Rookery House

The Early Days .....

In about 1630 a new house was constructed fronting onto the common at Nethergate Green. We do not know the name of the man who had it built, whether he was from Tasburgh or how he had acquired his wealth but the tall house with chimneys at each end would have been one of the prominent houses in the village. What we do know is that he wasn't the first to build on that site as excavated pottery provides evidence of continuous occupation back to Saxon times.

Apart from the brick chimneys and the southern gable end wall the house was oak timber framed on a brick plinth with wattle and daub infill under a lime plaster skin. The original windows were timber mullioned set high up in the front and back walls for both lower and upper storeys and are still in place under the present rendering. The timber frame would have been cut and assembled off site, the beams numbered and then taken down again before being transported by horse and cart and re-erected on site. Some of the numbering can still be seen in the roof space and it is the style of the roof construction which indicates an approximate date for the building, which would originally have been thatched

It seems likely that the front door would have been in the same position as the current 18th century door and would have led into a front to back passageway (the screens passage) with the kitchen area to the left and the main room with its moulded ceiling beam to the right. Upstairs there were two bedrooms accessed by a newel staircase beside the northern chimney breast.

At some point in the next century the original four bay house was extended by the addition of an extra two bays beyond the northern chimneystack with glazed sash windows replacing the old mullioned openings and an imposing pedimented new front door but the quality of the timber beams was not as good as used originally and the style of construction was different. Also added was an out-shot service range with a new rear staircase to a corridor accessing the three bedrooms above and a split staircase to the two attics lit by windows in the gable ends which show evidence of having been bricked up, re-opened and then bricked up again, probably to reflect changes in the Window Tax rules rather than any changes of use.

Again the identity of who carried out such a substantial re-modelling is unknown but the owner must have been relatively wealthy and almost certainly would have made the alterations for his own benefit and occupation. One possible candidate is Mr Somers Clarke who bought the house in 1795 although that date seems a bit late for the style. Dendrochronology might confirm or refute that possibility and also the date of the original build.

The 19th Century .....

It is only from the end of the eighteenth century that there is documentary evidence of ownership with a complete set of title deeds from 1795, mostly handwritten on parchment. In 1782 the owners Richard and Robert Wright were declared bankrupt and the property was sold to a Mr John Freshfield. There is no evidence that he ever occupied the property and it was to his tenant Thomas Kett that he agreed to sell "the house, garden and various parcels of land in Tasburgh now in the occupation of Thomas Kett and Ralph Nixon totalling approximately 14 acres together with the barn, stable, outhouses and buildings thereto belonging" for £630 with completion of the sale on or before 8th November that year.

Thomas Kett then agreed to sell on to Mr Somers Clarke of Baconsthorpe for £330 the house, garden and three and a half acres of land with vacant possession and on 7th August 1795 Mr Freshfield at the direction of Thomas Kett transferred the house, garden and three and a half acres with common rights of pasture and turbary to Mr Somers Clarke, presumably with the remaining ten and a half acres and the barn being transferred to Thomas Kett or other sub-purchasers. We know from the records of the Manor of Tasburgh Uphall with Boylands and Hunts that the three and a half acres of the land transferred were copyhold so the house and garden must have been freehold.

Whether or not Somers Clarke was responsible for enlarging the house, he certainly occupied it and enlarged the lands and property which went with it. In December 1804 he bought a further 2.63 acres of copyhold land from Simon Rayson, a yeoman in Tasburgh, for £144 and in April 1805 he purchased from the executors of Robert Browne dec. the freehold "barns, stables, yard, orchard and farmland" of approximately 1.5 acres on the other side of Saxlingham Lane ( now Aprilia Lodge ) and also two further pieces of arable land of about 2 acres and 1 acre of copyhold meadow between the barns and the river Tas for £350. It seems probable that the barn etc. was the same as that referred to in the contract between John Freshfield and Thomas Kett who had then sold it on to Robert Browne

Later in November that year he bought from John North the adjoining cottage to the West of the barns ( Rookery Cottage ) occupied by Richard Howes and a further 1 acre belonging with it adjoining Nethergate Green " together with all trees, wood and commons of pasture and turbary" for £100 plus an annuity of £2.00 a year payable to John North for his life.

From an agreement dated 22 March 1808 settling a dispute between Somers Clark and Simon Rayson we learn that Grove Lane used to run between the front of the house and the common land to the West and that it joined Saxlingham Lane approximately opposite Rookery Cottage. The curve of the roadside bank can still be identified within the garden. However in March 1807 Mr Somers Clarke had bought nearly half an acre of land from Simon Rayson on the southern edge of the common on which he laid out a new public road on the present alignment of Grove Lane and stopped up the old route. At the same time Simon Rayson built a cottage ( now Holly Tree Cottage) on his land fronting onto the new road with a sawpit and shed in the front garden and created an entrance to it by cutting though the bank and ditch which Somers Clarke had created along the side of the road.

Somers Clarke maintained that Simon Rayson had no right to break through the bank of which Mr Clarke claimed ownership and objected to the sawpit as creating a nuisance and being visible from his house, whereas Simon Rayson said the bank had been created in the wrong place and was in fact on his land. The dispute was settled on terms that ceded ownership of the bank and ditch to Simon Rayson on condition he maintained them and planted trees along it. He also agreed to move the sawpit and shed to the back of the cottage, albeit at Somers Clarke's expense, and not to do anything else which would interrupt the view or otherwise annoy Somers Clarke.

However in December that year Mr Somers Clarke died and was buried in Tasburgh churchyard. By his Will dated 30th November 1804 he left all his estates to his wife Anne Dorothy Clarke who subsequently married Philip Meadows Martineau, a well respected surgeon, a governor of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, member of the Royal Society and also a Land Tax Commissioner. Mr Martineau was born in 1752 so would have been in his late 50's at the time of the marriage.

Before the Married Women's Property Act of 1882 anything owned by a lady passed on marriage to her husband but it seems Mr Martineau didn't marry Mrs Clarke just for her property because on 30th June 1812 all the property in Tasburgh previously owned by Mr Somers Clarke was transferred to trustees of a settlement for the benefit of Mr and Mrs Martineau for their lifetimes. On the death of the survivor of them the property was to pass to such of their children as the survivor might my deed or Will appoint or in default of appointment to their eldest surviving son or if there were no sons, then to their eldest surviving daughter. Mrs Martineau must therefore have been young enough for them to anticipate having children and indeed they had a daughter Fanny Ann Martineau to whom Mrs Martineau left the property under her Will and who inherited it on her mother's death on 14th March 1851.

The final addition to the estate was the allotment under the 1813 Enclosure Award of the triangle of common land in front of the house formed by the re-alignment of Grove lane and its juncture with Saxlingham Lane and three further pieces of the Nethergate Green common to the north of Salingham Lane totalling just over one acre. In that document the residence was described as a mansion house but Mr and Mrs Martineau didn't occupy the house and land in Tasburgh but just took the rents from it. He had bought Bracondale Lodge on the southern outskirts of Norwich which must have been quite a grand house as the grounds had been landscaped by Humphrey Repton. Bracondale Lodge was demolished in about 1960 but its grounds are now the site of County Hall and his name lives on in the form of the adjoining Martineau Lane.

In June 1853 Fanny Ann Martineau decided to dispose of the property and the farm was offered for sale by auction at the Royal Hotel in Norwich in three lots; this provides us with the first plan of the farm. Lots 1 and 2 comprising the main house and buildings, the cottage and barns plus 12 acres of land were bought by James Smith of Eaton, Norwich for £865. The transfer records that after the death of Mr Somers Clarke the farm had been let first to Henry and Mary Dunt and then to William Smith and that the cottage had been occupied by Ralph Nixon though it seems unlikely that this was the same Ralph Nixon as mentioned in the contract between John Freshfield in 1795 referred to above. Lot 3 was a nine acre field known as Grove Close opposite the current playing field and village hall and which presumably gave its name to Grove Lane.

Four years later the property was sold again to another Norwich resident, Henry Blake Miller of Town Close in return for an annuity of £90 a year payable to James Smith and his wife Maria for their joint lives and £50 a year for the survivor of them. Maria Smith died in 1881 but her husband survived until 1892 by which time Henry Blake Miller had predeceased him and the property was held by Mr Miller's executors.

The 20th Century .....

Although there is no continuous record of lettings, we know that in 1906 the farm was let for three years to John Harrison at a rent of £26 a year and then in 1909 following the death of Mr Miller's widow his executors sold the farm to Sir Charles Harvey of Rainthorpe Hall when the property was for the first time recorded as Rookery Farm. By 1921 the rent had reisen to £55 a year under a lease to Thomas Cobb.

On the death of Sir Charles Harvey in 1928, the farm was inherited by his son Oliver Charles Harvey as part of the Rainthorpe Estate. The following year in 1929 Rookery Farm and other land on the Estate was sold to Fred Fisher, a builder from Newton Flotman. The tenant Thomas Cobb gave notice to quit his tenancy from 11th October 1930 and in April 1930 the farm then totalling 14.9 acres was bought by Charles Henry Page, a master printer of 4 Station Road, Drayton for £765 with the help of a mortgage of £275 from the Norwich District Provident Permanent Benefit Building Society from which he borrowed a further £100 in 1931. The price was therefore £100 less than that paid by James Smith in 1852 but the late 1920's and early 30's was not a good time for farming and land was cheap.

Mr Page died in March 1939 and the farm passed to his widow Ada Louise Page who continued to live in the house until her death in September 1951 with the farm being run by her son Harry Raymond Page. Under the terms of her Will, he was given an option to buy the farm which he did at a valuation of £1125 and the farm was transferred into his name on 28th August 1953.

Mr Page continued to eke out a living from the small farm but on 1st September 1970 Rookery Cottage was sold to its tenant Derek Morris, a sculptor and lecturer at the Norwich School of Art and the following year the remainder of the farm was sold in three parcels. The barns ( now Aprilia Lodge) and the land between Saxlingham Lane and the river Tas was bought by Timothy Peter Finch of Hapton Hall, the remaining 7.8 acres of farmland was bought by Peter Francis Ian Read from Long Stratton who built Pinewood Lodge and used the land as a market garden. The Farmhouse, outbuildings and garden totalling 1.84 acres was bought by David Langridge and his wife on 27th October 1971 for £8,200. Mr Page and his wife Elizabeth moved to Thatched Cottage, Low Road, Tasburgh.

David Langridge was a surveyor who worked for the estate agents Savills in Norwich and bought up and renovated a number of local properties including Grange Meadow, Low Road, Tasburgh and Tharston Mill. The old farmhouse certainly needed modernising as it had no bathroom or inside lavatory and no heating other than open fires and a coal burning cooking range. His alterations and improvements included dividing the northern bedroom to create a bathroom with a further shower room downstairs and installing central heating. He also removed the old cooking range and bread oven from the northern chimney and re-worked the fireplaces; he moved the backdoor from its position on the north end to the back of the house leading into a new kitchen; he filled in the cellar under the stairs and the pumped well which stood by the old backdoor and he made the two downstair rooms in the original part of the house into a single large room by removing the internal divisions and then inserting a new window where the door on the east side opposite the front door led into a dairy which was demolished. Unfortunately he also removed and sold a carved overmantle which had come from Rainthorpe Hall.

On completion of the alterations, the property was bought for £25,000 by John Richard Browne Cave, an assistant manager at the Midland Bank in Norwich who lived in the house with his wife and two young sons until 1974 when he was transferred to the Bank's head office in London and moved down to Essex. The house stood empty for nearly a year until on 27th June 1975 it was bought by Benjamin Robert Goodfellow, a Norwich solicitor, his wife Rosalind Mary ( Ros ) and her mother Joan Kathleen ( Judy ) Muskett. They further altered the property by building a "granny flat" or annexe onto the back of the house in 1976 and as the property was no longer a farm, they changed the name to Rookery House. In 1982 with a growing family of six children they installed a new staircase to the attics which were converted into additional bedrooms and a second bathroom. The inaccessible rotten rear dormer windows were replaced at the same time with Velux windows and later they put a new sash window into the back of the southern bedroom.

The 21st Century .....

In November 2014 Mrs Muskett died aged 95 but the granny flat continued to be occupied by her friend Ruth Mary Walker who having left All Hallows Convent, Ditchingham in 1977, came to stay for a few months whilst she looked for alternative accommodation but ended up staying permanently as an honorary great aunt to the family.

Dates Owners Occupiers/Tenants

• 1782 Robert Wright and Richard Wright ( bankrupts)
• 1782-1795 John Freshfield Thomas Kett
• 1795-1808 Somers Clarke Owner occupied
• 1808-1812 Anne Dorothy Clarke ( widow ) / Martineau Unknown
• 1812-1851 Trustees for Anne Dorothy Martineau Henry and Mary Dunt
• 1851-1853 Fanny Ann Martineau William Smith
• 1853-1857 James Smith Mr Bush
• 1857-1890 Henry Blake Miller Unknown
• 1890-1908 Executors of Henry Blake Miller John Harrison 1905-9
• 1908-1928 Sir Charles Harvey Thomas Cobb 1921-30
• 1928-1929 Oliver Charles Harvey Thomas Cobb
• 1929-1930 Fred Fisher Thomas Cobb
• 1930-1939 Charles Henry Page Owner occupied
• 1939-1949 Ada Louise Page ( widow ) Owner occupied
• 1949-1951 Ada Louise Page Harry R F Page ( son )
• 1951-1953 Executors of Ada Louise Page Harry R F Page
• 1953-1971 Harry Raymond Fountain Page Owner occupied
• 1971-1972 David Langridge and Joan Beryl Langridge Vacant
• 1972-1975 John Richard Browne Cave Owner occupied
• 1975-2014 Ben and Ros Goodfellow and Joan Kathleen Muskett Owner occupied
• 2014- Benjamin Robert and Rosalind Mary Goodfellow Owner occupied