Farm life in Salle Street

In the mid-1930s the terrace pictured in the April photo of the Reepham Life 2019 Calendar of eight homes in The Street, Salle, were the homes of the families of Barber, Stearman, Arthurton, Hardesty, Clements and Mallett.

Going back through the years some of these names, like Stearman, Barber and Clements, appear in earlier census records. Further back we find the Gladden, Page and Allen families living in The Street, and in 1871 the name Timbers appears in four of the cottages.

Through all the censuses most of the occupations, naturally, were related to farm work, cattle and horses, along with a regular blacksmith. Occasionally we find a carpenter, a brick-makers’ labourer, a shoemaker and a fish jobber, and, according to the 1851 census, in the middle of The Street lived a rat destroyer with his wife who was a fortune teller!

In 1861, in the middle of the houses in The Street, a William Gladden was running a grocery shop as well as being a farm worker and the parish clerk. In 1881 a few railway workers appear.

The longest-running resident seems to have been Joseph Leeds, born in Reepham in 1801, who ran the White Horse inn at the top of The Street for at least 30 years.

Each publican running the White Horse was also a farmer of between 20 and 40 acres, usually employing one or two labourers.

The surname Leeds was prolific in the Reepham area and it is a difficult task to unravel the various Leeds families since Joseph’s son Stephen William Leeds married another Leeds, Frances Ann, her father being another Stephen Leeds!

Stephen William Leeds became the proprietor of the ironmongery business in Reepham’s Market Place and was living there with Frances and their two children in 1881, selling the business to Edward Gibbs in 1888.

Frances and her mother-in-law Elizabeth lived on after their respective husbands had died, probably in Church House on Church Hill, Reepham, and were still registered there in 1901.

(None of these Leeds was directly related to the Stephen Leeds who owned a tannery and farm at Whitwell.)

Janet Archer

The Reepham Archive is open to the public on the first Wednesday and Saturday of the month from 10 am – 12 noon (or by appointment), upstairs in the Bircham Centre, Market Place, Reepham. Email: reephamarchive@gmail.com

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