Tales of Tunstall, Norfolk

 I have co-researchers, the Platts, to thank for sourcing this map from the late 18th century. It shows Tunstall Staithe House and the navigation linking it with the River Bure through the marshland. Diagonally opposite Stokesby, the other side of marshland and the quaintly named Muck Fleet, is Billockby, where third great grandmother Harriet Ecclestone was from, and Clippesby marshes, where third great grandfather James Skinner was farming in the 1820s. The presence of marshland surrounding the River Bure to the east of Tunstall and Moulton Bay in the west, creates a sort of peninsular of land with Tunstall Staithe House at the north, Tunstall hamlet south of that, with Halvergate below and Wickhampton near the bottom of the map extract.     It is in Wickhampton church that fourth great grandparents Virtue and John Crow are buried. Also buried with them is one of their sons, William Barnard Crow, father of Jane Crow (Bennett), Mary Ann Crow (Howlett) and Georgie Crow (Le...

  Photograph of Staithe farmhouse with six members of the Skinner family outside, taken circa 1867/68. Here is one of the pictures of our ancestors my mother and I took to the remote hamlet of Tunstall thirty two years ago. It shows a united couple, Jane Betsy Skinner, seated on a chair. Her husband, John Pollard Skinner at the end of a bench with their little dog and four of their daughters, Laura, aged seven or eight, Louisa, aged about twenty five, Mary Ann, aged thirteen or fourteen and standing behind them, Emma Jane aged fifteen or sixteen.    Staithe Farm Tunstall viewed from the south in this picture looks like a large Georgian House on three stories, but when my mother and I were invited inside to look at Thomas Skinner's name scratched on a pane of glass, I noted at the time, the ceilings were lower than I expected and the interior featured structural beams. I therefore set my co-researchers of the time, a mammoth task, to use their expertise and knowledge of ar...

Grade two listed church at Billockby, Norfolk, near Clippesby( picture above). Third great grandmother, Harriet Ecclestone, who married James Skinner in 1815 was from Billockby. I have sourced a (much later) picture of the Waggon and Horses, Tombland. It was clearly a timber-framed inn and had a later front to bring it up to date by the time the picture was taken in 1890. This is where Charles Pollard submitted and signed his response to James Skinner's petition to King George lll through chancery in 1816. In the document, the proprietor of the Waggon and Horses is mentioned as William Smith, who is listed as a licensee of the pub 1810 to 1811, after which there is a gap of licences listed until 1820, which is likely to reflect the disruption to all communities, when the Napoleonic Wars drafted all able bodied men into the army. (Information and picture is from Norfolk Public Houses website).  My fourth great grandmother had the unusual name of Palgrave Humphries. She married James...

Above is a picture of my great great grandmother, Jane Betsy's sister, Charlotte Allard. A new co-researcher contacted me recently. My fourth or fifth cousin, S. H., is descended from my 4th great grandparents, John Crow and Virtue Barnell Crow, who are buried in Wickhampton. S.H. has sent me an image of their burial place/memorial.     Cousin S.H. informs me that John and Virtue Crow had 86 grandchildren, of which Jane Betsy and S.H,'s ancestor, Elizabeth Virtue Browne, were two. Charlotte Allard, above, was another of John and Virtue's grandchildren. She is mentioned in the letters which my Tunstall ancestors kept. Charlotte Allard was mentioned by Jane Betsy, in her tearstained letter of October 29th 1870 from the Angel Hotel, Islington, to Emma Jane. "Aunt Allard" will go to Mr Palmer's shop, to buy lengths of black cloth for mourning clothes for her daughters to wear after the death their brother, James Charles, at the London Fever Hospital. Cousin S.H. h...

This story started in Tunstall in 1991 and ended here thirty two years later. I emerged from Stoke Newington station in the pouring rain to walk the wet pavements, and avoid the splashes from the flooded crossings, to explore Abney Park Cemetery. As I was early for my appointment I explored gingerly, for the paths were loamy, puddled and slippery. Where among the bare trees and ivy-clad hidden gothic-style memorials would I find what I was looking for? I met up with Haydn who works for Abney Park and Hackney Council. My expectations were low. I thought she might have located a ruinous concealed memorial and together, we would clear the ivy and weeds to try to decipher what was written. I was wrong. Haydn and her colleagues are working on clearing and researching the memorials. They had cleared the way and tidied the tomb of my ancestors. I had not expected it.   

  Here she is, Jane Betsy Skinner of Tunstall in an elegant crinoline. This photograph was taken in Great Yarmouth in the late 1850s, judging from the quality of the image and the style of the dress.      Jane Betsy was born at nine o'clock in the morning at Tunstall on the 21st January 1823.     She had an older sister, Harriett Virtue. All her younger sisters,  Eliza Charlotte, Emma, Charlotte and Louisa were also born at Tunstall. One of their parents, Stephen or Harriott Bately kept a notebook with a pencil record of the date and time each of them was born.     In 1831, Jane Betsy was given a sketchbook for her eighth Birthday. She filled it with her  competent and stylish drawings. They depict rural life, including cottages, distant mills, streams, milking buckets and three-legged stools.    When she was almost nine years old, on 7th January 1832, Jane Betsy and her family were subjected to an armed robbery at Tunstall, re...