourers as far as they could, and relied instead on the labour of agricultural ‘gangs’ which were established to satisfy the demand for labour.

Agricultural Gangs (Hoeing Turnips Painting by George Clausen_Public Domain) — Hoeing turnips by George Clausen. Image: Public Domain.

Where local population numbers allowed, some farmers organised their own private gangs by recruiting women and children from the nearest village to be employed at busy times to work for a few days at a time. Others employed so-called ‘gangs’ which were organised by ‘gang-masters’. In many instances these ‘masters’ were usually unemployed farm labourers who recruited between ten and maybe forty women and children to work for them at a fixed rate of pay, after which they contracted with local farmers for their gangs to tackle specific jobs. The gang master had to be able to accurately estimate how long a given job would take. If he overestimated, then he would probably be too expensive to get the contract. On the other hand, if he underestimated, then he would charge too little and he would lose money on the deal.

It was the seasons which dictated the type of work done by the gangs. In winter, when there were few of them, they were employed to clear stones or sort potatoes. In spring, their work became more varied; some cleared such growth as couch grass by hand, whilst others spread muck, hoed, or planted potatoes. In early summer their work increased to include clearing fallow fields, hand-weeding grain and root crops, and helping with the hay harvest. Strangely perhaps, gangs generally disbanded for the main grain harvest in August and September, in favour of whole families coming out to work together. Then, by October, gangs re-formed for the potato harvest. In 1866, it was calculated that some 6,400 people worked in gangs in Norfolk, East Anglia and the East Midlands at some time during the year.

However, agricultural gangs had a bad reputation. Some of the masters were said to be unscrupulous by accepting contracts at rock-bottom prices, and then forcing their gangs to work for long hours to fulfil them. Some were considered immoral by taking, according to many, advantage of their status by demanding sexual favours from the girls and women in their gangs. Many gangs were noisy, unruly and regularly disturbed the peace on their way to and from work. It was also said that they tempted children away from school into what seemed too many to be a totally unsuitable environment.

Legislation:
It was Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury KG, who persuaded the Government, in 1865, to order an investigation into agricultural gangs. The Children’s Employment Commission was subsequently formed to take evidence from about 500 witnesses before presenting its report in 1867. In it they condemned the gangs and maintained that most of the masters were ‘men of violent and drinking habits’ whose influence was ‘very pernicious to the moral principles and conduct of the children and young persons of both sexes under their management’. It concluded that the manners of older members of the gangs were ‘coarse and irregular’, and that young people brought into contact with them were ‘hardened by early association with vice’.

Agriculural Gangs (Anthony_Ashley-Cooper,_7th_Earl_of_Shaftesbury) — Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1801–1885), 7th Earl of Shaftesbury by Francis Grant (1803–1878). Painting with the Parliamentary Art Collection.

The Commission also found that gangs usually worked about eight hours a day – perhaps an hour more in summer and less in early spring and late autumn. But these hours did not include travelling time and the commissioners quoted the two children, aged eleven and thirteen, who had to walk eight miles to work, labour for eight hours and then walk eight miles back home – all for 7d. a day. At the end of six weeks work they were said to be ‘good for nothing’.

The commissioners’ report also concluded that working in gangs seriously damaged both the physical health and the moral well-being of the children and young people involved, and they proposed various regulations to deal with the situation. A bill based on their recommendations was introduced into Parliament on July 29th, 1867, and given the royal asset on August 20th.

The ‘Agricultural Gangs Act’ sought to eliminate unsuitable gang-masters by setting up a licensing system. It also forbade the employment of all children under the age of eight, prohibited men and women working in the same gang, and made it illegal for even a licensed gang-master to take charge of a female gang unless he was accompanied by a woman license holder.

Agricultural Gangs (Child_labour,_c1885_Science Photo Library) — Gang system of child labour, c1885. Teams of children were formed by a contractor or ‘ganger’ and hired out to farmers as agricultural labour for tasks such as sowing and hoeing. They would be made to worked for 8 or 9 hours a day and often had to walk 3 or 4 miles to and from work. The practice was particularly widespread in East Anglia. In this wood engraving a girl tries to revive a boy who has collapsed, probably from exhaustion, while the rest of the gang continue hoeing around them. (Coloured black and white print). Child Labour. Image: Science Photo Library

However, it may be somewhat surprising that the commissioners had, in some respects, painted a much blacker picture of gang work than was justified by the evidence they had collected, and on which their report was based. Though they were able to point to some cases of brutal or inconsiderate treatment, few witnesses seemed to agree with its assertion that gang work adversely affected the physical health of those involved. The scepticism of the witnesses was backed up by the evidence taken from boys and girls who themselves worked in gangs. For instance: one commissioner interviewed a sixteen-year-old Georgiana Rowan from Great Gressingham in Norfolk; she said that on her return from a day’s work near her home:

“We topped and tailed this morning for one farmer, she said, and forked docks this afternoon for another. We left the ground this afternoon at 5. Tomorrow morning, we shall start at 7. I take dinner with me to work, bread or bread with cheese or butter, but take no drink at this time of the year. [It was autumn] ……I don’t know what kind of work was hardest but we’re used to it now, and don’t mind it”

A Norfolk villager at the time felt that many young workers agreed with such a view, along with others:

“The children often come home wet,’……. but I believe they are fond of the work. They reckon to have some fun.”

Even a local magistrate, who believed that the gang system was ‘attended with much evil’, had to admit that children in gangs usually looked ‘happy and cheerful both in going to and coming from their work’. This positive attitude of many gang children was probably due to the fact that it was usually temporary and they welcomed outdoor gang work as a change from the classroom. Hannah Staff of Downham Market also gave a parent’s view. ‘My girl aged fifteen works in the gang. It is a deal healthier than the flax factory.’

Agricultural Gangs (Child_labour,_c1885_Science Photo Library)2 — Gang system of child labour, c1885 from The Sunday at Home, London, 1869. Image: Public Domain.

But when the commissioners asserted that gangs damaged the morale of those who worked in them, they were faithfully reflecting the opinion of the majority of their witnesses. A Norfolk doctor came down to basics by saying:

“It is most indecent with boys and girls of that age out all day always together, and with no hedges or concealment of any kind. Nature must be relieved, and the workers drop out for this, and then the boys laugh at the girls.”

Another witness had reported that during their dinner time girls would take off ‘their petticoats etc’ and hang them up to dry, while a third had seen boys ‘bathing in a pond, while the girls were sitting round on the bank.’ Certainly, the sexual morals of the rural poor seemed unconventional when judged by respectable middle-class standards. One vicar said:

“I seldom marry any of them without being obliged to see the bride to be of larger dimensions than she ought to be.”

Agricultural Gangs (labourer-with-scythe-1900_Public Domain) — Labourer with scythe 1900. Photo: Public Domain.

A more moderate, and perhaps more realistic view, came from several clergymen who probably knew more about the living conditions of the rural poor than did many other witnesses. They felt it was easy to exaggerate the pernicious influence of the gangs compared with other aspects of rural life. For instance, a vicar of Terrington in Norfolk painted a detailed picture of most cottages in his parish having only two or three rooms; where there were three, one was frequently let to a lodger, so that the family had to squeeze into the other two. Some cottages only had one room, and the vicar mentioned a case where one family, consisting of a father, mother, three sons and a grown-up daughter, all living in just a single room. He concluded:

“I fear that much immorality, and certainly much want of a sense of decency among the agricultural labouring classes, are owing to the nature of their homes, and the want of proper room: more so probably to this than to gang or field work.”

Many witnesses were particularly vehement about the bad effect of gang labour on the attitude of the girls involved. ‘They get so bold and know too much’, said one farmer. People seemed to take it for granted that the daughters of the rural poor ought to go into service in some respectable household where they would do useful work, be imbued with a proper sense of respect for their betters, and learn enough domestic skills to be able to keep house for their future husbands. Gang labour did not fit into this scheme of things. Indeed, it disrupted it.

Agricultural Gangs (Farmers on a Hillside_STRAFFORD NEWMARCH_Public Domain) — Painting of an Agricultural gang on a hillside by Strafford Newmarch. Image: Public Domain

The Rector of Stilton certainly had no doubts; he thought gang work was ‘most objectionable’ for girls. ‘It makes them rude, rough and lawless, and consequently makes them unsuitable for domestic duties; this, consequently would disqualify them for a future position as a wife and mother’. A prosperous farmer agreed. ‘Field work renders them unfit for service’, while another remarked that:

“A love for unhealthy liberty sets in, untidy habits arise, they turn aside from service in farm or other houses, know little or nothing of sewing, washing, making or mending, and entering upon marriage are generally untidy, slovenly and bad-managing housekeepers.”

Overall, it seems that the commissioner’s report did not represent the views of everyone, and certainly not those witnesses who thought gangs were subversive, teaching girls ‘independent habits’, and giving them ‘a love for unhealthy liberty’. Instead, the commissioners preferred to base their case against gangs on the damage they inflicted on the health and welfare of those who worked in them. Thus, their report highlighted parts of the evidence and played down the rest.Most gang workers interviewed did, in fact, present evidence in fact, calm and matter-of-fact manner. Ellen Collishaw of Metheringham, in Lincolnshire, was typical. She told a commissioner:

“I am going on 13. I have worked at weeding. I worked all the year to gleaning (harvest). I have been working since harvest too. I have been singling turnips and weeding turnips. I went with Mr Hutchinson. He is a labourer. I was all the time with him. There were twenty besides me, girls as well as boys. There were many girls younger than me… We worked on Mr Greenham’s on the heath, we weeded wheat and barley. We picked up twitch after harvest. The corn was high when we weeded it. We used to get wet. Our dresses got wet as well as our feet. We got them dry by next morning. We got home about 6. We left the field at 5. When we got home, we washed and changed our clothes. I never caught cold.”

Elizabeth Wilson, a labourer’s wife from Exning, near Newmarket in Norfolk, gave much the same impression:

“Both my girls, now at service, worked in a gang. Sometimes they would be wet from rain or dew, and some girls, I believe, take a great deal of cold from this, but mine didn’t go a deal. There was nothing I minded as to language or anything in the gang for girls, though I would sooner have kept them at school if I had not been obliged to let them go out.”

This is not to say that agricultural gangs needed no regulation. There were abuses, and perhaps the commissioners had to paint a uniformly black picture if Parliament was to be persuaded to do anything to control gangs. Certainly, there is no indication that interested MPs looked beyond the evidence quoted in the report itself – they had left the commissioners to carry out the burdensome task of sifting and assessing the bulk of the evidence. Historians could not afford to be so trusting.

As it was, Gangs gradually faded out towards the end of the 19th century, with two developments hastening their demise. The first was the increasing use of machinery, particularly on light soils, and the other was the spread of compulsory education after 1870 which hit the gangs even harder. In 1870 school boards were given the right to make education compulsory for all children under the age of thirteen in their areas. In 1880 Mundella’s Act made it compulsory to enforce attendance without naming a leaving age. In 1893, however, the minimum leaving age was fixed at eleven, and in 1899 it was raised to twelve, thus bringing the whole country into line with the practice adopted by some boards as early as 1870.

Though many country children still took time off school to work on farms from time to time, compulsory schooling made it impossible for masters to recruit them into gangs without falling foul of the law – as they would say “the game was not worth the candle” and they gave it up. It was then only during school holidays, usually considerately fixed to coincide with busy times on farms, that gangs of women and children went to work in the fields – a tradition which survived almost to the present day.

THE END

Sources:
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/agricultural-gangs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_gang
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-return-of-the-gangmaster

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Awdry: The Steam-Train Enthusiast!

On 7 April 2020 the Wisbech Standard published the sale of Reverend Wilbert Awdry’s former home in Emneth; a village in Norfolk and located 2.9 miles north-west of Wisbech, 12 miles south-west of King’s Lynn and 46 miles west of Norwich – and close to the course of the River Nene.

The 8-bedroom detached house was the former ‘The Old Vicarage’ and it was there, between the years 1953 to 1965, where Awdry wrote around half of his much-loved and popular children’s stories; principally, the Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends series of books which children, around the world, still enjoy today.

The house itself was built in 1858, using distinctive Victorian red bricks and set in 1.5 acres of grounds. This was where Awdry’s parishioners came on those occasions when they wanted to see their vicar. These visitors usually entered the house through the east side of the property, thus giving them access to his study. It was in this study where Awdry, not only attended to his day job of looking after his flock but also continued to write his famous books.

Rev Wilbert Awdry (Emneth Home 1953-62) — The Rev. Wilbert Awdry’s home in Emneth 1953 to 1963. Photo: Wisbech Standard.

Wilbert Awdry was born at Ampfield vicarage near Romsey, Hampshire on 15 June 1911. His father was the Reverend Vere Awdry, the Anglican vicar of Ampfield who was 56 years old at the time of Wilbert’s birth; his mother was Lucy Awdry (née Bury). More importantly perhaps is that the experiences upon which much of young Wilbert Awdry’s writings were to be based in later life began in 1917 when the family moved to Box, in Wiltshire when he was six years old. The family settled at “Journey’s End”, a house which was only 200 yards from the western end of Brunel’s 1841 Great Western Main Line ‘Box Tunnel’, through which the line passed on its way to Bath and Chippenham. Wilbert would lie in bed at night listening to the noise of the engines and he later described to Roy Plomley on BBC Radio’s Desert Island Discs how he and his father would engage in trainspotting the names of GWR engines, with a telescope aimed through his father’s dressing room window.

Rev W V Awdry (Box Tunnel_West Portal_Wisbech Society) — The western end of Brunel’s 1841 Great Western Main Line ‘Box Tunnel’. Photo: Wisbech Society.

Railway enthusiasts would know that it is at this point where the railway climbs at a gradient of 1 in 100 for some two miles. A banking engine used to be kept there to assist freight trains up the hill. These trains usually ran at night and the young Awdry could hear them from his bed, listening to the coded whistle signals between the train engine and the banker, as well as the sharp bark from the locomotive exhausts as they fought their way eastwards up the incline.

Here was where young Awdry’s imagination began to believe that all steam engines had definite personalities and that in their ‘puffings’ and ‘pantings’ he could hear the conversation they were having with one another. From this point, Awdry quickly developed his passion for steam engines. As the son of a vicar, of whom he was very fond, Awdry also grew gradually towards a vocation as a priest and was ordained into the Church of England priesthood in 1936. It was these two lines passion – steam engines and religious devotion – that were to run throughout his life of 85 years; two lines that were straighter than most railway tracks and, together, were to be the inspiration for the story that Wilbert first told his own son Christopher.

The origin of that particular story happened in Birmingham, in 1942; Wilbert having taken the curacy at St Nicolas Church, Kings Norton, Birmingham in 1940. Christopher was confined to bed with measles. Wilbert set about amusing his son with a ‘germ’ of a story about a little old engine who was sad because he had not been out for a long time. When Christopher asked what the engine’s name was, his father said that it was Edward – the first name that came into his mind. It was Edward who, in Awdry’s subsequent first story book entitled “Edward’s Day Out”, helped Gordon’s train climb an incline – the inspiration for that act of charity clearly came from the time when Awdry listened to the sounds at Box Tunnel.

After Awdry wrote ‘The Three Railway Engine’, he built Christopher a model of Edward, together with some wagons and coaches, out of a wooden broomstick and scraps of wood. Children being children, Christopher also wanted a model of Gordon; however, the wartime shortage of materials limited Awdry to just making a little 0-6-0 tank engine which he named Thomas because, according to Awdry, it was the most natural of names to give this particular engine – Thomas the Tank Engine was born! Christopher liked a train named Thomas and asked his father for more stories about Thomas; these duely followed. By the time Awdry stopped writing in 1972, his Railway Series numbered 26 books. They all featured what became ‘established engines’ – the impish Thomas, industrious Edward, argumentative Henry and proud and pompous Gordon – as well as introducing new characters in such stories as Toby the Tram Engine, Percy the Small Engine and Duck & the Diesel Engine from the 1950’s.

In 1946 Awbry and family moved from Birmingham to Cambridgeshire to serve as Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Elsworth with Knapwell which was near Cambridge.

Rev Wilbert Awdry (Elsworth Holy Trinity_Cambs) — Ben Colburn & Mark Ynys-Mon wrote of Elsworth church itself: Holy Trinity is placed for best advantage in the village – the church stands high above the houses looking benignly down upon it all. Even if it didn’t have the advantage of the high ground the church would be impressive. The west tower is one of the grandest I’ve seen in western Cambridgeshire. It’s not particularly tall, but it is massive: broad and square, with thick angle-buttresses. The buttresses are carved with decoration, and above the parapet they turn into big pinnacles. It’s all very dramatic…… It reminded [us] of a stately (but slightly past-her-prime) old tabby cat, sitting on her haunches, looking down the hill with ears pricked up – waiting for food to arrive perhaps. PHOTO: Elsworth Holy Trinity. Photo: Elsworth Chronicle

Rev Wilbert Awdry (Elsworth Stole) — The embroidered stole at Elsworth church commemorates the links the church had with the creator of Thomas the tank engine. Revd Wilbert Awdry, creator of the characters and author was rector at Elsworth with Knapwell 1946-1953.

Thomas the Tank Engine – in the Flesh!:
In 1947 a 0-6-0T steam engine, No.1800 was built by Hudswell Clarke for the British Sugar Corporation (BSC) to work at Woodston at Peterborough. It remained at Woodston for all of its working life where it was in daily use, in the sugar beet season, pushing wagons of beet from the farms up the steeply graded line to be uploaded at the factory. It also marshalled lengthy trains in the extensive siding that BSC had near the Fletton Loop just east of Orton Mere Station. It was in the late 1960s when diesel traction took over the duties from this steam locomotive; fortunately, however, the pensioner was maintained in good condition.

Rev W V Awdry (BSC Engine No 1800_Thomas_Gordon Edgar) — Pre-Thomas Engine (No.1800) at work with the British Sugar Corporation works in Peterborough Sept 1972. . Photo: Courtesy of Gordon Edgar,

Then in 1970 the newly formed Peterborough Railway Society (later to become the Nene Valley Railway) appeared on the scene, setting up their working base in a compound within the BSC sidings. The company then sold its steam locomotive No.1800 to the Society for a nominal £100, and it was sometime around this point when the engine acquired the nickname of ‘Thomas’ – because of its blue livery! Almost twelve months later, in 1971, the retired Rev Wilbert Awdry returned to Cambridgeshire to officially name the locomotive ‘Thomas’, thereafter to become the star of what is now the Nene Valley Railway.

Rev W V Awdry (Engine No 1800_Thomas_NIck Cottam) — Thomas (No.1800) on the Nene Valley Railway in June 2016. Photo: Courtesy of Mick Cottam.

Of Thomas’s lasting popularity, Wilbert Awdry wrote:

“Thomas is the eternal child! Thomas is given a prohibition; naturally, as all children do when they’re told not to do something, they want to know why and they find out why by doing it.”

As for Awdry, he served seven years at Elsworth with Knapwell before moving to Bourn in 1950 as Rural Dean and then, in 1953, as Vicar of Emneth, Norfolk, near Wisbech. According to the Wisbech Society:

“It seems that concerns about his daughters’ future schooling drew Awdry from Elsworth to the Wisbech area and St. Edmund’s Church at Emneth. Both daughters attended Wisbech High School, three miles from Emneth Vicarage, and his wife Margaret taught in Wisbech at the Queen’s Girls School for 10 years.”

Rev (Church of St Edmund, Emneth, Norfolk._James P MIller) — St Edmund’s Church, Emneth, Norfolk. Photo: Courtesy of James P. Miller

‘Gordon the Big Engine’ was the first book published after Awdry moved to Emneth and 12 more were to follow during his incumbancy. Whilst there, he also maintained his enthusiasm for railways and was very much involved in railway preservation, building model railways, which he took to exhibitions around the country. At Emneth he created an extensive model railway network in his loft – it was based on Barrow-in-Furness layout. Fuelling his enthusiasm, Awdry’s Emneth home was also close to three Wisbech railway stations. The former Emneth railway station itself was on the EAR line from Watlington (formerly Magdalen Road Station) to Wisbech East. The GER Wisbech and Upwell Tramway tram engines, coaches and rolling stock were similar to ‘Toby the Tram Engine and ‘Henriett’ on the Ely to King’s Lynn mainline with Wisbech East (Victoria Rd) station. The M&GN Peterborough to Sutton Bridge via Wisbech North (Harecroft Rd) station. There were also harbour lines either side of the River Nene – M&GN Harbour West branch and GER Harbour East branch.

Time, inevitably, slipped away and in 1965, Wilbert Awdry “went into private practice” – retiring in other words. He moved to a smaller red-brick house in Stroud, Gloucestershire, where his study there became “an agreeable jumble of railway books, maps and timetables”, and was denoted by a “STATION MASTER” sign on the door. During these years, Awdry continued writing books for children, published a new Railway Series title each year until his last ‘Tramway Engines’ in 1972.

According to Awdry’s biographer, Brian Sibley:

“All these stories harnessed Awdry’s knowledge and love of railway engineering and history, which had to be “true-to-life”. Although the fictional engines had human personalities and voices, their activities always followed the rules of the railroad and virtually all the exploits described were based on something that had happened, somewhere at some time, to a real railway engine. Those adventures – mostly mishaps – included common derailments as well as more surprising disasters such as an engine running off the end of a jetty into a harbour or an unexpected disappearance down a disused mine. As often as not, however, these crises were brought about by the arrogance, stubbornness, jealousy or ambition of the engine involved. The morality of the stories was clear and Christian: misbehaviour led to suffering and retribution; however, provided the culprit showed repentance, restoration always followed. “The important thing,” Awdry said, “is that the engines are punished and forgiven – but never scrapped.

The analogies between the Christian faith and the ways of the railway are obvious: the engines are meant to follow the straight and narrow way and pay the price if they go off the rails. No wonder Awdry enjoyed drawing the parallels between railways and the Church: ” Both had their heyday in the mid-19th century; both own a great deal of Gothic-style architecture which is expensive to maintain; both are regularly assailed by critics; and both are firmly convinced that they are the best means of getting man to his ultimate destination.”

Rev W V Awdry (Familt_Emneth_Wisbech Society) — Awdry and family in 1996 at the time of his OBE Award. Photo: Wishbech Society.

In 1983, Wilbert made his final visit to Wisbech when he opened the Tramway Centenary Exhibition at Wisbech Museum. In 1996 Awdry was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List, but by that time his health had deteriorated and he was unable to travel to London. He died peacefully in his sleep in Stroud, Gloucestershire, on 21 March 1997, at the age of 85.

Rev W V Awdry (Memorial Window_James P MIller) — The stained-glass window at St Edmund’s Church, Emneth. Photo: Courtest of James P. Miller

In Emneth, a stained-glass window was commissioned by the Awdry family and unveiled at St Edmund’s church in 2003; and in 2011 a blue plaque was unveiled by his daughter Veronica Chambers at The Old Vicarage where he had lived from 1953 and until 1965. Finally, in 2020, the Old Vicarage was placed on the market with an asking price of £895,000.

Rev Wilbert Awdry (Plaque 2011_Ian Burt) — Photo: Ian Burt.

THE END

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbert_Awdry
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-the-rev-w-awdry-1274321.html
https://lowlandrambler.com/2018/11/12/the-king-of-east-anglia-and-a-tenuous-connection-to-ringo-star/
https://preservedbritishsteamlocomotives.com/hudswell-clarke-works-no-1800-1-thomas-0-6-0t/
https://www.wisbech-society.co.uk/wilbert-vere-awdry-obe
https://preservedbritishsteamlocomotives.com/hudswell-clarke-works-no-1800-1-thomas-0-6-0t/

Banner Heading Photo: This shows Wilbert Awdry in May 1988, with ‘Edward Thomas’ dressed up as “Peter Sam” on the Talyllyn Railway, Wales. Photo: Wikipedia.

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