Army cyclists billeted in Reepham

We assume the soldiers with their bicycles in the photograph for March (above) in the Reepham Life 2021 Calendar were part of the Army Cyclist Corps during World War I, billeted in Reepham while they were training.

The Reepham Archive has information about a young man called Jack Brahms, who spent some time training in the Reepham area with the 3rd City of London Yeomanry.

After about six months training, he was sent to France where, in 1916, he was invalided out of the frontline trenches with severe frostbite.

In the photograph (below) of his unit taken in Reepham, Jack is in the front row on the right.

Part of Jack’s story is told in a book by Jerry White about the Rothschild Buildings in Spitalfields, London.

The Spitalfields area is famous for the Huguenot silk weavers who settled in the area in the 1700s, and later for the site of the Jack the Ripper murders in the late 19th century.

The Jack the Ripper case highlighted how rundown and densely populated the area had become, full of common lodging houses, courts, alleys and interconnecting properties.

Plans were made for demolition and rebuilding, resulting in tenements like the Rothschild Buildings where Jack lived.

Typically, these flats consisted of two rooms with a small scullery and a shared toilet on the landing.

The buildings were themselves eventually demolished in the 1970s and 1980s.

Information and photograph about Jack Brahms from Rothschild Buildings, Life in an East End Tenement Block 1887-1920 by Jerry White: Publisher: Vintage. ISBN 978-0-712601-46-7

Other information from londonremembers.com and wiki.casebook.org

Janet Archer

The Reepham Archive is normally 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 current services during the coronavirus pandemic, please email

To buy the Reepham Life 2021 Calendar, click HERE