Tales of Tunstall, Norfolk

The picture above is Marine Parade, Great Yarmouth. Following in the  footsteps of my Norfolk ancestors and their large families, my researches have taken me through the social changes which resulted in an inevitable decline in the family's fortunes. Gone are the days of a genteel retirement in Great Yarmouth enjoyed by previous generations. I discovered a really good clue, which has helped me unravel the turn of events, in the British Library National Newspaper Archives. It's an advertisement from the Yarmouth Independent newspaper for a property sale to take place in the  Star Inn on 25th April 1871. Four properties are to be auctioned in St George's Road, Great Yarmouth on behalf of John Pollard Skinner and the trustees of his brother's will, the late James Pollard Skinner (my great great grandfather).  Also for sale, according to the advertisement, are stables, gig house, warehouses, two cottages and a large yard in the rear of Camperdown Place. I have discovered th...

Here is an illustration from Jarrold's of Norwich publication of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell. She wrote it between 1871 and 1877 in Catton, which is now a suburb of Norwich. She was living less than three miles from Albion Terrace, Heigham Road, where Jane Betsy and her daughters moved from Tunstall. I illustrated this article with it, because the most valuable things belonging  to James Pollard Skinner's estate, which were sold on 21st September 1875, were the Norfolk horses he bred.    Under the terms of James Pollard Skinner's will, Harry must run the Tunstall farm until the end of his father's lease. He could invest in it from his father's estate. He was then instructed to sell everything and invest enough to keep his mother's annuity up to a guaranteed  £ 100 per year. After that he was instructed to invest the rest of the capital between all James Pollard's surviving children. Their share was to be paid to them when they came of age or got married. His...

Rosa May Skinner was the last of the descendants of the Batelys and the Skinners to be born at Tunstall in 1865.   She first appeared in her medical student brother, James Charles's letter to his father of 1869. He berates James Pollard Skinner for not mentioning the four-year-old Rosa May had a fever.   I have identified the picture, taken in Norwich by photographers who were doing portraits in the city at the time, as Rosa May. At first I thought it was a young picture of my great grandmother, her sister, Emma Jane, but I realised, in all the pictures I have of Emma Jane, she is wearing some kind of jewellery.    Rosa May was a small child when the triple tragedies struck the family. As the youngest surviving child, she was the baby of the family.    Thanks to the surviving letters and the meticulous investigations of my co-researchers, we know Jane Betsy and her children, Louisa, Harry, Emma Jane, Mary Ann (Polly), Laura and Rosa May remain at Tunstall a...