Trades & Occupations

  Information on the various trades and occupations in which village residents were engaged can be found in the available census returns from 1841 to 1911, trade directories from 1843 onwards and in a few cases, in Wills although the majority of residents would have been too poor to make them. As might be expected in a rural community, the predominant source of employment was in or connected to farming so the most common entry under occupation was agricultural or farm labourer, with a few claiming a higher status such as cowman, drillman, horseman or even team man ie. able to work with a team of horses. Although it isn't possible to be sure which farm they worked at, with other trades or occupations there is no room for doubt as to where they operated.

Millers and the assistants, or journeymen, that they employed had run a mill in Tasburgh for centuries, and clearly it was quite a profitable business because there are Wills for millers dating back into the 1500s. Similarly there is a surviving Will from 1569 for a blacksmith in the village and we know that there was a smithy adjoining Forge Cottage on Low Road, operating from the 1830s until the beginning of the 20th century, and another one on the main road near to the Norwich bus shelter which was still working until after WW2. There are also references to blacksmiths living elsewhere in the village, such as at White Horse Cottage in the 1840s but we can't tell whether they were just living there or working there as well. Similar to the blacksmith, but with different skills combining joinery, was the wheelwright. The early title deeds for Commerce House indicate that from 1791 it was owned and occupied by Simon Rayson who was a wheelwright, and when he sold it ten years later he moved to Grove Cottage, where he built a new wheelwright's premises with access on to Grove Lane where The Maples now stands. One of the occupants of Grove Cottage named in the 1841 Census was a retired wheelwright so it would seem that the business had closed by then, but another wheelwright's shop was already being run at Taas Ford on Low Road, adjacent to the smithy, by Samuel Dye who also owned the Horse Shoes pub next door. Taas Ford was still in use as a wheelwrights' in 1911 when it was also a builders' premises.

Village maps show that there was little in the way of new building from 1840 until the 1960s but as would be expected carpenters, thatchers and bricklayers were still well represented in the Census returns, and bricks also featured for a number of other residents who worked in the brickyard and limekilns just over the boundary in Tharston. Walking would have been the way in which most people got around so it is no surprise that there were a number of boot and shoe makers and repairers appearing in the Census returns, almost certainly working from home. In 1807 a shoemaker by the name of Stephen Alexander bought what is now Holly Tree Cottage on Grove Lane and was still there in 1851 when he was referred to as a retired shoemaker. By then Richard Warnes, who had fought at the battle of Waterloo, and his sons George and Hebron were working as shoe and boot makers at Commerce House, and in due course at least four other properties in Low Road, including Jasmine Cottage, were home to shoe makers, one of whom described himself as a cordwainer or master shoemaker. Others worked in Upper Tasburgh, with even the landlord of the Bird in Hand mending boots and shoes for a while, but the last shoe repairer in the village was William Moore, who rented the shop premises at Old Post Office Cottage after the Post Office moved to Commerce House in 1954. Unfortunately four years later some of his equipment overheated while he was closed for lunch, and the premises were burned out. The coming of the railway at Flordon station in 1849 didn't change the reliance on walking but it did provide another source of employment for people in the village in the form of platelayers, signalmen and general labourers, as well as enabling other trades such as a fish merchant and a coal man.

Domestic service also featured, with William Gwyn at Tasburgh Lodge (Hall) employing a resident cook, two housemaids, a laundress and a groom, as well as non-resident gardening staff whilst at Rainthorpe Sir Charles Harvey retained a gamekeeper and assistant, and a forester or woodman in addition to domestic and gardening staff. However it wasn't just the grand houses of the village that had staff; for example many of the farmhouses in the late 1800s had at least one domestic servant, and a number of widows acted as charwomen, cleaning for those with no resident help, in order to earn a little bit of money for their families. For some, life in Tasburgh was hard, but not as hard as life in the Pulham workhouse. Another occupation for older girls and women was dressmaking and needlework, no doubt boosted by some of the shops on Low Road also acting as drapers, reflecting the increasing ease of distributing Lancashire cottons and fabrics across the rail network.

The Census returns also show that from at least 1861 until WW2 the village had its own resident policeman and roadmen, responsible for maintaining the local stone roads before the coming of tarmac, but they also reveal other occupations. The Sayer family provided at least two generations of local vermin destroyers and warreners or rabbit catchers, there were a couple of fowl or poultry dealers, and in 1841 a clock and watchmaker and a glover or glove maker, although there are records of glove makers in Tasburgh well before then. An inventory from 1603 of the goods of John Allgard who died in Tasburgh indicates that as well as running a smallholding, he had a stock of 224 pairs of gloves plus various purses and other leather items, and an even earlier Tasburgh Will from 1355 was made by David the Glover. Amongst the more unusual or unexpected entries however, were a fisherman who smoked the eels he caught in an outhouse by Thatched Cottage, a hurdle maker, a razor grinder and a 13 year old wick boy, whose duties can only be guessed at. Bringing things up to date, the last business to close in Lower Tasburgh was Wayside Garage which had been started in 1962 by Harry Bright and his son Peter but closed at the end of the century, and employment or work within the village is now almost non-existent.