Commander William Gwyn of Tasburgh Lodge

William Gwyn was born at Pensthorpe in 1797 into what was clearly a wealthy family. At the age of 19 he was appointed a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy but unlike the British army, the navy did not sell commissions so his appointment would have been on merit after a minimum of three years' service as a midshipman. That means he would have been no older than 16 on joining and would have seen service towards the end of the Napoleonic War. In 1819 he married Mary Rudge in Fakenham parish church and as there were six Rudge witnesses and no one from his side of the family, it seems that his parents may well have died by then.

By 1827 however, as the navy scaled back its operations, he had been placed on the reserve list on half-pay and was living in Bergh Apton. We know this because the Tasburgh manorial court records have an entry for his purchase that year of Elms Farm, now Tramps Hall, at the junction of Fairstead Lane with the A140 main road for £2,260, equivalent to about £2 million in today's terms, so clearly he was a man of considerable independent means rather than just a half-pay junior naval officer. It is thought that the purchase of the farm would have been as an investment rather than for his own occupation because the following year in 1828 he bought Tasburgh Lodge, now Tasburgh Hall, with 170 acres of farmland without selling Elm Farm, and it is clear from the 19th century census returns that Tasburgh Lodge was his home. About ten year's earlier his older brother, Richard, had bought a 260 acre farm at Stratton St. Michael and was living in the three story house with its cedar trees on the way to Long Stratton, which may have been the reason why William came to live in Tasburgh.

He and Mary had at least twelve children, including nine daughters in succession sandwiched between three sons. An 1891 memorial in the church records that their second son, Hammond Wesson Gwyn, had been a General in the Royal Marines. In 1840 William Gwyn was appointed a Justice of the Peace and was one of the magistrates at the local court in Long Stratton. There is a report of one case in 1852 which involved an accusation by the Rev. Carter Moore, curate of Flordon, that he had been assaulted by the local postman, both of whom would probably have been known to Mr Gwyn, who would have been aware that this was not the first time that the Rev. Moore had "been at variance with some one or more of his neighbours". The Rev. Moore's father, who was also a vicar, wrote to the court in support of his son, but Mr Gwyn in reply "advised him to remove his son from Flordon, as sooner or later he would get himself into serious scraps". This led to a degree of animosity on the part of the Flordon curate, and one evening as Mr Gwyn was leaving the train at Flordon Station, the Rev. Moore, who had been waiting in full clergy robes, "cursed him and his family and all belonging to him in the most vehement manner". Perhaps not surprisingly, Mr Moore had the curate arrested for contempt. He was committed to prison in Norwich castle, and the Bishop of Norwich deprived him of his licence.

By 1851 the census indicates that William Gwyn was by then farming 250 acres and employing six men and three boys. In 1868 William Gwyn's nephew, Colonel Reginald Thorsby Gwyn, married Sophia Henrietta Jermy, the only surviving child of Isaac Jermy, Lord of the Manor of Tasburgh, who had been sensationally murdered along with his son at Stanfield Hall in 1848 by his estate bailiff. As a result of his marriage, Colonel Gwyn and his descendants took over the title of Lord of the Manor, as well as the Stanfield estate; the Gwyns were clearly an important local family at the time. As a naval officer still on the reserve list William Gwyn would have received promotion by seniority and by 1871 he was described in the census return of that year as Commander Gwyn RN but in 1880 aged 84 he died at The Hall and was buried in Stratton St Mary churchyard.