Moving to the City

 A few weeks ago, I wrote about tidying up my family history records, and how that task had been 'agreeably distracted' into tracking one particular family through the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Despite all manner of other interests and seasonal obligations, I'm pleased to say that this has continued and, during the course of this, a number of interesting stories have come to light.

The family I've been looking at is that of my maternal grandfather's maternal grandmother, Eliza Bullingham or Burlingham.  She was the fifth of a family of eight children born to George Burlingham and his wife Mary, formerly Mary Finch, between 1827 and 1844.  In my earlier blog, I wrote of Eliza's eldest sister Sarah, and the discovery that her daughter had married one of Eliza's sons.  This week, I've been following the life and fortunes of Mary, the next of Eliza's siblings.

Mary Burlingham was born in either Thorpe Abbotts or Brockdish (Norfolk villages lying along the Suffolk border in the valley - such as it is - of the river Waveney) and was baptised at Brockdish on 21st October 1832.  At some point in the next two years, the family moved to Wattisfield in West Suffolk, which is where George, her father, had been born and it was there that the rest of the Burlingham children were born.

Meanwhile at South Lopham, just over the border in Norfolk, Norwich-born Thomas Batley (a name sometimes found as Battley or Battely) had married Mary Finch in July, 1825.  William, their first child was born there in 1825 or 6 and then the family moved to nearby Bressingham, where William was baptised on 30th April 1826.  By 1841, they were living in Roydon.  Although about ten miles (depending where their respective houses were located) separate Roydon and Wattisfield, this didn't prevent William Batley and Mary Burlingham meeting and growing attached to each other.  Early in 1849, Mary found herself pregnant and they were married in the June quarter of that year.  Their daughter, named Sarah after her aunt, was born before the year was out.

Much is made of the mid-to-late 19th century being a difficult time for those dependent on agriculture for a living - the 1870s in particular - and the fact that many families moved to the newly industrialised north in search of work.  But it was already difficult for larger families to find work as they grew up in earlier decades.  With their family now complete, late in the 1840s, the Batleys moved to Norwich and at the 1851 census Thomas and Mary and their five youngest children were living at Castle Ditches in the parish of St Michael at Thorn.  William and his wife had left baby Sarah with her grandparents in Wattisfield, and were making a new life for themselves in Norwich, living in Rising Sun Lane in the same parish as William's parents.  Mary, now said to be 21, but in truth somewhat younger, was expecting her second child, George, who was born on 19th May that year.  Both Thomas and William are shown as labourers.

The 1861 census shows that progress had been made in their plans.  By then they were living in Golden Ball Street, William being listed as a shoemaker, while Mary (now revealing her true age, 28) is credited with the occupation of a shoe binder.  Their family then consisted of five children and Mary's 20-year-old sister Maria was also with them, described as a domestic servant.  Whether working for them or outside the family is not indicated.  Most census records list the children in order of age; most that do not show the boys first, followed by the girls.  The sequence of this entry is somewhat strange.  After William and Mary come Sarah, 11, daughter Eliza, 2, and Maria, followed by the boys: Thomas, 6, George, 8 and William, 3.

St Michael at Thorn was close to the centre of the city.  Castle Ditches was, as its name indicates, close to the foot of the great mound on which the Norman castle was built.  By the start of the nineteenth century, it had become a general dumping ground and refuse pit.  The area was levelled and advertised for development in 1826 and it's likely that both Thomas's and William's 1851 homes were part of that development.  Golden Ball Street ran through the middle of the area and obviously the houses there afforded greater accommodation.  As the decades passed, prosperity increased and they moved from parish to parish further out from the city centre.

William and Mary went on to have a family of ten, six sons and four daughters; William died in the summer of 1889 at the age of 62 and later that year daughter Sarah was married.  In the 1891 census Sarah, now the wife of William Meadows, described as a 'Laster and heeler', were living in Quebec Road, while her widowed mother was living with two of her younger sons in nearby Rosary Road, both in St Matthews parish.  William Meadows died in 1906 and Sarah's mother Mary in 1909. In 1911 Sarah was living in the same area, with a teenage lodger, and her brothers and their families close by.  She died in 1925.

Of the parish of St Michael at Thorn, which had played a great part in the family's settling and early life in Norwich, little can be seen today.  The church itself, which stood at the corner of Ber Street and Thorn Lane, was hit by incendiary bombs on 27th June, 1942, leaving only the tower and part of the walls standing.  The whole area was flattened as part of the post-war redevelopment in the 1950s and the church door is the only survivor, having been re-erected in the restored church of St Julian (now something of a tourist attraction) as the entrance to Mother Julian's cell there.