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"Out of the Long Ago" by Maud Milgate |
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Princess Eugenie
When next I went to Norfolk I went alone. Adelaide had started on what proved to be her English Coach Tours. For quite some years she enjoyed visiting different parts of the country on coach tours but I still felt drawn to Norfolk. Nothing relaxed me so much and by now I knew enough people there to make any visit worth while. Mr. and Mrs. Fitch who ran the Park Hotel were always willing to have me and made me very comfortable and I made friends with their daughter June who although married with a little girl of her own, was often at the hotel and pleased to see me.
Mrs. Coleman took me for a ride and said "Brome Hall is down. do you care to see it or not".! thought upon reflection I would like to see it. It was down to the ground floor, some parts of the lower window frames were standing and it was stripped of every growing plant and now easier to walk round. I took some photographs of it. grim though it looked. Before we came away we looked in the front doorway but dare not go too far into the building for fear of falling through the floors into the cellars. Mrs. Coleman picked up a piece of ceiling molding and said "Do you want a souvenir?" I also collected some rose coloured pieces of old brick. We wrapped them up in newspaper and I took them back to the hotel. It was the next day when June Huggett (Mrs. Fitch’s daughter) admitted to me they were curious to know what I did in the neighbourhood. She said "You came in last night, with something wrapped up in newspaper, looking as pleased as Punch with yourself and Mother said "what does she come here for?" I burst into laughter and told her what I was seeking. It just never entered my head that I was of sufficient interest to anybody, for them to wonder about me and what I did. Once she knew my interest in the neighbourhood she collected up all sorts of old books for me to read. The next time I saw the site of Brome Hall it was levelled to the ground. Only a few ponds of water on a wet afternoon showed where it had once stood. An old English mansion had passed into the limbo of things forgotten.
Eventually a long low bungalow was built on the site.
The following day I went to pay my respects to Katie and found her in the throes of moving. She and her niece Winnie were getting out of the "Greyhound" and going to live at Bramble Cottage on Scole Common. Winnie was nearing retiring age and Katie long past it and in this dangerous day and age it was not wise for two women to run a public house on their own. The "Greyhound" was a vast Victorian building and the cottage they were going into very small and the problem of how many of her treasures she could take was beginning to worry Katie. Looking at a lovely picture of Empress Eugene, she said, "I’m not going to be able to take that, although I love it. it reminds me so much of my dear Aunt". Then she told me the story of how the picture had hung in the Drawing room at Diss Court and how my mother’s cousin Harriet (Katie’s aunt by marriage) was sitting one evening dressed to go to some function in a similar style of dress to that in the picture which hung above her head. Glancing up at the picture and then at her aunt. Katie exclaimed "Why aunt, you are the image of Empress Eugenie." From then on Katie loved the picture and when Diss Court was sold up in 1923 she took the picture with her, and there it was in front of me a beautiful mezzotint in a lovely gilt frame. Seeing my gaze on it Katie said "Would you like to have it," and that is how I now possess a lovely picture that once hung in Diss Court. Of course I could not bring the frame home only the picture although I now very much regret that I did not do so, but it is very difficult to pack such things especially on the spur of the moment. As it was I had to tip my clothes out of my suitcase in order to send home my piece of gilt moulding and Bricks from Brome Hall and my picture. My clothes got home best way they could in a parcel. In any case this was what I was in the habit of doing. Sending a parcel of a few things up to the Broads if I was going there and sending my case back home when I was finished with it. My hand luggage always consisted of my camera from which I was never parted. Some months previous to this holiday I had had some correspondence with a Colonel Castle who lived near Breydon Water in Forfolk. He apparently had been tracing his ancestry since boyhood and he had contacted some of my Castle cousins for information, Castle being my mother’s maiden name. Knowing that genealogy was my hobby my cousins referred him to me and an interesting correspondence had ensued. I therefore looked him up in the phone book and rang him from the Park Hotel. We had a very interesting chat, he said he would like to meet me but regretted he had no transport and Burgh Castle where he lived was 40 miles away across difficult country. He said he had got his ancestry back to the 1 5th century, and he suggested I consult the Diocesan Librarian in Norwich to trace my Rev. Shardelow and he gave me the address and necessary advice over procedure. I never met Colonel Castle, but it was his advice that led me to using the County Records Office in Norwich.
I wrote to the Diocesan Librarian that night and asked him to reply to my Broads address as that was where I was going. When I got his reply it was to say he could not help me but that Norwich Records Office could and told me how to apply to them. I duly rang them up, told them what I wanted to trace and they asked for 24 hours notice and I made an appointment for the day after next. Now by this time Paula was out of her cafe which was turned into a grocers and I had to seek my meals elsewhere and I got food poisoning. This meant I was not fit to go and do my search on the day appointed, so I extended my holiday another day in order to go into Norwich. I still felt quite ill, but I am very glad I made the effort for it was an enlightening experience. Norwich Library and Records Office was new. It had been opened by the Queen Mother only a year or two earlier. It was a very modern building on a cup and saucer design. The entrance was up broad steps and a fountain played in an open forecourt. The Records Office was below stairs but the design resembling a shallow saucer admitted uninterrupted sunshine to flood into the search rooms. The outer rim of the saucer was lined with flints and some flower beds and this was very pleasing to gaze out upon. A very long corridor led to the archives office and was lined with glass fronted bookcases containing books of enormous size, probably the city’s records. I should just love to have seen inside them. Inside the search room I was asked to sign a very large register and allocated a vacant table. It was a long room, flooded with sunlight from its all-glass outside wall, equipped with tables for working and a very large index file. Across the corner at the entrance end was a desk at which sat an elderly woman who presided over the room like a school mistress. She looked past retiring age and was inclined to be short tempered, perhaps she ailed something for I believe she was really very clever. I had to indent for whatever documents I wished to look at, and having filled in the form and signed it I handed it to the presiding lady and files were presently brought me by very willing young girls. Discussing my problems with the cantankerous lady she jumped on me for talking too loudly. "If you are going to work here" she said severely "you will have to keep your voice down". Her next victims were two middle aged men, who looked like professional genealogists. when they queried something, she said "you are wrong, you’ve forgotten the calendar changed in the mid eighteenth century." They looked very crestfallen. I did a three hour search of the Bishops Transcripts. of Buxton. Kenninghall and Swaffham. These transcripts are copies of church registers sent in by the clergy of parishes once every year to the Bishop. Once every seven years they go to someone else. This makes searching complicated. I found nothing beyond what I had already found for myself in Kenninghall Church. I next sought to trace my illusive Rev. Shardelawe. Consulting the "Oracle" about this she barked at me, "Have you tried Venn? "Venn I murmured vaguely, wondering what she meant. Venn I learned later was the name of the man who had compiled a register of all Oxford graduates. someone else had done the same thing for Cambridge. To consult these I had to go upstairs to the Reference Library. There I found an earnest young man who asked me if I would like him to put someone on to do the search for me. Feeling a bit feeble by this time, I said I would, and he gave me some other, reference books to study, while his minions searched for a Rev. Shardelawe. They did not find him, but my young librarian assured me this did not mean that he did not exist, but very often in the eighteenth century clergy did not graduate. Although this search was non-productive, it opened my eyes to our wonderful library and research facilities which are all free. I lost my way back to the bus station and felt very weary. I took the half an hour bus ride back to Wroxham, and that was the last time I went up on the Broads. Paula died shortly after and I realized that without her and her little riverside cafe. I could not manage for food, so never went again, but turned my attention solely to my ancestry hunt.
| Owner of original | Maud Milgate via Gerry Langford |
| File name | shard/myfolio_02/10_chapter.html |
| File Size | 11.04 KB |
| Media ID | 1361 |
| Dimensions | n/a |
| Folio version | v13.0.0.22 (28 Mar 2021) |
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