Private William Ainger Howman, 1895–1916 AS WE HAVE learned in the previous post ― From the Farm to the Veldt ― Private Robert James Howman stepped off a train at Fakenham station in December, 1901 and returned home after almost seventeen years in the service of the Crown. His military career had carried him to …
The Military Service of a Victorian Soldier IN DECEMBER 1884, eighteen-year-old Robert James Howman left his home village of Great Ryburgh in Norfolk and travelled to Great Yarmouth, where he enlisted in the Norfolk Regiment. Like many young labourers of Victorian rural England, he sought opportunities beyond those offered by agricultural life. What followed was …
Wills and Continuity in the Sandall Family WHEN WE THINK of inheritance in eighteenth-century rural England, we often imagine little more than the passing of possessions after death. But the wills left behind by members of the Sandal family of Rippingale suggest something altogether more deliberate. These highly-informative documents reveal ordinary villagers thinking strategically about …
IN THE COURSE of tracing my paternal family through the fenland parishes of south Lincolnshire, one crude, recurrent declaration stood out above all others: Occupation: Ag-Lab. Two blunt syllables. Generation after generation, the same entry appears in parish registers and census returns. Agricultural labourer. Not farmer. Not landowner. Not even cottager. But labourer. It is …
My daily dog-walking exercise often takes me through our village’s churchyard and its cemetery. As I meander among the graves, my past interest in researching my own family history often causes me to stop and read some of the headstones. Inevitably, these often raise questions in my mind. Who were the characters whose names live …
RAVEN MOON 