The Berney-Ficklin family

In 1888 Philip Berney Ficklin, a London solicitor, bought a small estate called Tasburgh Lodge, extended and completely remodelled the main house and renamed it as Tasburgh Hall. However he wasn't just a rich in-comer but had ties to Norfolk, having been born in the village of Hellesdon, the son a Norwich clergyman, although the family had later moved to St. Albans. Berney was his second Christian or given name which came from his maternal grandmother who was a member of the Berney family. They had been established Norfolk landowners since at least the 14th century when Sir Thomas de Berney acquired the manor of Reedham, hence the Berney Arms and the Berney marshes out towards Great Yarmouth. For the first 39 years of his life however, Philip's surname had been Brown. His father was the Rev. Philip Utton Brown, and his grandfather Crisp Brown had been Mayor of Norwich in 1817. The change of name to Ficklin was all down to an inheritance.

His maternal grandmother, Mary Russell Berney, had married Thomas John Ficklin, who was a member of an even older landowning family in Cambridgeshire and a Deputy Lieutenant of that county, but he had no sons to carry on the family name, so in his Will he had left the bulk of his estate to his eldest grandson, Philip, on condition that he changed his name and adopted the arms of the Ficklin family. The necessary Royal Licence was issued in 1888 and the Court of Heralds issued him with his own personal coat of arms which he later incorporated into the various properties he owned in the village. That same year he had married Janet Margaret Tennent Mackintosh (Rita), the daughter of a Glasgow surgeon and grand-daughter of the Scottish industrialist who developed a way of waterproofing woven materials, hence the Mackintosh raincoat.

They had three sons, the first of whom, Philip Sydney Berney Ficklin, was born in 1889 at Crostwick in Norfolk and died there three months later, probably indicating that Tasburgh Hall was at the time still undergoing alterations, but in due course they erected a memorial to their son against the north wall of Tasburgh church, and when Rita donated the stained glass East window to the church in 1903 the inscription shows that she dedicated it partly in his memory as well as that of her parents. It is clear that there were earlier family links to Crostwick because Philip's memorial at the back of Tasburgh church records that he was buried in the family vault at Crostwick. The other two sons, Horatio Pettus Mackintosh Berney Ficklin and Alexander Tennent Mackintosh Berney Ficklin were born at the family's London house in Cavendish Square but both are recorded in the parish Registers as having been christened in Tasburgh in 1892 and 1895 respectively, indicating that the family were splitting their time between London and Tasburgh Hall. It was the two sons who would later incorporate Berney as part of their hyphenated surname.

As part of the estate bought in 1888, Philip had also become the owner of Hall Farm on the opposite side of the Hapton Road, Elm Farm on the main road, and the semi-detached dwellings on Low Road now known as Wayside and Jasmine Cottages, in the garden of which he had built another pair of cottages, Bramble and Greenmore, for his agricultural workers. Then in 1902 he added Malthouse Farm, now Tasburgh Grange, and later acquired the water meadows opposite as well as the forge, now Forge Cottage and Grange Meadow. He also used his money to fill Tasburgh Hall with antiques and historical objects, especially anything related to the Stuart dynasty and the Jacobite cause. After his death at the Hall on 31st October 1917, his various collections were auctioned by Christie's in London for a total of £2,915, equivalent to over £560,000 at 2020 values. The star lot representing almost 10% of the sale proceeds was the undershirt or vest worn by Charles I for his execution. The total value of his estate for Probate purposes was given as £71,246, or nearly £14m. in today's terms.

Philip's two sons were both educated at Rugby school and Cambridge University, both served with the Royal Norfolk Regiment in WW1 and both were awarded the Military Cross. After the war, Horatio elected to remain in the Army, and after various postings, transferred to the Highland Light Infantry which by the outbreak of WW2 was part of the 5th Infantry Division of which he was given command in 1940 with the rank of General, being promoted to Major General in 1941. His division served in India and then the Middle East before being amongst the first British troops since Dunkirk to land in Europe as part of the invasion of Sicily at the start of the Italian campaign. At the end of the war he presided over one of the British Military Tribunals, trying suspected war criminals from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and then after serving a Colonel of the Royal Norfolk Regiment until 1947, he retired to Cape Town, dying out there in 1961.

Unlike his elder brother, Alex Berney-Ficklin, after completing his University studies, returned to the village, taking up residence at Tasburgh Grange, where with his wife, Rachel, they brought up their son John and two daughters. Between the wars Alex was involved in motor sports, taking part in the first British RAC Rally in 1932, but at the outbreak of WW2 he was put in charge of air-raid precautions for Norwich with the rank of Captain, and later for the whole of Norfolk; at the end of the war he was awarded an OBE for his services.

  After the war, and with his children grown up, he sold Tasburgh Grange in 1948 and, like his brother, retired to South Africa. After his death in 1964, his widow Rachel briefly returned to Tasburgh, living for a while in Old Post Office Cottage, but then went to live with one of her daughters in Australia, by which time their son John Berney-Ficklin was living out in California where he became the chief plant design and controls engineer for the Bechtel corporation.