Rookery Cottage, Saxlingham Lane

As its name suggests , Rookery Cottage was part of Rookery Farm, a link which existed for over 150 years, but Rookery Cottage is considerably older than the farmhouse, now Rookery House, opposite. The English Heritage index of Listed Buildings suggests the cottage dates from the 17th or 18th centuries but a report by the Norfolk Historic Buildings Group supports the conclusion of a previous inspection that the building is much older than that. Ignoring the post 1970 extensions on each end, the central portion was originally the core of a hall house, dated around 1500, ie. one without an upper floor and therefore an open space up to a queen post roof. The timber work suggested that in addition to the hall, there was a parlour or living room on the southern end, and in a the traditional layout there would have been two service rooms at the northern end, although no trace of those remain. Blackened roof timbers evidence that there was originally a smoke bay which was later replaced by a chimney, probably in the early 1600s, with the upper floor being inserted around the same time.

The earliest documentary evidence of the cottage comes in the form of a map of the Rainthorpe estate prepared in 1772 for Robert Wright who had inherited the Hall and estate from his father Richard in 1770. The map, which is held by the Norfolk Record Office, clearly shows Rookery Cottage as one the properties along Saxlingham Lane, but the colouring or lack of it would suggest it wasn't part of the estate at the time. It also wasn't part of Rookery Farm when that property was purchased by Mr Somers Clarke in 1795, but the cottage was subsequently bought by him in 1805 from John North of Norwich for £100 and an annual payment of £2 to him for the rest of his lifetime which was quite a common arrangement at that time. The transfer records that Mr North was selling as son and heir of his late father, Thomas North, and that previous owners had been Robert Tolk, and before him John Browne, and that at the time of the sale the cottage and its adjoining acre of land was occupied by Richard Howes. Thereafter ownership of the cottage remained in the hands of successive owners of Rookery Farm until it was sold by the farmer Ray Page in 1970 prior to his retirement.

The ten-yearly census returns from 1841 onwards provide details of the occupants and their occupations during the 19th and early 20th centuries but although some of these were agricultural labourers, it doesn't necessarily follow that they were employed at Rookery Farm which, despite the size of its farmhouse, never included more than 20 acres of land over that period, although other land may have been rented. The first of those farm workers was William Quantrill with his wife Ann and son John but by 1851 he was living in one half of White Cottage, and Rookery Cottage was home to another farm worker, John Meadows, his wife Elizabeth and son George. Also living with them was John's brother Robert, an agricultural labourer, his wife Elizabeth and their infant son Robert. Although there is evidence that the downstairs room was at one time divided into two, and presumably therefore the same upstairs, it would have been a bit crowded by today's standards! In 1861 the occupants were recorded as a widow, Sarah Sheldrake, and her son John but curiously George Meadows, then 18, was still living there as well, and both the young men were working on the land. They were the last agricultural labourers for a while because the 1871 occupants were an elderly couple, John and Elizabeth Seaman described as paupers but ten years previously he had been the farming tenant of Rookery Farm. They were followed ten years later by Walter Sutton, a plate layer working out of Flordon station, and his young wife Sarah Ann, a laundress perhaps at Rainthorpe Hall. The occupants in 1891 were William Abbs, a wheelwright, and his wife Emma with their four children but by the beginning of the century they had moved on, and an agricultural labourer, Jeremiah Sutton and his wife Mary Ann were in residence, followed in 1911 by a 97 year-old widow, Maria Smith.

By the end of the 1930s the cottage was let to an elderly widow, Miranda Goose, and was also home to her grand-daughter, Phyllis Moss and two great grandchildren, Doreen and Sheila, but in 1953 Mr and Mrs Larner moved in from Glebe Cottage. Their daughter, Elizabeth, had married Ray Page, the owner of Rookery Farm, but after her husband died Mrs Larner moved to a retirement home in Blofield and the cottage was let to Phyllis Zchorn and her husband, Hans who had been a German prisoner of war, and one of their daughters, Doreen, married Ted Hardingham from Jasmine Cottage, and they still live in Tasburgh. In 1963 the Zchorns moved to one of the council houses on Grove Lane, and an artist, Stuart Milner, rented the cottage from Mr Page, so it was perhaps through him that Derek Morris, a sculptor and lecturer at the Norwich Arts School, came to know about the property and took on the tenancy in 1967 at a rent of £1 a week. Ray Page refused to take any more, saying it had always been that amount!

Three years later Derek and his wife Christina were able to buy the cottage from Mr Page, but had to promise that they wouldn't just do it up and sell it – in fact they remained there for another 30 years! At the time the conditions were very basic, with no bathroom and an elsan toilet down the garden, so at an early stage they almost doubled the size of the cottage by demolishing a lean-to kitchen and adding a two story extension to the northern end, comprising a new kitchen and bathroom with two bedrooms upstairs. Some 20 years later they added an extension on the southern or road end, which being open to the apex, apart from a gallery, reflected what would have been the architecture of the original cottage. Once their children had grown up, Derek and Christina bought an old house and shop on Elm Hill in Norwich, and sold Rookery Cottage in 1999 to Philip and Gillian Evans. Shortly afterwards they purchased the adjoining field from the owner of the converted barn on the other side, but he never particularly liked the property and when he retired from his post as a consultant in the A&E department at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, they sold to John and Caroline Lowton in 2002.  John and Caroline had the roof completely stripped and re-thatched in 2021, but with Norfolk reed in short supply, the thatcher had to use reed imported from Ukraine.

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