Would Zachariah have seen a banana?

Burston now - courtesy of Google

Faden's 1797 map of Burston

When I started my family tree just before Christmas I knew only a little bit about my mother’s side of the family. Now I have names, birth dates and locations going back to the 16th Century for the Broadleys (my great-grandmother on my mother’s side). They were all from East Yorkshire (Beverley way), not far from where I’d worked until moving to London a couple of years ago.

Also, I was surprised, but quite pleased to find that my maternal great grandfather, John Burrows, had been born in Norfolk and I was also able to trace his father, Job and his grandfather (my 3 x great grandfather) Zachariah. They lived in Burston, a small village to the north east of Diss and so while I was on holiday last week I went to visit Burston to walk in their footsteps and to see if there was anything that remained of what Burston would have been like in 1788 when Zachariah Burrows was born.

I also visited Hales and Stockton, home of my great ancestors on my dad’s side. More of that later, but it was interesting that Margaret remarked how much my sister Maggie loves Norfolk. She wondered if something had been passed down in the genes - who knows?

Anyway, back to Burston ... The thing about visiting any village or town and trying to envision it many years ago is that it is extraordinarily hard. If I go back to places I knew 40 years ago, they’ve often changed completely. Around Burston, all major roads will have been straightened, dualled or given completely new routes in the past 50 years. In Burston, it’s a bit off the beaten track, but there was a railway station opened in 1845 (long after Zachariah and Job were born) and closed by Dr Beeching in the 1960s. It was probably the coming of the railway which enabled my ancestor John Burrows to leave Burston in search of a better life. Now, in four generations, it has been opened and closed.

The main Diss to Norwich road has certainly changed course, but not far (and it would never have run through Burston I guess, although it is a more direct route than the current road). Anyway, Burston is now a typical dormitory village with very little industry - still plenty of agriculture, but highly mechanised so that one person and a tractor can do the work of a score of men and horses. There’s an office complex, a pet-food outlet and a millers.

Farmyards will now be housing estates, woods felled for agriculture, hedges planted and then torn up to create larger fields ...

We drove into Burston along Audley End, which is one of the addresses I had for my ancestors, arrived at a crossroad, carried on for a while until we drove out of the village again, then backtracked and returned to the crossroads. Like many travellers, the pub seemed like a good place to take stock. Gravel and Holly were with us, so we treated them to their first pub lunch and, apart from a good old woof when a labrador came through the door, they were pretty well behaved. The pub is called the Burston Crown and a plaque on the front dates it from the 16th century, although the present building was certainly more modern, perhaps no more than 200 years old, but a very nice pub all the same.

The Burston Crown

Perhaps Zachariah, Job and John have slaked their thirst in the bar more than a few times?

There was no longer a post office or a shop in Burston (the landlady blamed Tesco, which she said had not only destroyed all the shops in the village, it was also responsible for half the shops in Diss being boarded up). It’s a familiar complaint, but why do we complain and then shop at Tesco? Why do we elect councils and governments that allow out-of-town supermarkets to destroy our traditional market towns and village shops?

After lunch, we had a walk around the village. It has the usual mix of council houses, built after the First World War as homes for agricultural workers (now in private ownership), some old people’s bungalows, old cottages restored, knocked together and extended, and the modern, four-bedroomed, doubled-garaged ‘executive’ homes you find everywhere. Barratt probably didn’t build them but they look as though they did.

I had few addresses for the Burrows clan. I knew that Job ended up lodging in Church Green and that he’d also lived on Audley End. We started our tour at the church, St Mary the Virgin, which was locked (not a good start), but we had a good wander round the churchyard and failed to spot any Burrows’ gravestones. They would have been buried in there, but probably didn’t have the cash to splash on a fancy headstone. Many of the headstones that were there were overgrown, eroded or covered in lichen, so reading their inscriptions wasn’t possible in many cases. Half the graveyard has been given over to a wildlife conservation area, which is a crafty way for the church to avoid keeping it tidy. The church is not fine - a square building of brick, stone and flint with a single bell housed in an open wood frame on the apex of the west gable. It was built in the 14th and 15th centuries and once had a round tower (typical of many churches in Norfolk) with an octagonal top. Sadly it fell down in 1753 and the church was the subject of major restoration in the 19th century.
 
Next to the Church is Church Green. This is now the site of the Burston Strike School, famous for being the centre of the longest strike in history. Basically, the school teachers were sacked in 1914 and the pupils (with their parents’ support) went on strike. The two teachers taught in a strike school using a tent and the village chapel until a school-house was erected. The strike lasted from before the First World War until just before the Second World War (1939) when the sacked teachers retired. The strike was about the poor conditions available for the pupils; they were cold and, if it was wet, many would have to sit in damp clothes all day. Children were often taken out of school to work on farms if extra labour was needed. The Strike School is now the focus of Labour Party rallies and something of a cause celebre in the union movement.

Job Burrows lived at 26 Church Green in 1891 when he was 72. I guess there was once quite a few houses around the Green, but now there’s just one large modern bungalow and an older house at the west end of the green (which would have been old enough to be around 150 years ago. To the south of the green, there’s a new development - Higdon Close (named after the teachers) which may have replaced older properties. There seems to be the remains of a pond (overgrown and silted up). The Green would not have been there when Zachariah was around, it was created in 1871 when 36 acres of common land in the village were enclosed. I bet that land grab went down well with the locals who would have kept some livestock there.

Audley End is a narrow road leading south towards Scole Common. There’s a small development of bungalows and what look like former council houses near to the village also an office complex in what looks like the old school, but soon you’re in fields with a few scattered houses along the road until you reach the railway crossing. The railway (Norwich to London, Liverpool Street) is still there, but the station, which opened in 1849, courtesy of the Eastern Union Railway, was closed in 1966 thanks, no doubt, to Dr Beeching. Some of the houses along there look as if they could be quite old, but they have been extensively altered and renovated.

I wonder if I had time to wander round, engage some older people in conversation, whether I might find a trace of the Burrows (or even a living Burrows). Maybe that’s a job for another day, we had very little time, two restless Springer Spaniels and several other villages to visit. This was a quick recce and really useful and interesting.

Since my visit I’ve done a little more research, found the names of Zachariah's father and mother, sons and various wives and babies. I’m still inching my way through scanned parish records, kindly provided by the Mormon church!

So let’s put a few things in perspective:

Zachariah was born a year before the French Revolution when George III was on the throne, although he was increasingly mad and so the Prince Regent (later George IV) was the power. As he was growing up, Napoleon was rising to power and taking over half of Europe. He was married in 1801 as Britain was at war with France, his first daughter Ann was born the year after the Battle of Trafalgar and was growing up as Sir John Moore’s army was retreating to Corunna and as Wellington chased the French out of the Iberian Peninsular. Job was born in 1819.

In their day, no-one travelled faster than the wind or than a horse could gallop; you could be transported for petty crimes and there was still public execution. There would be no running water in their homes, no gas and no electricity (unless you were struck by lightning). News would be carried by pedlars or (around the village) by word of mouth.

They could not read or write (Zachariah and Job made their 'mark' on their wedding record), there was no cinema, no photographs and no music hall. Sources of joy would be family celebrations, local fairs and the companionship of spouse and family. The church would have been a focus of the community and their fears would have been debt and disease.

Would Zachariah have seen a banana? He certainly would not have - the first bananas (an everyday fruit for us) were imported in 1901.

Burston Church - St Mary the Virgin. Its tower fell down in 1753

Burston Green - they grabbed 36 acres of common land and gave the
villagers a green. Bad deal - I think so, but Margaret, Holly and
Gravel don't care on a sunny day.

Audley End - narrow country lane where my ancestors
lived in the 19th century