Family History

 Is it because of getting older that I've got more interested in family history? 

Years ago when all elderly relatives were still around to question I never even thought about asking what they knew about their families.

 

After my Mum died in 1999 my sister and Dad spent months tracking down his family tree. It helped him to get through after being a carer for Mum for many years. I knew they went back a long way on his maternal side of the family and I'm the keeper of  the family bible with lots of details of that part of the family too but I'd not realised they'd gone back to the early 1800's on the paternal side as well.

 

 My maiden surname is a fairly unusual name and the first time I walked through the churchyard over the road I spotted some graves with the surname and knew they were some sort of relation.

 

How the graves looked last July, the grass was cut in the autumn

 I wrote about it HERE . The family have always been in Suffolk and tended to use the same forenames ...variations on George,  Edward, Edwin and Edgar but my sister was able to tell me they were our great, great, grandfather and grandmother. She brought over a copy of the family tree of that bit of our family.

 

My Grandad, also a George was born only a few months before this George died so wouldn't have known his Grandfather.

I wondered whereabouts in the village they'd lived so had a look on Ancestry website and from a census I found he was a farm labourer, living in a Tytes Lane, but there's no lane of that name in the village now. On the same page of the census is Hall Farm. It would seem likely that any farm cottages would have been somewhere in the region of the Hall. Which now looks like this........

 

 

 Hall Farm stands on it's own along a small road out of the village, no cottages anywhere around. I even looked on old Suffolk maps of the village, with no luck.

 

There is a lady in the village who goes to WI and over 60's and she's nearly 90 and has lived in the village all her life. Next time I see her I'll ask if she has any memories of a Tytes Lane. Tyte is also a local Suffolk surname so it's possible the lane was called that locally when a family of that name lived there and is now called something else.

What a happy co-incidence that I've come to live in the village where great, great grandparents lived so many years ago.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

Christmas Crackers in April?

 Yes.

They were on my list of things to look out for at boot-sales so when I found some I bought them.  

The Merry Christmas window clingy thingy was in the box with the crackers, which had 10 in out of a possible 12. Also from the same house clearance people I found two more clay saucers and a pack of greaseproof paper. Gave £3 for those and the things for grandchildren were 50p each.

How's the list looking after a few weeks?

 Birthday cards that have granddaughter/grandson and an age

 Interesting looking books

 Herb plants - cheap sage and parsley 

Few plants for the plant stand (lost two over winter)✔ + clay saucers after the crash✔

Metal Dustbin ✔

 Duplo for middle grandson  (now has enough)

Lego for oldest Grandson

Barbie sized dolls clothes✔

Possible Christmas gifts 

Raffle prize for WI

Cheap New Funnel

Christmas Crackers✔

You never know.................. I might get to the end of the list before the end of the season.

Back Tomorrow

Sue

A Norfolk Author

I can't remember where I bought "No Halt at Sunset; The Diary of a Housewife" but I know the second of the two books.......... "Wheelbarrow Farm" came from Wigtown,  Scotland's Book Town, and I remember being excited to find it (this was before Amazon and Abebooks)

Elizabeth Harland wrote several books between 1936 and 1955 as well as running a farm. No Halt at Sunset was published in 1951 and is written in diary form covering the part of 1949 and 1950 when rationing was still in force it is about their move to a smallholding which she and her husband hoped to run commercially.

 

 

A Man's work ends at set of sun, A Woman's work is never done

 

 The dust jacket on my copy of Wheelbarrow Farm is very tatty, 

 

unfortunately the back is even worse so that a lot of her biographical details are missing.

She was born in Norfolk in 1904, started writing  early and got her first book published in 1936. Wheelbarrow Farm was published in 1954. There's no mention of whereabouts the farm she was running in the first book actually was....she called it Silford, but I found a note that said it was Sparham Hall N.W of Norwich.

Wheelbarrow Farm might be about the same farm but it's written as a story rather than a diary.

 

I found that her first book "Farmer's Girl" written during the war was well known in the US and there is a review in the New York Times.

Also this....................

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

Farmers Girl was republished in the US as recently as 2021.

I couldn't find out anything else about her, so I think that was a pen name.

Back Tomorrow

Sue