Yesterday, 28 people came to The Archive Centre to hear about how to research tenants on the Gunton estate. They were here for a lunchtime talk, entitled A Norfolk Estate and its Tenants.
I discussed the Gunton project, the estate and its tenants. I chose certain interesting characters, including Edward Green, a successful tenant farmer, to illustrate how useful the archive is and the colour it can add to people’s family history research. I also asked ‘Was Gunton Hall like Downton Abbey?’, questioning whether there was a two-tier society of rich and poor or whether the picture is more complicated. The agent, successful farmers, the head gardener, etc. appeared to have formed an emerging middle class during the nineteenth century. This question was prompted by a fascinating volume of servants’ and gamekeepers’ wages, which showed the agent’s wage, already far and away the highest, more than doubled in 1829. This book is a hidden gem despite its very poor condition, being the only record of the wages of Gunton Hall servants: most labour records relate to building and repair work. The volume is currently receiving significant conservation treatment and we hope to make a microfilm copy of suitable pages from it available soon.
Gunton Hall servants and gamekeeper’s wages, 1822-39
(Norfolk Record Office, GTN 3/1/16/38)
One or two people who had been to the talk mentioned their ancestors, including gamekeepers, on the estate. I even saw some of audience using the records in the searchroom afterwards. I hope that I shared with them the importance of the Harbord of Gunton family and estate papers and enthused them to use this fantastic resource.
The group were interested in portraits, so I encouraged them to take a look at Picture Norfolk.
One visitor even recommended a book called Portraits in Norfolk Houses, volume 1, by Prince Frederick Duleep Singh. Copies can be found at the Millennium Library and Thetford Library. This volume includes portraits of members of the Harbord family. He also drew my attention to a box-file of nineteenth-century cuttings at Thetford Library, in a section of the Duleep Singh Collection called ‘Illustrations Collection – Villages’.
This shows that using Gunton papers and additional material elsewhere can give a fuller picture of an estate. With this in mind, I look forward to visiting the Norfolk Heritage Centre with the Gunton volunteers, on Friday morning.
If you would like to come to any other lunchtime talks, details can be found here. The next one takes place on 4 April 2012. Eve Read will be telling us about Women’s Lives in the Census. The talk is free of charge and takes place from 1.00 – 1.45 p.m. in the Green Room, at The Archive Centre.
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