Tales of Tunstall, Norfolk

The brothers, James and John Pollard Skinner were noted for breeding, keeping and managing horses. These were good and useful skills on a reasonably large farm when they were both working the land on opposite sides of the River Bure.    The picture of the carriage outing, above, comes from a first cousin once removed, with whom I spent many happy hours delving into my fathers side of family history.  This side all originate from the north west of England. This picture shows parents James and Ellen with two of their children, Mary and Seth. From the researches of my cousin Molly and I, that branch of the family also left the land and moved into the towns to work in retail, commerce and industry.    Back in Norfolk when James Pollard Skinner made his (apparently) contentious will in December 1869, of which, thanks to my co-researchers, I now have a copy, we agree, he was unwell and depressed.   His depression is indicated in the letter he received from his me...

The picture above is early portrait photography. I will put a portrait of pioneer portrait photographer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce below. It is from the same period and helps to date the one above.    The portrait above is of James Pollard Skinner, probably taken in the late 1830s or early 1840s. He is notable for his large eyes, which are apparent in the picture of him with his wife and some of his daughters seated outside the farmhouse at Tunstall.    James was born in 1817. That date and his name has been put on the back of this portrait by his granddaughter May Gertrude. He is dressed in a similar style to the portrait of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce which is 1830s.  It was probably taken at about the same time. Both portraits are heavily touched in. This is probably why he appears to have rather small ears. My friend who restored this picture has suggested it was intended to be a cameo portrait which did not work out.    In the 1840s, James Pollard S...

Jane Betsy had left Tunstall by the end of 1875. She lived in Norwich for about eight years and then moved to London, where she spent the rest of her life. She kept letters and photographs of the people she had loved and lost.    The photograph above was probably taken in the late 1840s and is a very early photograph for which the sitters had to pose of several minutes with their heads in a clasp to keep them in one position.  Who are the couple above? Why did Jane Betsy keep it?     After careful examination of all the pictures I have of that branch of the family, I have come to the conclusion it is Stephen Bately, Jane Betsy's father and Harriott Crow Bately her mother.    Because it has been taken with a long exposure, something like 10 minutes, the photographer has added features which may have been blurred on the original picture, particularly by blinking. The set of the eyes, whether blinking or not, stays much the same though. Jane Betsy re...

How much did Jane Betsy know of the events which involved and split her family in the 1890s? The photograph of her, above, shows her at the age of 61, with a Mona Lisa smile. It was taken in a Stoke Newington photographic studio in September 1884. With her are daughter, Emma Jane, son in law, Joseph Joyce and baby granddaughter May Gertrude.     Jane Betsy spent the final decades of her life in a crowded terraced house in Stoke Newington. Her three surviving sisters lived out their days in St George's Road and Marine Parade, Great Yarmouth.    The close affectionate families of the Skinner brothers, James and John Pollard Skinner became estranged, split apart and even aggressively confrontational in the mid-1890s. Was Jane Betsy aware of any of this? The evidence I have, carefully kept by our branch of the family, is that she was not.      Letters show Jane Betsy's daughters and their husbands have agreed Harry had lost or spent the Skinner bequest set...

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 nearly nine years old, on 7th January 1832, Jane Betsy and her family were subjected to an armed robbery at Tunstall, according...

Battle lines were drawn in the 1880s which created two distinct factions in the fortunes of Jane Betsy of Tunstall, her immediate and extended family.      The two pictures I have of Jane Betsy, standing outside the farmhouse and seated looking relaxed and happy with her husband and four of her daughters, show a confident lady-like person. Widowed at the age of 47, when her youngest surviving child, Rosa May was five years old, she remained at Tunstall and continued to run the farm until 1875, when it was taken over by her sister's oldest son, James Thomas Skinner and his sisters, Alice and Eleanor, all from Thrigby.    As I have mentioned before, Jane Betsy's Wesleyan Methodist faith had sustained her through the tragedies, or "blows to the heart" in her words, which she suffered in 1870, 1871 and again in late 1875 with the death of her eldest child and daughter Henrietta Louise.    Women could not own property when Jane Betsy's father made his will ...

Widowed and with six surviving children, Jane Betsy Skinner gives up the farm in Tunstall and moves to  Albion Terrace, Heigham Road, Norwich, where her eldest daughter, Louisa died.    In 1876, her only surviving son, Harry, gets married to Emma Fill and runs a shop, post office, carrying service and coal agency in Freethorpe.    By 1883 Jane Betsy's daughters, Polly (Mary Ann), Laura and Emma Jane have all married and moved out of Norfolk.    I still have difficulty working out why the Norwich solicitors take the extraordinary step of summoning the widow, Jane Betsy and her unmarried daughter Rosa May to court in chancery in January 1888. The implication the Norwich solicitors make, by taking this action at this time, is the two women are untrustworthy.    In fact, thanks to the researches of my friends,  after Jane Betsy left Tunstall, it was occupied by her nephew and nieces from Thrigby, James Thomas Skinner and Alice and Eleanor Sk...

Rosa May, youngest daughter of Jane Betsy, married Edward Dennis Ballinger, a farmer, from Hemsted, Gloucestershire at St Judes church, Islington on 27th December 1887. Joe Joyce was a witness. The bride and groom both had addresses in Mildmay Road, London. Had they run away together?    It is under these circumstances I begin to speculate why the marriage was in London. Whether Rosa May had moved from Norwich as soon as she was 21 and if she met Edward Ballinger when staying with her sister in Gloucester, which is the most likely explanation.    Out of all Jane Betsy's daughters, Rosa May is the only one to marry a farmer. This farmer is not trying to make a farm in Norfolk pay the bills, but he has one in Gloucestershire near the Forest of Dean. In the later decades of the 19th century the livestock and dairy aspect of farming, which suited the damper climate found in the west of the British Isles, gave better returns than the cropping which was most suited to the ...

The story Emma Jane told my mother as a little girl about her coral engagement ring from a sailor who drowned at sea, could have been just a story.  I have a picture of him with a pencil note on it, in the same hand writing as the pencil note on the blank part of Jane Bennett's letter of 1873. Emma's amorous sailor never returned to claim her. When Joe Joyce proposed, she accepted him.    Emma Jane's brother Harry and youngest sister Rosa May are at her wedding. She marries Joe Joyce at St Peter's Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Lady Lane, Norwich in March 1883. As far as I know, she packed her bags and left Norfolk for good. That is why I have put the pictures above against a map of the very comprehensive rail network of the time.    Joe was living at 12, Hayman Street, Islington when he married Emma Jane. He was working as a manager in an isinglass and gelatine warehouse. Joe had, like the author Charles Dickens, gone out to work as a boy. Joe didn't work in a blac...

Ironmongery shop in Cockermouth, Cumbria we visited in 2014 featuring Emma Jane's 2nd great grandson and 3rd great grandson The suitor who wins Laura's heart is Job. She is living and working as an assistant at a mourning warehouse (Jarrolds) in Norwich in 1881. She is 21, so she doesn't need Jane Betsy's permission to marry him. We don't know what her mother thinks of her daughter's decision to marry an ironmonger and work in the business with him, but by 1883, when Emma Jane marries Joe Joyce and moves with him to London, there is only Rosa May, aged 18 dependent on her mother. Rosa May must marry someone Jane Betsy approves of, or wait until she is 21 to get married.      After the luckless Alfred King, who signs his name with a bit of a flourish, accepts his rejection from Laura, she meets Job Sharpe an ironmonger's assistant and farmer's son from Lincolnshire.     After their marriage at the church of St John de Sepulchre, Norwich, October 1882, the...

This early 20th century picture of fishing smacks from a quayside at Lowestoft, Suffolk, shows what a thriving industry the port had. Frank and Polly Stebbings ran a book and stationery shop in London Road Lowestoft until they retired to Stoke Newington, London.  My ancestors and their immediate family followed their hearts when they left Norfolk and the increasingly remote rural backwater at Tunstall, where they were all born.    Jane Betsy was "looking about" in her son Harry's words, for husbands for her daughters. I think of her, as she lives at Albion Terrace, Heigham Road, like Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, keen on getting her daughters settled.    Her daughters had different ideas. They were out working and would make their own choices. Jane Betsy was probably expecting her daughters to find farmers who owned plenty of land to marry. It was a lifestyle she had grown up with and one which her youngest daughter, Rosa May, would have.   ...

A  GNR Stirling Single passing through Holloway station from King's Cross. Picture from Railway Historian J.E. Connor. He also supplied a  picture  of a metropolitan engine at Shepherd's Bush, below. Harry and his wife, accompanied by her sister Fanny, most probably took the train from Kings Cross to Sunderland and made their return journey to Shepherd's Bush by train as well.    Harry is on honeymoon at 5, Cresswell Terrace, Sunderland, early in 1876. He addresses his letter from there to "Emma, Rosa and Mother." He signs himself as simply "Harry". It begins his emotional ties with the north east.    I realise now, the "Mrs Henry" in Sunderland he is referring to is Mary Ann, wife of Henry Fill, master mariner, who does not appear in any censuses, until he is in his fifties, because he is always at sea, when they are conducted. I'm not sure if it is his own wife  Emma, or her sister Fanny, Harry is referring to who is "looking about...