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Norfolk’s Women’s Land Army in World War I
During World War One, women took on men’s roles on the land, forming the Women’s Land Army. Their work was crucial, and after the war, women sought greater independence and…
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Bird’s Mill, (1848-90), Whittington Road, Stoke Ferry Bridge
This flour mill was owned and run by Jacob Mason Bird. It was on the site which became the home to The Crouch family’s grass dehydration concern .
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Of Revolution, Nuns and Oxburgh Hall
A while ago, I came across this notice in the Norfolk Chronicle of 1793: “FRENCH REFUGEE CLERGY. Subscriptions and Collections already advertised £181.10s.6½d …Collected from the following parishes…Rev F.A. Oxburgh…
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The Fasionable Villebois Family who deprived their poor of their rights.
The Parish of Marham was once famed for its cherry and walnut orchards. The orchards were felled for use by gun manufactures during the Napoleonic wars. It was around this…
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19th Century Game Laws; complicated and socially challenging
The Game Laws of England in the 1800s derived from the Forest Laws set down at the time of the Norman Invasion (1066). Over the intervening 800 years such laws…
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A Tale: one woman’s thoughts on hay rick burning in 1831
On November 5, 1831, a fire near Stoke Ferry reflects unrest among impoverished laborers like John, who resort to arson against mechanisation after losing their livelihoods due to new threshing…
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Spinning a Yarn: how 18th centuary local women spinners felt the full weight of the law
In the twenty years between 1769-89 at least 238 women spinners who lived in Norfolk were convicted of fraud under the Worsted Act of 1768. I have identified thirty-two of…
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Spinning a Yarn (for a second time)….a folk tale
North of Stoke Ferry, up by Castle Acre, there lived a villainous Count named Barnard Ralph Rainald. (1) Now, Count Barnard desired a certain maid, and he swore that she…
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Policing in Norfolk: from the Middle Ages to 1856 – referencing rural protest in Wymondham and surrounding parishes.
Norfolk’s policing evolved from community-based methods to organised forces due to rural unrest from land enclosure and mechanisation. Protests emerged against wage decline, leading to confrontatio, government repression, and the…