Tales of Tunstall, Norfolk

The letters Emma Jane kept tell a story. They were kept for the memory of a life-style and home that had gone forever. In 1870, Emma Jane was 18 and her brother Harry was 21.    I knew nothing of Harry until I read the letters. I had only heard of the 2nd great uncle James Charles, who had qualified as a doctor when he died of typhoid.    The first mention of Harry is in James Charles's letter to his father of 29th November 1869. It also mentions the food parcel which has arrived. The contents are itemised and also "2 brown bags the use of which to Harry and myself is a mystery."    James Charles always signs his letters, J.C.Skinner whereas his brother always signs Harry Skinner or just Harry. James Charles and Harry's letters indicate their father is not well and that it is "an old complaint" or he is "much the same." They also concern themselves with the farm, the "marsh hay" and "drilling wheat on the marsh"    An aspect of ...

I am going to unravel the myths and legends which surround the tragic circumstances and fall in fortunes of Jane Betsy and her children in stages.    This part of her story starts in Tunstall, surrounded by her family (above), in comparative gentility. It finishes in a terraced house in London with, what must have been, an enduring sadness for lost loved ones and the well-remembered life-style which went with it. Tragedy of Dickensian proportions struck her in 1870 and 1871. Her tear-stained letter to her daughter Emma Jane bears witness to the first 'heavy blow to the heart' as she puts it herself.    The death of her husband, shortly afterwards is beginning of more pressing problems. It was followed in the summer of the death of her 16-year-old son, Thomas, this was another 'heavy blow to the heart,' for her.    Thomas had been ailing, as Harry writes to James Charles the previous autumn. Harry says they have been sitting up with him "all night" and uncon...

When I saw a chancery case among the papers kept for more than 150 years I thought there would be some sort of lengthy case as described in one of my favourite books, Bleak House by Charles Dickens.   The case however, is disappointingly straightforward, but why it was ever brought to Chancery is another question altogether and one I still struggle to find answers for.    The summons to court was sent to widowed Jane Betsy and her unmarried daughter Rosa May on 12th December 1887. The case would be heard on 12th January 1888. The case was taken out by the Norwich solicitors. It still strikes me as an extreme way to deal with a lump sum which her son Harry had lodged with the Norwich solicitors to top up his mother's annuity.    I have to go back to Bleak House for the image which came to mind. I thought of my 2nd great grandmother, Jane Betsy, as a sort of eccentric Miss Flight, living in the attic at 81 Aden Grove with her caged birds, called, Hope, Joy, Y...

Was there a crock of gold at the end of the rainbow?    When chasing facts and figures, there are many possibilities to be considered. Was the money or land there in the first place? Had it been invested in a loss-making venture? Had it been spent? Were there swinging debts to pay? Did someone make a mistake?    From Jane Betsy's daughter Laura's letter of 1886, with her husband Job's overwritten part on the back,  the will of Jane Betsy's husband James Pollard stipulated there should be an amount to top up the annuity from land inherited from her father.    Jane Betsy's father Stephen Bately bequeathed her and her five sisters an annuity from land rents. Jane Betsy, Harriet Virtue, Eliza Charlotte, Louisa, Emma and Charlotte benefitted from this. They all married farmers. Until legislation later in the century, they could not own/inherit the land themselves. Also, the annuities depend on the land being retained and farmed profitably. It is now cl...

From the surviving letters and documents between James Charles, Harry, Emma Jane, Jane Betsy and her cousins Jane Bennett, Georgie Lesbini, Mary Ann Howlett and Mary Boult, I have come to the conclusion there was a major decline in the inherited family fortunes, which was inevitable.    Jane Betsy, with her drawing 'accomplishment' and five of her sisters had a Jane Austen-like search for husbands in an era when manors and estates were still privately owned, oldest sons inherited them, younger sons went into the church or took commissions in the army or navy. They were born just after the Napoleonic wars, when farming was profitable and fresh food was produced, milled and distributed on the nearby River Bure navigation and  turnpike roads. When Jane Betsy and her sisters were getting married to their farmer husbands, in the 1840s and 1850s, the new railway network was already linking the Tunstall and Acle area with the cities of London and Norwich.    It was nev...

The letters James Charles sent home from his lodgings in London in the summer of 1870 reveal that he, Harry and Emma Jane (above) were involved in running a Sunday school. Harry has his brother send music to be played and from James Charles's remarks about it, he approves of 'Abide with Me', but is not so sure about the other piece, for which which he doesn't give a title.    The Sunday school the young people are talking about was Wesleyan Methodist. The movement was based mainly on the teachings of John Wesley, who had taken a mission over to an American colony of Savannah Georgia in the 1730s, to promote Anglicanism over there. By the 19th century, there were Wesleyan Methodist chapels all over Norfolk. As can be seen from Mary Boult's letters, the movement had great appeal among the young.    It looks as if the enthusiasm for Wesleyan Methodism in the family was shared by grandmother, Harriott Crow Bately. The Methodist chapel they are likely to have attended wa...

Going back to 1870, there was a letter I missed because I thought it just a condolence. It was from Mr Gillett of Rose Villa Halvergate. He sent it on November 18th 1870. It has been read so much in the past, it is falling apart. It is addressed to Jane Betsy and her husband. It enclosed something, we have to guess what that something was. The enclosure  has not been kept. This is what it says:- "Rose Villa Halvergate     Nov m 18th 1870          Mr Gillett herewith begs respectfully to offer Mr Skinner the enclosed thinking the contents so consolatory that he and Mrs S might derive consolation, and a desire to retain them, altho' it may bring to remembrance the sad loss they have sustained for which he offers his sincere sympathy having himself passed through the like troubled waters of affliction, but in the midst all it is the christian's part to be submissive to the Divine Will .    With this he presents his condolence to Mr ...

In 1875, Jane Betsy, her daughters, Louisa, Emma Jane, Mary Ann (Polly), Laura and Rosa May left their family home at Tunstall and moved to a terraced house in Heigham Road, Norwich.    To try to discover why, I have tried to explore every aspect of their lives and traced brothers, sisters and cousins all over the country and abroad. It is very complex. Deals, investments, marriages and contracts had been arranged in an attempt to keep properties and farmland within the family and to pay for the annuities Jane Betsy and her surviving sisters expected from their father, Stephen Bately's, bequest.    Stephen Bately had aspired to be of yeoman or gentleman status. But by the end of 1875, when Jane Betsy, her son Harry, daughters, Louisa, Emma Jane, Mary Ann (Polly), Laura and Rosa May moved to Norwich, land values and profits from farming in Norfolk had declined. In competition with cheap imports from abroad, agriculture in Norfolk was  in a steady decline.   ...

I don't know what date Jane Betsy's daughter, Emma Jane, inherited enough money from her mother to take her family out of rented accommodation and to buy a house. There is a pencil note on the postcard of a house, similar to the one my mother was born into, (above) which gives a price of " £5 00, 83 year lease." I don't know, either, how long May Gertrude worked at Avenue Telephone Exchange after she was married. The question of what happened to the trust fund left to Jane Betsy in 1871 continues at least until 1912. May Gertrude's first daughter, Muriel Joyce, was born the following year in 1913.    What I do have is a description of the house from my mother, Margaret, who was born in 1920. She writes for her own grandchildren in 1984:    "I was born at 8 o'clock on 24th December 1920 at Portland Avenue, Stamford Hill, London N.16. My oldest sister is seven years older than me and my sister Nancy 4 years older. We lived with my grandmother, Emma Jane...

29th August 1906 Jane Betsy's granddaughter,  May Gertrude, married Walter Harold. May Gertrude looks a bit fed up in the picture and Walter Harold, insurance Clerk with the United Kingdom Provident Institution, in the Strand is taking his wedding very seriously. Directly behind May Gertrude is her father Joe. Mother, Emma Jane, is third from the left seated. Martha, Walter Harold's mother is third from the right, seated and Walter Henry his father stands behind Emma Jane.    On both sides of the families, are many maiden aunts of various ages and they are the most difficult to track down. Cousin Lucy, may be at the left end of the row, seated. She became Mrs Lacroix and emigrated to Canada. She sent pictures to May Gertrude, which have been kept, of herself, her mother and her son Michael. Seated on the grass at the front is the groom's brother Bertram. Next to him, perhaps, is a Norfolk Skinner cousin, perhaps one of Arthur Skinner's children. Arthur was farming in No...

9th July 2020. Since writing this, an archivist from bt.com has sent me some information about women working as telegraph and telephone operators in the 19th and early 20th century. They first employed young men to work the telegraph system, but found them to be "unruly and rude." They decided to recruit a "better class" of woman, who would work for lower wages than the men. Women therefore were recruited to work in the Electric Telegraph Company in Charing Cross when it was set up in 1859. The company was inundated with applications because women had few opportunities apart from marriage, being a nursery governess or a milliner. The telegraph network became a vehicle for online romances in code. This explains a few cryptic sayings and riddles in my grandmother's note book. "meat at 5/-" translates as "meet at the Crown."    When they recruited women, the London & District Telegraph Company, set up in 1859, was "surprised and grieved...

  She was f rom a rural backwater on the River Bure, Norfolk, yet Jane Betsy spent the final decades of her life with her daughter Emma Jane, her son in law Joseph Joyce, her grandchildren Alfred and May Gertrude living at 81, Aden Grove, Stoke Newington.    Because Emma Jane has taken in lodgers and everyone else in the household is working, it looks as if Jane Betsy's  annuity from  her father, topped up with money allocated for it from her late husband, isn't going very far; or it has all been spent; or the rents of the land holdings have devalued in tandem with the decline in the profitability of agriculture, fuelled by cheap imports from abroad.     It is also notable Jane Betsy's only surviving son Harry has left the land and is working for Moy's the coal merchants in Yarmouth. In the early years of the 20th century Jane Betsy's nephew Arthur Skinner is still farming. By 1926, Arthur, his wife Maud and his sons and daughters had all left rur...

Is this a Bately, Crowe, Boult, Skinner or even Joyce picture? I don't know. It would fit in with Joe Joyce's uncle Frederick and two of his sisters, Cecilia and Emily, perhaps, who lived  at Burgh Castle. They are all there in the 1891 census, where he is most careful to point out he was a customs official in London and well and truly retired living in Norfolk. Or it could be a Neave, Page or Allard household. What split the family up and forced them to leave Tunstall? The answers are in tantalising clues in those letters which Jane Betsy's daughter, Emma Jane, kept.    Grandma Harriet Crow Bately, the one who I guess made Jane Betsy's son Harry a favourite, and was on the move in James Charles's 1870 letter to Harry, died at St George's Road Yarmouth in January 1876. The same year Harry married Emma Fill and his first daughter Gertrude Emma is born.      In 1880 Jane Betsy's sister, Charlotte Allard died in Park Lane Heigham. Her widower Francis Allard ma...

The River Bure. Photograph by M Hobbs When we visited nearly 30 years ago, Tunstall seemed to be a remote place with the graves of my great great grandfather and 2nd great uncles and 2nd great aunt in the overgrown churchyard with the semi-ruined church. My mother and I were about to give up the search when I turned the car and the resident with the rosy cheeks came out of her house to empty the tea leaves out of her tea pot, so I was able to show her the picture of the house we were seeking and ask her. When I drove down the lane, it seemed, at the time, increasingly unlikely there would be anything like the substantial house in the picture in such a remote place.    We found it eventually and, as I put in an earlier post, had a friendly welcome from the farmer and the family who lived there.    The letters show an interaction with the close cousins at Thrigby which is some ten miles away. Jane Betsy's surviving son Harry, according to his letters and those she kept...

Above is a picture of Thrigby Hall, which is now part of a wildlife park attraction in Broadlands. I have often wondered why this postcard was tucked in family pictures. I am still unravelling the family relationships. At first I thought Thrigby and Tunstall were near and the two families of Skinner/Bately cousins saw a lot of each other. Thrigby and Tunstall are ten miles by road, the other side of the River Bure, the railway line to Yarmouth and, today, the A47.     Jane Betsy's younger sister, Eliza Charlotte married James Pollard Skinner's younger brother John Pollard Skinner. Their children, the cousins, must have been more like brothers and sisters. All Jane Betsy's sisters married farmers.    In 1895 John Pollard Skinner's oldest surviving son, Stephen Bately Skinner, is running the Corporation Farm, Thrigby, where all his brothers and sisters were born and brought up. The farm is part of the wildlife gardens today. The Corporation referred to is Great Y...