My Early Years In Barsham

A Memory of East Barsham.

I actually lived in West Barsham and attended the primary School in East Barsham from September 1930 to July 1937. The walk to the village school took me past the Manor House, which always looked dark and forbidding, shrouded as it was in the massive beech tres that grew behind the wall, bordering the main road.
No one that I knew had ever been inside the wall, and I had no idea what the grounds were like. That all changed in 1937 when it apparently changed hands and it became a bustle of activity, as the new owners, reputed to be members of the Austrian Habsburg family, took up residence and began a massive project which restored the Manor to its present form. My father, a landscape gardener who had previously worked at West Barsham Manor, was offerred the job of supervising the restoration of the grounds and gardens.
All went well until early 1939 when rumours began to circulate that all was not well.
Not long after, the new owners dissapeared leaving the house unoccupied. A month or two later the house and contents were sold off at auction, to pay accumulated debts I believe. The auction presented an opportunity to enter the property and to view the lavish scale of the restoration work which had been carried out on and inside the house.
As far as I am aware nothing more was heard of the owners, although there was a rumour that they had been seen in southern France just before war broke out in 1939.
My best memory of that period was, I think, the lavish party held in the school at Christmas 1938, as I recall, and provided by the owners of the Hall. None of us village kids had ever seen anything like it, and most were ill next day!
That the Barshams have changed over the years I have no doubt, but I cannot say to what extent since I left the area in the Autumn 1941, never to return to Norfolk to live. I've passed through the village on several occassions since, heading for the coast, but have never spent any time there. I know that the village School has long been closed, in fact it was reduced to a junior school in the year I left to attend the grammar school at Fakenham.
I have, however, many memories of my life there during the thirties when it was still part of the immense rural landscape of East Anglia. And I recall the events and the experiences of the early war years. I am aware also of the huge changes in agriculture which were initiated by the war, and which have led to the the dispersal of almost all of the old village families. I know of no-one still living who shared my schooldays in Barsham, although curiously I have, through the Net, encountered a chap who was born
in East Barsham during the war. A Scotsman would you believe!
I have actually committed a large part of my old memories of those years, particularly of life on the farm, to print, although none of it has been published.
Louis N Wells November 2012 Courbiac France

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