Tales of Tunstall, Norfolk

Reedham railway station. Image from the "Wherry Line" I travelled to Lowestoft on Friday 11th October to join other regional guides for a weekend and AGM. I realised Reedham station featured in my Norfolk ancestor's story. It was a tragic event, particularly for his mother, my second great grandmother, Jane Betsy and his sister, my great grandmother, Emma Jane, when James Charles Skinner, who has just qualified to be a doctor, caught typhoid and died at the London Fever Hospital in 1870. It was such a tragic event that it was still being talked about by later generations of the family when I was a child. My researches, which I made with a lot of help from good friends during the lock downs in the recent pandemic, show the hopes that died with James Charles were to affect the family's lives and fortunes in the years to come. Jane Betsy, Emma Jane and the rest of their large family lived at Staithe Farm, Tunstall. In the letter below, Jane Betsy asks Emma Jane to air th...

 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...

  I am still surprised to have ancestors who lived in such a remote area. They left it, because, in common with families all over England, the Inclosure Acts of Parliament stimulated a steady exodus from remote rural villages such as Tunstall. The practice of enclosing land, to make agriculture more efficient, maximise land rents and create areas for the 'recreations' of hunting and shooting, increased the flow of families, like mine, from the land to find employment in the cities.      I was having an email discussion with my co-researchers about the possible impact of enclosures on my Tunstall ancestors. They found maps and allocations in Tunstall and Cantley. They also identified 3rd great grandfather Stephen Bately as being the largest landowner in Tunstall, plus a few additional pieces of land which he enclosed. By extending his freeholds, it is arguable, he could have, inadvertently, contributed to the decline in the fortunes of his descendants at Tunstall. ...

Alfred Neave, above, was married to 3rd great aunt Emma. He came to the rescue when the close relatives of my Tunstall ancestors were in trouble in 1887 . The farmers who married my 3rd great grandparents' daughters took on responsibilities they could never have anticipated. Francis Allard, apparently, didn't recover from the death of his wife Charlotte. His tendency to drink too much alcohol is in many press reports. It makes me think there was more than one person of that name with a drink problem.    Francis Allard and Sherwood William Page were executors for their mother-in-law, Harriet Bately. Apart from that and the friendship of his daughter Ednalenna with Rosa May, who was at his house in the 1881 census, Francis Allard doesn't feature much in our family saga. After all, our lot were tea drinkers. There is one exception, Francis Allard's daughter, Bertha Kett, is listed in my great grandparents address book.    Jane Betsy and her sisters could be maintained i...

  The Moreton Bay took Arthur (57, farmer) and his wife Maud (55), Kathleen (27, home help), Olive (24, domestic), Ena (22, domestic), Arthur (20, clerk), Doreen (18, clerk) and Lucy (14, scholar) to start a new life in Australia in 1926.   Arthur Skinner gave up trying to make a living farming in Norfolk in 1926. He, his wife Maud and his entire family emigrated on the Moreton Bay to Sydney. The farm he left was on the edge of the broads. It was beginning to be easier to make a living catering for visitors in the area than from farming.    Arthur's eldest son, John William Irvine Skinner had preceded him to the Antipodes. He had emigrated in 1912 and served in WW1 with the Anzacs. Fourteen years later, the rest of the family joined him in New South Wales. In Moss Vale, where Arthur and Maud lived, there are a couple of street names which caught my eye. One is Arthur Street and the other Chapman Street, (Maud's maiden name).    At this time, Arthur's sister...

Picture of  Thomas  Moy's coal trucks. Thomas Moy started his enterprise in Colchester. By the 1890s he was organising many more coal agencies and depots in London and the East of England. Photograph supplied by railway historian and photographer J.E.Connor. My Norfolk ancestors from Tunstall moved from remote rural living to urban life. When her cousin Stephen died at Corporation Farm, Thrigby on 5th June 1896, great grandmother Emma Jane and her mother Jane Betsy heard about it at their home in Stoke Newington. Brother Harry heard the news at St Augustine, Norwich. His four children were doing well at the Norwich schools and colleges, especially in physiognomy and drawing.     Harry had been running the farm at Burlingham St Edmund until 1887, when he sold everything and took Mr Rising's advice to file for bankruptcy. After that he worked as a draper. Five years later he became a canvasser (or salesman) for coal merchant Thomas Moy, when Moy's took over f...

This superb picture of reed harvesting in east Norfolk comes from Norfolk Tales, Myths and More The documents and letters kept in my family tell a story of a rapid decline in fortunes and an apparent splitting up. The name and relationships with the Skinners was forgotten or ignored. Investigating this in the 1980s my mother obtained a copy of Jane Betsy's, 2nd great grandmother's, wedding certificate with James Pollard Skinner, 2nd great grandfather. The wedding was in Caister rather than Tunstall, where he and his father were running the farm she had been living on with her parents and sisters.   On the certificate are listed the names of six men, including Jane Betsy's father. It looks as if there was no escape for James Pollard Skinner. He would inherit an obligation to the Bately's from his father and he would take on the further responsibility of a wife and family. Apart from Jane Betsy's father, uncles William Barnard Crow, G.C. Bately, N.O.Bately, John C. No...

Alfred Edward Joyce, Emma Jane Joyce, Joseph Joyce standing at the back, with May Gertrude Joyce (right) and a friend sitting at the front . My grandmother, May Gertrude had a very clear idea of gender roles. Women should get married. Their husbands should keep them. It was an even stronger rule when the women had children. Even if the husband had cleared off or died, it was a woman's duty, as far as my grandmother was concerned, to stay at home and look after them. I think her ideas may have been shaped by her own experiences.    May Gertrude had worked a sixty-hour week as a telephone receptionist (see my blog post "Jane Betsy and the Hello Girl"). She was a receptionist at the Avenue Telephone Exchange in the City of London. She had been dealing, according to some humorous jottings and anecdotes she noted, with many stroppy male customers. After her grandmother, Jane Betsy, died (1st April 1906) there was enough money to afford to be married. She and my grandfather wer...