Crowds gather to see clock reinstated in St Michael’s tower

Post date: Tuesday, January 14, 2025 - 12:57

The cover image of this year’s Reepham Life Calendar shows crowds and cars gathered to witness the church clock being reinstated in St Michael’s tower.

Flags are decorating the buildings and “God Save the King” can be seen on Hilton’s shopfront. White surplices of the choir show up at the base of the tower and a long ladder has been placed against the tower wall.

A newspaper cutting describes the day’s events and records many of the people present including Rev. Luscombe, Edward Gibbs, Messrs Faircloth, Beaver, Alford, Newstead, Temple-Owen and Turner, and Mesdames Luscombe, Watson, Owen, Laskey, Bircham and Symonds. Edward Gibbs Snr was chosen to make the dedication itself.

When was the photograph taken? On the reverse of the postcard is written: “At the unveiling of the restoration of the Church Clock to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of King George V in 1935.”

Then we have a newspaper cutting with 1935 written in biro at the top. This article names the occasion as commemorating the coronation of King George VI in May 1937 and goes on to describe the rest of the day’s events, a carnival parade, prizes awarded for fancy dress, a whist drive and a dance in the evening. Sports events had to be postponed due to a downpour.

After the service, adults had a buffet tea in the Methodist Hall and the children were treated to tea in the Town Hall and we are assured that, in spite of the weather, everyone “enjoyed themselves as far as they could”.

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.

Copies of the Reepham Life Calendar 2025 can still be purchased by mail order HERE.

Market Place baker with Hampshire connections

Post date: Friday, June 28, 2024 - 08:58

The Reepham Life 2024 Calendar image for June (below) shows Walter Ford (left) with his brother Richard and sister Dolly, possibly taken in the early 1950s after their father William’s death. The boy’s name is not known.

Walter (1905–1980) was the youngest child of William John Ford and his second wife Eliza Holt. With his brother and sister he ran Ford’s bakery in Reepham Market Place. He was a bellringer for 60 years and Reepham Tower Captain from 1944.

He is also remembered as a great handbell ringer. People who were children when he was an old man remember calling him “Buns” and he was an extra (a bellringer) in the 1971 film The Go-Between.

Above: Ford bakery van, probably photographed when it was new.

Walter’s father William came from Topsham in Devon and was born in 1863. He married his first wife Ellen Fuller Clarke in Portsea, Hampshire. Three of their four children were born there, but by 1894 when their fourth child Gladys was born they were resident in Reepham and running the bakery in the Market Place. Ellen came from Aylsham and her father, Alfred Fuller Clarke, ran a bakery in Red Lion Street and later in Cromer Hill.

So far there are no clues as to how William and Ellen, growing up in different parts of the country, could have met. Ellen died in 1896, two years after Gladys was born. William married his second wife Eliza the following year and had five more children.

The eldest child of the second marriage, Elsie Mary Ford, also poses a similar mystery. Her husband Isaac Gale came from Lyndhurst in Hampshire which is where Elsie and Isaac lived after being married in the Aylsham registration district in 1921.

By 1929 the house in Lyndhurst where they were living had been named Reepham House. They were still living there in 1939 but when they both died in the 1950s they were buried in Reepham with their address given as the Market Place.

Until a few years ago, Reepham House on Romsey Road, Lyndhurst, had been run as a hotel and B&B.

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.

The shock of war

Post date: Monday, June 17, 2024 - 18:53

The May image (below) in the Reepham Life 2024 Calendar shows the thatched cottage that can still be seen on Reepham Moor.

A brief annotation states that the woman in the image is Charlie Self’s mother: Charlie was born in 1896 to Frederick and Florence Self.

Records from the National Archives show that Charlie enlisted in 1915 and by October he was involved in the Balkans campaign. In 1916 his regiment was transferred to France.

During the first day of the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916, Charlie was wounded by gunshot which led to the loss of his left leg. This was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the First World War.

He was finally discharged in November 1917 from Warley Barracks, headquarters of the Essex Regiment. He was awarded the Silver Badge, the main purpose of which was to prevent men not in uniform being thought of as shirkers.

No record of Charlie has yet been found in the 1921 Census but his parents Frederick and Florence and three of his siblings were all still living on Reepham Moor.

In 1927 Charlie was certainly living with his family as there were reports in the newspapers of his bad behaviour leading to an eventual sentence of three months' imprisonment.

He had threatened both his mother and his brother, and there were “numerous complaints from the neighbourhood and no one could live there peaceably”.

 

Extract from Yarmouth Independent, 15 October 1927.

 

Charlie is perhaps an example of a First World War soldier deeply affected by his wound and the subsequent loss of his left leg, suffering from shell shock (now called post-traumatic stress disorder). He died in 1938 aged 43.

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.

Fashionable wedding held in Reepham

Post date: Wednesday, April 17, 2024 - 20:07

On 14 April 1903, the Tuesday following Easter Monday, Francis Richard Samuel Bircham was married to Agnes St Clair Bruce in St Mary’s church in Reepham.

The town was decorated with flags and garlands, arches were erected in the Market Place and at the entrance to the church, and the path leading to the porch was covered with a red carpet strewn with primroses.

Pictured in the Reepham Life 2024 Calendar for April (above), the arch showing “Long Life and Happiness” had “Good Luck to Them” on its other side.

The occasion was reported in the Norfolk newspapers at length, commenting that it was a full 50 years since such a fashionable event had occurred in the town, and emphasising that the wedding dress had been made by Mesdames Lacey of Bond Street.

From the newspaper reports we learn that “the bells pealed out a merry chime, and the usual quietude of the town was disturbed by the booming of guns”, and the guests were treated to a “recherche breakfast” served in a large marquee attached to the Old Brewery House. In the evening a ball was given for about 200 local tradesmen and servants in Hackford old schoolroom.

Above: A second photograph of the Market Place later in the afternoon. Photo: courtesy Gary Meek

Francis, the groom, was the son of Samuel Bircham (1838−1923). He gave his residence as Beech Hill, Woking. This was his father’s property that Samuel had purchased in 1892, while still owning and living at the Moor House in Reepham.

The bride, Agnes, was already known as Nan and had been living in the Old Brewery House with her older sister Margaret since 1901. They had left the Isle of Man with their mother Jemima and the youngest daughter Dorothy after the death of their father Alexander.

Agnes’ mother Jemima Bruce became a tenant of Hackford House and was still living there in 1915 occupying eight rooms. She later moved into Norwich with her daughters Margaret and Dorothy.

Margaret (known as Daisy) is recorded as working at Reepham’s Red Cross hospital from 1914−1916, and younger sister Dorothy was a volunteer nurse during the same period.

Agnes is also recorded as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurse during the First World War, resident at the Old Brewery House. She continued to live there with her three children, Richard Merrick Samuel, Michael Guy and Ann, after her divorce from Francis in 1919. She died in 1969 at the age of 90. Her daughter Ann continued to live at the Old  Brewery House, later moving to Swannington and lastly to a care home. Ann Bircham was buried in Salle churchyard in 2006.

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.

Cello-playing painter and decorator

Post date: Tuesday, January 23, 2024 - 15:56

The January picture (below) in the Reepham Life 2024 Calendar shows a view of Norwich Road. The building on the left displays the name of George Storey who was a painter and decorator.

The late local historian Wesley Piercy tells us that George used the upper part of the building as storage for his decorating supplies and that in the 1920s the ground floor was a butcher’s shop run by W E Spriggs.

The Storey family lived in the house known as The Bays. George played the cello and was the conductor of the Reepham Orchestral Band (below, seated right) as well as being part of the Reepham Black Diamonds.

George Storey was born in 1883 and grew up in Norwich working as a bootmaker in Pitt Street where his father Edmund had a boot manufacturing business.

George must have made a decision to seek work elsewhere since in 1907 he married Lilian Agnes Wright in Hackford Parish Church (presumably St Michael’s Whitwell). Lilian was the daughter of John Wright, plumber and glazier.

In the 1881 Census, John Wright, age 26, had his own business on Norwich Road. The image below, probably from the 1920s, shows John Wright’s painted advertisement, which was visible for many years on the gable wall of The Bays/Bay House. This is the house that faces Norwich Road, attached to Swiss Cottage. Before it was painted over the text read: “John Wright Registered Sanitary Plumber/Drains Tested/Decorator”.

John Wright died in March 1911 just before the Census of that year, and George Storey was registered as a painter and decorator at the Norwich Road address, presumably having taken over his father-in-law’s business.

By 1922 George and Lilian had six children and eventually moved to Acton in Middlesex (now a suburb of West London).

The house known as The Bays was taken by the Allen family who had a coach business, running services to Norwich.

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.

From selling furniture to singing of hope

Post date: Thursday, December 14, 2023 - 20:26

John Plane Walker (below) was born in 1881 in Norwich. At the age of 14 he was employed by the Wallace King furniture store, and when it opened a shop in Reepham he became the manager, making deliveries by horse and cart.

The December photograph (below) in the Reepham Life 2023 Calendar shows the buildings the company also used, part of which is now the takeaway and The Granary on Back Street. John Walker is standing on the far left.

In 1919 Wallace King decided to move its business back to Norwich and John took over the shop, moving the premises to the Old Maltings on the corner of School Road and Back Street. The picture below shows his advertising board with Sun Barn Pit in the foreground.

John was a staunch Methodist and became a well-respected local preacher. He founded and ran a branch of the Band of Hope in Reepham.

When larger premises were needed to accommodate a growing membership John and his friend Jesse Bircham purchased land from Harry Hawes and the Methodist Hall was built.

It later became the home of Reepham’s band and was known as the Band Hall until it was demolished and replaced by flats.

In 1927 John and his wife Laura wrote a seven-verse song for the Reepham Band of Hope entitled The Hope of Reepham, to be sung to the tune of My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.

It begins:

Oh listen, dear friends to my story,

A wonderful tale I will tell,

How the Temperance cause here in Reepham,

Has gripped many people so well.

Chorus:

Reepham’s hope, Band of Hope,

I’ll ever be loyal and true to thee,

My beloved Band of Hope.

I’ll always be faithful to thee.

John died suddenly of a heart attack on 5 November 1938 while sitting at his desk in the shop. A fireworks party at the Rectory planned for that night was cancelled as a mark of respect.

There was a huge crowd at his funeral at the Methodist Church, with the church hall being used for overspill and still more people standing outside.

Information sourced from Let’s Talk, 6 February 2013

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.

The Crown at Six Crossways

Post date: Wednesday, September 20, 2023 - 17:23

The Crown public house stands at the junction of Ollands Road, New Road and Cawston Road, Reepham.

This junction was once known as Six Crossways since there were six ways one could go from that point: to Salle and Cawston via Cawston Road, to Townsend Corner down Station Road, to Kerdiston along Stony Lane, to Reepham Market Place via Ollands Road, to Reepham Moor down New Road and to Reepham station yard.

In the 19th century The Crown was a beer house and Edward Page was the landlord there from about 1867.

Edward was also a carpenter and ran a coal merchant’s business. His wife Pamela was the daughter of Richard Amiss, a master tailor who also ran a grocery and drapery shop in Reepham.

In 1882 the Great Eastern Railway station at Reepham had recently been erected and The Crown was in a prime position.

It was already a popular hostelry for farmers returning home from a busy day at Reepham’s cattle market to Kerdiston, Wood Dalling, Heydon, Salle and Cawston.

In his application for a spirit licence that year, Edward said: “A great many people travel by this line having driven to the station but finding there is no stable accommodation they have left and gone elsewhere in the town.”

Edward’s landlord Steward & Patteson offered to build stabling for 10 horses and traps, and plans had been prepared.

Opposition to Edward’s application came from the landlord of the King’s Arms, who said there were already 10 licensed houses in Reepham and that this application would injure their trade.

The Bench granted the application but it was later refused by the County Licensing Committee.

The licence was eventually granted in 1884, in spite of continued opposition from the King’s Arms landlord.

The newly built stabling and cart sheds provided stabling for 14 horses and traps.

Above: Ground plan of The Crown inn and outbuildings, 1889. Below: The Crown, pictured in 1966. Photo: Reepham Archive. Images: Reepham Archive

Edward died in 1911 and Pamela continued running The Crown until 1913. She eventually went to live with her eldest daughter Bessie at Gate House Farm in Salle where Bessie’s husband James Parker was the farmer.

Pamela died in 1923 and is buried in Salle churchyard with Edward.

Information from: Norfolk Public Houses website; ancestry.co.uk; undated Ordnance Survey maps; findmypast.co.uk

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.

For more information about opening times and current services, contact the Archive by email.

The Reepham Archive also welcomes new volunteers to support its work. If you are interested, please email.

Love in the air at WWI hospital

Post date: Thursday, July 13, 2023 - 19:54

Previously, the Reepham Archive had no records of any of the soldiers who came to Reepham to recover from their wounds during the First World War. There are several photographs that record 30 or more faces, but no names.

In 2022 we were intrigued and pleased to receive an enquiry: “Did we have any records about Frank Leiper and Ethel Keeley who met in Reepham during World War I?” This was soon followed with further details and photographs.


Frank and Ethel Leiper, pictured around 1918.

We learnt that Ethel died young, only 36, but her daughter, now 98, wanted to learn more about her parents. This set the Archive volunteers on a flurry of research to find out more.

We found that Ethel Keeley was listed in a photograph of all the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) hospital staff taken in the gardens of Hackford House (the present-day Bircham Centre, Market Place, Reepham).

Sadly, she is named as the night sister and must have been off-duty when the photograph was taken as none of the nurses look like her.

Red Cross records confirm that Ethel was indeed engaged as a night sister from October 1916 until June 1918 in Reepham VAD Hospital.

Frank’s army records show he was enlisted with the Glasgow Pals Battalion in January 1915 and sent overseas. He was wounded twice, in 1916 and 1917, and it is not known after which incident he came to Reepham.

Frank was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1917, and demobilised and transferred to the Army Reserve in 1919.

We could not find a face to match Frank in any of our photographs but we did discover that they married in Edinburgh in 1918 and that Ethel gave her occupation as certificated nurse at the Red Cross Hospital, Reepham, Norfolk.

Frank’s occupation is shown as a farmer but he is still recorded as a company sergeant major of the Highland Light Infantry.

Their grandson, who sent the initial enquiry, visited Reepham this summer and spent time walking around the town, visiting Hackford House, the gardens, the Market Place, the town hall and the churches that his grandparents would have known more than 100 years ago.

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. For more information about opening times and current services, contact the Archive by email.

The Reepham Archive also welcomes new volunteers to support its work. If you are interested, please email.

Crowning glory for the May Queen

Post date: Friday, May 26, 2023 - 09:52

Celebrations of spring have been held for centuries related to both pagan and religious beliefs, and the ritual crowning of a May Queen has been said to go back to the Middle Ages.

May Queen celebrations were revived in Victorian times and poets like Tennyson, who published a long poem called The May Queen, did much to popularise the return of the tradition.

In the 20th century it became fashionable for children, rather than adults, to perform a crowning ceremony and the Reepham Life 2023 Calendar picture from the 1950s (pictured above) shows Enid Pask as a teenage May Queen surrounded by her attendants.

Older residents, when they were at school, may remember learning Now is the Month of Maying, a song from Tudor times, and Sumer is icumen in, a song in the form of a round for four voices accompanied by two lower voices, probably written in the 13th century.

The opening line is shown here with the red cross indicating where the second voice is to enter. The manuscript is now kept in the British Library and includes instructions for its performance in Latin. It is traditionally sung from the tower of Magdalen College, Oxford, every May Day.

The song also made an appearance in an episode of the children’s TV programme Bagpuss and was used as part of the opening ceremony at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.

Information from Wikipedia and the British Library

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. For more information about opening times and current services, contact the Archive by email.

Subscriptions raised towards expenses of volunteer rifle corps

Post date: Thursday, April 27, 2023 - 09:54

The enthusiasm for the Volunteer movement following an invasion scare in 1859 saw the creation of many rifle, artillery and engineer volunteer units, which comprised part-time soldiers eager to supplement the regular British Army in times of need.

A general meeting was called in Reepham in June 1859 with the intention of raising subscriptions towards the expenses of a volunteer rifle corps for the Eynsford area, and local gentry were called upon to support their local troops.

Prominent Reepham residents were listed with their contributions: Rev. Edward Holley, Robert Leamon of Whitwell Hall and the brewers Bircham & Sons all donated £10, the equivalent of £1,000 in today’s money.

Pictured above in the Reepham Life 2023 Calendar for April, Harry Hawes is a familiar figure with his recollections of life in the town in the late 19th century.

Excerpts from his memoires – Harry Hawes’ Walk – can be found on the Reepham Archive website.

The drummer is John Flatman (born Arthur John Flatman) who, when he enlisted in the regular army in March 1894, gave his address as Beck Cottage, Reepham.

Military records show Arthur as completing 18 years’ service – in India for eight years and also in South Africa for a further two years – before being discharged in 1912.

A ball, organised by the Reepham Volunteers, was held on 4 January 1894 in Hackford and Whitwell old school room (the present town hall).

The ball commenced at 8.30 pm and “dancing was kept up with unabated vigour” until five the next morning. A quadrille band provided the music and 27 quadrilles were danced.

More than a hundred people attended even though the weather was severe, and Dr Charles Perry, father of Dr Edward Verdon Perry, sent his carriage to take home many of the women, presumably exhausted.

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. For more information about opening times and current services, contact the Archive by email.

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