Forge Cottage and Grange Meadow

In 1818 along Low Road, there were no buildings of any sort between Commerce House and the ford, with almost all the land between the road and the river being part of the village's common grazing. Under the Enclosure Award that year, the land between Jasmine Cottage and Grange Meadow was granted to Charles Dye. He built a house for himself and his family on top of the hill, now The Old Horse Shoes, and his son Samuel built Taas Ford where he operated as a wheelwright. Whether he also originally built the forge and blacksmith's to compliment his own business isn't clear but by the time of the Tithe Apportionment Award in 1840 the premises were owned by Sarah Cooper. The census return of the following year indicates that Sarah was a 65 year-old widow but she was running the blacksmith's in conjunction with her son John. He had been born in Tasburgh, and the Parish baptism records show that his father, Thomas, was also a blacksmith, so it seems possible that his father, rather than Samuel Dye, might have built the forge and house after acquiring the land from him, which Sarah then inherited following her husband's death in 1839.

The census return also indicates that either the house was split into two dwellings or had been built as a pair of cottages, a fact which seems to be borne out by the first large scale OS Map published in 1882. At the time of the census, in one half with Sarah Cooper and her son John, were her 26 year-old daughter Hannah Wilton and her two young daughters, perhaps indicating that Hannah had also been widowed, plus a blacksmith's apprentice. In the other half were George Noble, a wheelwright presumably working for Samuel Dye, plus his wife and three children, making a total of eleven inhabitants!

By 1851 Sarah and her son were still running the forge assisted by a resident journeyman blacksmith, but the adjoining occupants were Thomas Cooper, an Inland Revenue Officer, with his wife and two young children. However he was probably not a relative as he had been born in Yorkshire. A few years later John Cooper married, and he and his wife, Sarah, had a daughter in 1856, who they also named Sarah. However, in 1857 firstly his mother died in October and less than two months later his wife died leaving him with his one year old daughter. The 1861 census shows that they were being looked after by a housekeeper. John Cooper was still in residence in 1871, but had married again to Caroline. His daughter was still with them as well as a different journeyman blacksmith, and living next door were James Riches, an agricultural labourer, and his with Harriett, a farm servant, and their daughter.

The 1881 census shows that John Cooper, aged 71, was still running the forge but with the help of a younger blacksmith, George Smith, who was living in the adjoining property. John's daughter Sarah, by then 24, was still at home and was described as a dressmaker. He died the following year and his widow Caroline in 1887, but it seems that by then his daughter had married because the 1891 census refers to a blacksmith Walter Ruppers living in one of the properties with a 34 year-old wife called Sarah who had been born in Tasburgh and they had two children, the oldest of whom was aged six. Perhaps Walter had come to help run the forge after John Cooper's death and had taken a fancy to his daughter! The other of the two properties was occupied by another blacksmith, Samuel Rump and his wife plus seven children , but as the youngest was only one year old and all had been born at Roughton, near Cromer, it is clear that they had only just arrived in Tasburgh at the time of the census. Samuel and his wife were still there ten years later and had four more children, making eleven in total although the oldest three had by then left home. However there was no mention of Walter Ruppers or his family or indeed anyone else in the other property and by 1911 the Rump family had also moved away.

At some point the two properties and the adjoining smithy were acquired by Philip Berney Ficklin of Tasburgh Hall, as indicated by his armorial shield on the front of the cottage. It seems unlikely that this was in 1887/8 after the death of Caroline Cooper since he didn't buy Tasburgh Hall until then, so it was probably sometime after 1903 to go with Tasburgh Grange and the adjoining water meadows which he had just acquired. That would possibly fit with the property having been converted into a single dwelling by 1911, when it was known as Hill House and was occupied by a farmer, Leonard Gardener and his wife Emma with a two year old son and a maid servant.

Although the Hall was sold after Philip Berney Ficklin's death in 1917, his son Alexander inherited the rest of the estate including Tasburgh Grange and Forge Cottage, which had become the farmhouse for Grange Farm. The tenant in the 1930's was Dennis Robinson who developed a poultry business with a number of large chicken sheds on the field opposite The Old Horseshoes, and he was succeeded by William Ebbs and his wife Ethel, and then the Allen family who during the 1940s converted the adjoining meadows to arable use as part of the war effort. After Tasburgh Grange was acquired by Julian and Ann Crawshay in 1956, they sold off most of the Grange Farm land, and Forge Cottage became the home of his mother, Bette Crawshay, until her death in 1972 when the cottage was sold to Christopher Lewis. He worked for BBC East and was the producer of the Antiques Roadshow when the programme was based in Norwich, but he moved to the West Country when production was switched to Bristol. The purchasers were Mr and Mrs Unwin who stayed for over twenty years before selling to the current owners in 2004.

Following Bette Crawshay's death the adjoining farm buildings were bought by David Langridge for conversion into Grange Barn, which he sold in 1976 to Geoff Cheney, a surgeon at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. After his divorce, the next owners were Richard Jefferies, a director of Norwich Union, and his wife Wendy. When he returned to his native New Zealand in 1985, the Barn was bought by the current owners Don and Ann Gibbins.