Thatched Cottage, Low Road

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This Grade II Listed timber framed building is thought to date from the 17th century, with the brick front having been added in about 1800, and was originally two cottages. At the time of the Enclosure ward in 1818 it was owned by John Wright, but following his death in 1830 it was inherited by his son William. The 1841 census return shows that he wasn't living there, as the two cottages were let and he was recorded as occupying Waterloo Cottage on Flordon Road.

The right hand cottage was let to John Sword, a market gardener, and included all the land as far as Mill Barn, which has now been built on. The left hand cottage was let to James Cannell, a 47 year old farrier, with his wife Pheby (sic.) and four children, the oldest of whom, 19 year old Isaac, was also described as a farrier, presumably working with his father. Three years earlier, James Cannell had been locked up in Norwich Castle prison as a debtor, when he has described not just as a farrier but also a cow leech (doctor) and a horse and dog breaker (trainer). White's Norfolk Directory of 1845 records that Mr Cannell was also licensed to sell beer and cider, so for a while it seems part of Thatched Cottage was a Tasburgh beer house, along with the White Horse in Saxlingham Lane and the Cherry Tree in Church Road in addition to the two public houses, the Horseshoes and the Bird in Hand. By 1851 it appears that his wife Pheby had died because the census return records Mr Cannel's wife as Hannah, but the census also suggests that they were no longer living in the same place.

The plans attached to the 1818 Enclosure Award and the 1840 Tithe Apportionment both show that there was a group of buildings to the right of Thatched Cottage, roughly where Chamusca now stands, but as they were shown in grey rather than coloured red we know they were not then residential. However, William Moore in his booklet of memories of Tasburgh during and after WW2 describes those buildings as a black barn joined in an L shape to a clay lump cottage, so at some point after 1840, part of the group of buildings must have been converted into a cottage. The 1840 Tithe Apportionment shows that in addition to Thatched Cottage, William Wright owned five other newly built properties, so it seems possible that he might have been responsible for converting/creating the extra cottage sometime between 1840 and 1851, because to make sense of the 1851 census return it is necessary to assume the existence of an extra dwelling between Thatched Cottage and the Mill, and that cottage being occupied by James Cannell, by then described as a veterinary surgeon, and his wife Hannah.

He had been replaced as the tenant of the left hand end of Thatched Cottage by Benjamin Sayer, an agricultural labourer, and his family. By 1861 his occupation had changed to that of a vermin destroyer, and the 1871 census describes him as a warrener or rabbit catcher, though possibly living in the right hand cottage, unless the person who wrote up the census return had muddled up the two which in the absence of addresses certainly did happen. Be that as it may, the next three census returns show that the left end cottage was occupied by the same family, albeit with various changes. In 1881 the head of the house was George Francis aged 38 with his 31 year old wife Mary Ann and their two young sons, George and Frederick, but Mary Ann must have been married before as there were also three step-children, Florence, Rosa and Alice Thornton. That same year, her second husband, George died, and Mary Ann must then have got married again, because by 1891 the head of the house was George Chapel and there were four more children, but she was then widowed for a third time as by 1901 she was head of the household. The three children of her first marriage had all left home, but her second two sons George and Frederick recorded as fowl dealers were still with her, as were her youngest three, but strangely they had all reverted to the use of the surname, Francis.

Over the years, occupiers of the other half and the converted cottage included a master cordwainer (shoemaker), bricklayer, carpenter, fish hawker, dressmaker, and laundress. The 1939 Register taken at the outbreak of WW2 records the occupants of one half as George and Dulcie Riches, with John Chambers living in the other half with his wife Mildred and her father, Harry Moyes. The converted cottage and barn were demolished in the 1960s, becoming the site of Chamusca, and the other half of the land was also sold as a building plot to John and Jane Paxon who had an optician's business in Norwich on Castle Meadow. They designed the house, Bullswater Cottage, and it was built for them in 1972/3. By then Thatched Cottage had been renovated and combined into a single dwelling which was bought by Ray and Elizabeth Page when they retired and sold Rookery Farm in 1971, but Ray couldn't quite give up farming altogether and for a while kept a cow in the outbuildings on the right front of the house.

After Ray died in 1983, Elizabeth Page continued living in the house until shortly before her death, when the property was bought in 2001 by one of the joint owners of Tasburgh Hall. He did some work on the house intending it to be a home for his mother, but that never happened. It was then sold a couple of years later to Mr Coupe, a property developer from Essex who carried out further improvements for his own occupation,before selling in 2017. He also extended and then converted to residential use of the former garage building to the left to residential use. That was sold in 2019, and named The Smokehouse,  after the former use of a brick building in the back garden as a smokehouse for eels taken from the river. Mr Coupe had previously adjusted the right hand boundary of Thatched Cottage with Chamusca which he also owned, in order to create room for a new access and garage, before building a new house for himself, Water's Edge, in the garden of Chamusca.

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