Norfolk Records Committee Annual Report 1997-1998

The Norfolk Record Office collects and preserves records of historical significance relating to the County of Norfolk and makes them available to a wide range of people for consultation and study.

Dr John Alban became County Archivist on 1 April, following the retirement of Jean Kennedy. Miss Kennedy was awarded an MBE in the 1998 New Year’s Honours List.

Accommodation

The joint application with the University of East Anglia for a new Norfolk Record Office and East Anglian Studies Centre on a University site, submitted to the Heritage Lottery Fund in January 1997, was turned down in November.

Accessions

There were 243 deposits, gifts or purchases of documents made during the year. They included:

• an account roll, 1363-4, and a court roll, 1559-1601, for the manor of Williams in Tacolneston
• deeds and papers relating to estates in Thorpe Abbotts, Brockdish and adjoining parishes, mainly 18th-20th centuries, but including 14th-16th-century deeds to Dickleburgh town land in Thorpe Abbotts and two Thorpe Abbotts estate maps, 1720 and 19th century
• a ship money assessment for Eynesford Hundred, 1638/9
• Townshend correspondence, 1660-1770
• Wymondham town book, 1663-1772
• records of the Octagon Charity Schools in Norwich, 1742-1962
• sermons, notebooks, correspondence and accounts of Aquilla Cannell, a bank clerk to Gurney's Bank, Norwich, 18th-19th centuries
• the diaries of Lord Lothian of Blickling, 1845-1857
• catalogues, photographs and other business records, c.1850-1980s, of Boulton & Paul, the Norwich based joiners and constructional engineers
• additional estate, business and manorial records of the 17th to the 20th centuries from Francis Hornor and Son, including a map book of estates belonging to Norwich Hospital Charities, 1717 and maps of the Lombe and other estates, 18th-19th centuries
• a Lee Warner family photograph album, 1901-1904

Public Services

12,398 visits were made to the searchroom compared with 12,689 in 1996-97 and there were 357 visits to the Borough Archives at King's Lynn. 30,778 original documents were produced, and a week-long survey of microform use indicated that at least 70,000 microfilms and fiches were also consulted during the course of the year. 8,079 postal, telephone and e-mail enquiries were answered.

Research

Family history was, as usual, the major interest, engaging 61% of searchers. Of manuscript users, 47% were family historians, 13% were working for a post-graduate or other academic qualification and 26% were studying local history.
The survey of microform users showed that 75% of those using microforms were researching family history, and 15% local history. Research topics included:

• the changing settlement of Merton village from Domesday to the 19th century
• the history of St Giles Hospital Norwich
• Elizabeth Talbot, Duchess of Norfolk, c.1443-1507
• charitable institutions in Norfolk and Suffolk before and after the Dissolution of the monasteries
• herbalists and apothecaries in Tudor and Stuart Norwich
• religious scandal
• Quakers and society in north-east Norfolk, 1690-1800
• the survival and conservation of English church monuments to 1750
• Blickling Mausoleum
• Norwich parishes in early modern times
• militia and military organisation in Norfolk and Suffolk, 1757-1815
• seaside resort marketing, 1880-1890s
• the Plantation Garden in Norwich
• Henry Rider Haggard

Conservation

Conservation work has continued on documents which were water-damaged as a result of the Central Library fire in 1994. Records treated in-house include 36 volumes, mainly parish and privately deposited records, which have been dismantled, treated, and rebound, 10 maps and 70 parchments. Seven water-damaged volumes have been dismantled treated and rebound by a local conservation bookbinding firm. County Council Committee minute books, 20th century, Norwich District Probate Registry will registers, 1858-1918, and Duties on Land Values registers, 1910, have been repaired and rebound by a large commercial conservation and bookbinding firm.

Exhibitions and Publicity

The Norfolk Record Office website was launched on the Internet in July 1997. It includes information about finding and using the Record Office, its history and background and the texts of a number of information leaflets on popular record sources.
900 years of Record-keeping in Norfolk was the theme of the Record Office's display at the 1997 Royal Norfolk Show.
Four small exhibitions were mounted in the Record Office reception area and then in the foyer of County Hall: the subjects covered included the Martineau and Taylor families, Trade Unions in Norfolk and the conservation of a 16th-century parish register. Exhibitions were also prepared for loan to nine churches and a school.
Articles on the Record Office's acquisition of the Colditz letters of Geoffrey Ransom appeared in the local and national press and the story was also featured on BBC Look East. Local radio interviews with the County Archivist and other staff have featured the work of the Record Office, its earliest document and records relating to water and to cookery. The East Anglian Sound Archive initiative, in which the Norfolk Record Office is playing a leading role, also attracted media coverage.

General

Following the outcome of the previous Heritage Lottery Fund bid, consideration of other options for a new Record Office started.
The post-fire conservation programme for water-damaged records has been accelerated. In February, the Record Office became part of the new Department of Cultural Services.

IIlustration: Wedding ceremony at Topcroft church, from Topcroft register bill of marriages, 1828.

Aspects of Norfolk life through the centuries, from the everyday to the extraordinary, are illustrated in this year's exhibition for the Royal Norfolk Show. A range of personal, private and official documents from the Record Office offers insights into the experiences of people in the past. Most people leave at least some trace of their existence in official records. From the 16th century onwards, parish registers form the most comprehensive record of named individuals, but many also left wills, records of property transactions, had a brush with the authorities or themselves served as officials. A minority left diaries, letters and other personal documents.

A child's view Moses Frosdick, the son of a Surlingham labourer, was the writer of this, 'the first letter I have attempted to write,' in 1855. Letters written by working class children are rare before the late 19th century, when primary education became compulsory. Illustration: MC 392/10, 726x2 By contrast with Moses, James Lee Warner came from a clerical family and was sent to a public school, Rugby, in 1849. His first letter home, blotted by a tear, describes his unhappiness: 'they bulley me most dreadfully' (Lee Warner 21/4, 441x5).

Illustration: Le Strange NH 15

Strickland Neville's meticulously detailed account book for 1814-18 (GUN 9, 362x6), provides an insight into the day-to-day life of an early-19th-century gentleman and his family. A 'teeth brush', for example, cost 4 shillings whilst Mr Drake the 'taylor' was paid 14 shillings 10 pence 'for mending cloathes.' A few household accounts also survive from earlier times. The 'weekly expenses' of Sir Hugh Hastings at Elsing in 1531 include the main items on the menus at dinner and supper and the names of any guests at the table. On Monday, 16 December there were 8 guests plus two local clergymen at a dinner of goose and pork, and some of the visitors stayed for a supper of pheasant and a mallard.

Old maps from cellar store

Francis Hornor and Son, the land and estate agency, had occupied premises at Old Bank of England Court, Queen Street, Norwich, for almost 200 years before a merger which led to the creation of Francis Hornor, Brown and Co. in 1996. Old maps and other documents which had accumulated in a large cellar had to be cleared to make way for current records storage, and the Record Office was pleased to help by accepting the older archives on deposit. Recent accessions from Hornors include attractive estate plans of the 18th and 19th centuries, mainly for the Lombe estates in mid-Norfolk. Another significant find was a map book, dated 1717, of estates belonging to Norwich Hospital Charities, for which Hornors acted as stewards. It is this book which contains the early 17th-century Cathedral Close plan.

Illustration: Tombland and Upper King Street, Norwich, shown on an early 17th-century plan of the Cathedral Close (ACC 1997/215)

Saving Norfolk's ancient hedgerows

Illustration: Hedges in 18th-century Scarning, from a map of the estate of Thomas Grigson 1761 (BCH 20)

Maps and documents in the Record Office are now playing a part in saving old hedgerows as a result of new Regulations which came into force in 1997. Among the criteria used to decide whether a hedge is 'important' and ought to be protected is its age and historical significance, as revealed in documents deposited in the Record Office. These have to be used in conjuction with other evidence, such as the species of animals, birds and plants which can be identified in the hedgerow. A hedgerow which marks part of the boundary of an historic (pre-1850) parish or township may be considered significant, and this can usually be determined by looking at the tithe map. Hedges shown in Parliamentary inclosure maps also come into a special category and the inclosure awards sometimes specify the type of hedge or fence to be constructed around new allotments. In Bridgham in 1806, for example, they were to consist of ditches 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep and 'a bank laid with white thorn layer or briar and a stake-bound hedge' (C/Sca2/52). The boundary of a pre-1600 estate or manor recorded in a Sites and Monuments Record or in a document held by a Record Office may also qualify for protection, but pre-1600 maps are rare. A survey of pre-1650 maps deposited in local authority Record Offices in 1991 identified 725 in the whole of England and Wales: 85 of these were in the Norfolk Record Office.

Illustration: Rose Lane Works, Norwich (ACC 1997/146)

Illustration: Part of William Raistrick's map of King's Lynn 1725, showing the area around Greyfriars tower (BL4/1)

An invitation from the Norfolk Gardens Trust to members of the King's Lynn Civic Society sparked off Dr Dennis Morgan's involvement in a survey of Norfolk's historic parks and gardens in 1996. 'It sounded interesting,' said Dr Morgan, 'and, since I liked gardening, read maps well and had not long retired from my work as a psychiatrist, I decided to go to the first meeting in Norwich, where Anthea Taigel and Tom Williamson of the University of East Anglia's Centre of East Anglian Studies spelled out their plans for carrying out the survey.' 'Using OS maps, they explained how to relate existing features on the ground with the detail on the maps and the evidence to be found in archives. I had never done any similar work before,' continued Dr Morgan, 'but embarking on this survey I opened the door of the King's Lynn archives and entered a new world!'

This new guide, published by the Norfolk Record Office, April 1998, is an introduction to the wide range of material in the cathedral archives. The author is Frank Meeres, who has worked as an archivist in the Norfolk Record Office since 1974 and has had special responsibility for the cathedral archives since 1983. The records of Norwich Cathedral form an extremely rich collection of documentary material, ranging over nine hundred years. They are the archives of the Benedictine monastery of the Holy Trinity in Norwich, founded by Herbert Losinga in about 1096, and of its successor body, the Dean and Chapter of Norwich, established by Henry VIII in 1538. The collection includes one of the fullest series of medieval obedientiary rolls for any monastic cathedral and the records of estates in over 100 parishes in Norfolk and Suffolk.

Norfolk Record Office, Gildengate House, Anglia Square, Upper Green Lane, Norwich, Norfolk NR3 1AX. Telephone 01603-761349. Fax 01603-761885. E-mail norfrec@norfolk.gov.uk.

Copyright @ Norfolk Record Office 1998