Early 20th Century
Village life, the parish council, two wars
In the early years of the century Tasburgh continued as a mainly agricultural community, only one villager worked in Norwich, one at Dunston Hall and two on the nearby railway, all the rest found their livelihood in the village. In addition to farmers, smallholders and farm workers there was a rat and mole catcher and a hurdle maker. It was very much a self-contained community with four publicans, a miller with two mill workers, two blacksmiths, a carpenter / wheelwright, two thatchers, a bricklayer, two carriers, two general dealers, two grocers, a pork butcher, a baker and three - yes three - shoemakers. In the public service there was a schoolmistress, two parish roadmen and a policeman. There were also two dressmakers, two washerwomen and a lady who treated people for sores burns and abscesses. In 1911 the population was 355.
Tasburgh Lodge had been improved and renamed Tasburgh Hall by its owner P. Berney Ficklin. At Rainthorpe Hall, Sir Charles Harvey was spending considerable sums both on the hall and St Mary's Church. The rector from 1897 to 1922 was the Rev Walter Robert Hurd. Sons of these three gentlemen were to have distinguished careers. Horatio Berney Ficklin was a judge Advocate at the Nuremburg Trials of Nazi war criminals. Oliver Harvey became British Ambassador in Paris and was made Lord Harvey of Tasburgh. Richard Hurd was later Canon Hurd, he had a lasting love of Tasburgh and left a substantial bequest to the church on his death in 1975. Lord Harvey and Canon Hurd are both buried in the churchyard.
The Cherry Tree in Church Road was a free house and the publican made horehound beer which was reputed to be good for coughs. He also sold cider which was made from apples grown in the orchard at the back. The landlady of The Bird in Hand was appropriately named Mrs Alice Sparrow. The Quaker chapel off Fairstead Lane was active while the primitive Methodist Chapel on what is now Church Hill and the parish church both had large congregations and thriving Sunday schools.
William Moore, who spent much of his life in the village, tells us that his grandfather was estate bricklayer and chimney sweep for Rainthorpe Hall. To sweep the great chimneys at the hall his grandfather would take one of his eight sons to climb up into the dark chimney as far as he safely could, carrying a hoe to scrape away the soot. While up the chimney, enveloped in clouds of soot, the lad would be required to help the sweeping rods on their way up the chimney and to try to rescue any brush which came adrift.
The local organisation for controlling the affairs of the village had devolved from the courts of the lords of the manors to the church during and after Tudor times. Now the Local Government Act of 1894 had passed the responsibility on to elected parish councils. The first recorded meeting of Tasburgh parish council was on 18th April 1900. The council was required to meet at least once a year within seven days of the 25th March and not before 6pm. The first council comprised William Briggs, William Duffield, Arthur Fuller, Samuel Rump, John and Robert Dix, with P. Berney Ficklin as chairman and Daniel Burgess as clerk. Meetings were held in the school room on a rather irregular basis. The cost of heating the room was two shillings and Mrs Goose was employed to clean up afterwards for one shilling. One can only suppose that they were inveterate pipe and cigar smokers!
Taking over duties from a church which still retained a strong influence in the village was difficult and many of the early meetings dealt solely with appointments to committees or as trustees to the various village charities. Local government was much more at parish level and there were officers to appoint such as the overseer and assistant overseer whose duties included the collection of the parish rates. In 1914 Ernest Wright was appointed parish constable and later had an assistant in John Harrison.
Until after the First World War the railway was, for most people, the only link with the outside world, if they could afford the fare! Motor cars were unreliable and far too expensive for all but the privileged few while horse drawn transport and cycles were only suitable for local journeys.
Something of the heavy casualties of the First World War is told by the War Memorial in the churchyard which records the names of twelve Tasburgh men who died at a time when the villagers fit for active service probably did not exceed forty-five. The Depwade Deanery Magazine of March 1919 tells of the passing of a wartimeTasburgh sailor,'... A hero of Zeebrugge. With deep regret we record the death of Charles T. Lyon of this parish. After twenty-one years service in the Royal Naval Reserve he rejoined in August 1914 and was commissioned to HM Trawler Aurora being made Commodore of Group Seven in November. In the Zeebrugge expedition he showed the greatest gallentry ... after three years service in the war this hero was invalided out'. The article goes on to say that Charles Lyon had been given a gold watch and chain for diving into the sea to rescue men during a storm in 1882 and that in 1916 he saved the lives of twenty-seven men from torpedoed fishing smacks.
Mrs Mildred Garrett has recalled that between the wars her father, the parish clerk Albert Matthews, started a bowls club with a green on the Mill Meadows between Tasburgh and Flordon. Also on the meadows were the two grass courts of the tennis club of the day. The Mill was not then in use and was taken over once weekly for a dancing class, the instructor and pianist cycling out from Norwich. Once a month there was a dance, grandly call a 'ball', which often lasted until 3am. A moonlit night was choosen so that those walking from other villages could find their way home with case. Mrs Garrett would cycle to Norwich or Wymondham to shop and well remembers Sir Charles and Lady Harvey travelling from Rainthorpe Hall to Tasburgh church in their carriage and pair. Her mother, together with Mrs Gates, the rector's wife, founded the first Women's Institute in Tasburgh in 1922.
Throughout the 1920s and 30s travel became easier as a few people acquired motor-cycles and cars and bus services were developed. Orange coloured buses of United Automobile Services pioneered the route along the A140 until they were absorbed by Eastern Counties Omnibus Company in 1931. The Eastern Counties service was five buses daily, including Sundays. Lower Tasburgh was served by the buses of Mr Trudgil of Pulham St Mary. One bus ran each way on Wednesdays and Fridays with two return journeys on Saturdays. The trip to Norwich called for either plumpness or fortitude for the buses had wooden seats and one was fitted with solid tyres. The return fare was nine old pence (less than four new pence).
At this time the present Grove Lane was called Coal House Hill, the Coal House standing on the site of the first house below the village hall. Here coal carted from Flordon Station was stored for distribution to the poor by the local charities. These charities had, by 1928, been condensed into three, the Fuel Allotment and Meek's Charity, the Poor's Land and the Clabburn and Bateman Charity. In that year they were all amalgamated into Tasburgh United Charities.
The parish council still owned the pair of cottages in Marl Bottom which had been the Town House, the parish poorhouse. Despite rethatching in 1916 and again in 1925 they became a liability and were sold in 1928 to Dennis Cushion for seventy pounds. The beginnings of the village hall can be traced back to 1919 when the parish council resolved that 'a parish club or reading room should be erected centrally in the parish for the benefit of parishioners and for the fostering of a parochial feeling in the younger members of the parish'. In 1928 the parish subscribed to Norwich Fire Brigade the sum of four pounds yearly for their services. The brigade had stated that they were confident that they could get to Tasburgh in time, a brave statement indeed. This arrangement was made despite the fact that there was at the time a fire engine in use at Long Stratton, perhaps their charges were too high!
All we currently know of sport in Tasburgh in the inter-war years is that Mr Berney Ficklin of Tasburgh Hall gave a silver cup to be played for at football between Upper and Lower Tasburgh. It is believed that the trophy was only played for on three occasions, the last being in 1968 when the score was appropriately one all after extra time.
Children attended the school from the age of five and stayed until they were twelve, this was later extended to fourteen years. Bob Lammas was an exception, at the age of four he followed a flock of sheep passing his home. As they reached the school he saw his brother and sister and went in tojoin them; meanwhile his distraught parents were searching the village for him. Miss Abbs, the teacher, gave Bob a halfpenny and made sure he reached home safely but Bob was so upset at leaving the school that she allowed him to begin school one year early. Mrs Elizabeth Page recalls that she was quite overawed on her first day at school with so many children crowded into the building. The scholars were seated on long benches placed in a series of steps, as they grew older they were moved higher and higher up the steps.
The school log book, kept since 1922, records all visitors, events and repairs. Many entries report the difficulty of keeping the building warm in winter, often the temperature was only 30*F and it was not always possible to light the fire because of sulphur fumes and smoke. A regular visitor was Sir Charles Harvey of Rainthorpe Hall but in March 1927 a far less welcome visitor paid a call. A ferocious bull took possession of the playground and Kenneth Riches and Herbert Sayer were sent to remove it! In the same year three boys earned notoriety in a different way for on 22nd November the punishment book records that Harold Riches (12), Arthur Hurry (12), and Fred Larter (11) received 'four strokes on hands and buttocks for milking Mr Curson's cow when standing in a meadow ... and for telling lies about it'.
Elizabeth Page remembers the annual school outings, paid for by Sir Charles Harvey, train journeys from Flordon to the seaside, her first sight of the sea. School concerts were held in the theatre at Rainthorpe Hall. Frances Rayner recalls starting at the school in 1939 when Mrs Cross was head teacher. All the children attended Sunday schools, the church school was taught by Alice Matthews and all her pupils were in the choir.
At the outbreak of the Second World War the school had declined to fourteen children and was the smallest in the Deanery. With the coming of evacuees billeted out in the village the numbers of scholars swelled and a shift system had to be introduced, the village children attending in the mornings and the evacuees in the afternoons. Later most of the evacuees were taught at Tasburgh Hall by additional teachers.
The 1939-45 World War started early in Tasburgh for the parish council minute book records a request from Depwade Rural District Council in 1937 to appoint three air raid wardens. This done, two stirrup pumps were purchased to deal with incendiary bombs and three more were given by the RDC. By 1939 there were five wardens. The parish council ran a competition in 1940 for those making the best use of their gardens for food production and in 1941 a knitting group was formed to knit garments for the armed forces.
As part of a national scheme a salvage officer was appointed and a derelict building at the bottom of Grove Lane was used to store paper, bottles, jam jars and metal, collections were made by the WVS aided by schoolchildren. In addition to finding material for the war effort the salvage fund raised money for local charities and especially for the village hall building fund.
With the fall of France a parish invasion committee was set up in 1940 and a local unit of the Home Guard was formed under the charge of Ray Page the farmer then resident at Rookery Farm. The Home Guard post was in a building at The Bird in Hand (now the Countryman). William Moore reckons that the proximity of the public house was, on occasions, something of a temptation to the gallant patrol defending Tasburgh as was the blazing fire in their guardroom. Tasburgh Hall became the headquarters of an army searchlight unit with a searchlight on the lawn and another nearby at Hapton Hall. Later in the war the army left and the hall was used to house evacuees.
Beer supplies were severely restricted, the public houses opened only at weekends when they were swamped by soldiers stationed in the area and, later in the war, by American servicemen from nearby airfields at Hethel, Tibenham and Hardwick. It was not unknown for the week's supply of beer to be consumed in an evening. William Moore says that some of the precious beer at the Horseshoes was held back for the locals who had to call at the back door and drink secretly in the cellar. At these times the village policeman would leave his cycle in a field and approach on foot to join the clandestine drinkers.
William Moore also speaks of more direct contact with the war, of tracer bullet holes in his cycle shed and of his bed which would jump off its blocks with the force of bomb explosions during the Norwich blitz. Late in the war German flying bombs, nicknamed doodle-bugs, would pass over but one day he was blown from his feet when a doodle-bug motor cut out and it exploded in a nearby field. Teacher, Miss Hewett, was once shown as absent due to 'the shock of the blitz'. The only wartime casualty known to occur in the village was of a soldier who was crushed by a tank while guiding it along Old Hall Farm Loke. Loss of life by residents on active service was much less than in the First World War; one name only is recorded on the War Memorial.
To save petrol during the war buses were powered by gas which was produced in a coke burner towed behind the bus on a two-wheeled trailer. William Moore says that very limited power resulted and the buses could only manage about fifteen miles per hour. On reaching Dunston Hill the passengers had perforce to alight and walk up the hill behind the struggling bus.
During the war scholars would walk to school carrying their lunch of meat paste, jam or even lard sandwiches together with their gas mask and identity card; anyone forgetting the last two items could be sent back home to get them.
Bob Lammas and William Moore both recall a wartime drama in the village when a spy was captured. He lived in a cottage on Church Hill and toured the district on a bicycle visiting the Horseshoes public house to mix with the soldiers drinking there. One night a vigilant Home Guard saw a flashing light from the cottage as enemy planes were flying over. The incident was reported and shortly after the Tasburgh Home Guard were called out to patrol the area until a light armoured vehicle and army lorries with Military Police arrived. The spy was arrested and a radio transmitter was found in the cottage chimney.
