Another of those deceptive buildings in Harleston, the front corner of this building is a rare and classic mid Victorian butcher’s shop. 

The fixed canopy to keep sun off the meat remains although the hanging rails for displaying meat below have gone.  These, along with the side shutter type windows, the marble slabs and the ventilating fly screen in the door are superb examples of how a butcher’s shop of this period operated although the payment kiosk in the rear section was probably a later insertion when handling both meat and money was frowned upon!

However, that is from a later period. When originally built some 500 years ago, the building would have been very different. If you peer through the front window you can see an old timber frame to the rear – this was most likely the back wall of a barn (although a little unlikely as barns tended to be built more to the rear of plots) stretching back up what is now Bullock Fair Close and was at a higher level than the modern shop floor. With the accretions of the years and limited access the exact evolution of this building is tricky to fathom – the above is one version of how it might have looked, the main sheet shows another version!

Fireplaces and chimney stacks were inserted at various stages; the main building was almost certainly built with lath and plaster within a timber frame, slightly clumsy brick infil can also be seen in the timber frame when peering through the front windows – this was, I think, the original back wall? 

We are lucky to have a 1777 map that the local schoolmaster and gifted mathematician Henry Tilney executed for Kerrich, local brewer and owner of the Cap.  At that time the upper half of the plot behind the butcher’s and its neighbour, the ancient house, was known as Malthouse yard, belonged to Kerrich and had very little in it other than some sort of barn structure in the top left hand corner – roughly where No 11 Bullock Fair stands to day.  The lower half of the rear Yard was used by Verdon Smith – a blacksmith whose son and namesake continued to work from there until the mid 19thC appearing in several censuses) and Godbold/Godbolt.

The tithe map of1838 shows that the Ancient House and the corner building were owned by John Bloomfeild whilst a John Gobbett was a bricklayer living in one of the three small tenements facing Bullock Fair.  This John Gobbett might have been the now elderly Jonathan Godbolt busily marrying off his daughter in 1830, unusual for a tradesman to be granted the title of Mr though!

John was literate, his wife was not as evidenced in the register of their marriage

His son and semi namesake suffered a terrible tragedy in May 1834 when a cart ran away with 3 of his children on board.  The child killed was his oldest son,  his own John Junior whose death, aged only 4 , was recorded in the Parish Register.

The 1841 census shows John Snr in Bullock fair Close with wife and 5 children including 14 years old twin sons – plus a slightly random 1 year old with a different surname to the rest of the family – a grandchild perhaps?

The 1838 tithe map reveals that, both the Ancient house and the corner shop were both owned by John Bloomfield Tailor- he occupied the Ancient House whilst Charles Watson was on the corner.  This is where we can possibly fly a bit of a kite – looking at the ancient house (aka Jackamans) it is plain that the detailed carving over the door continued over the bay window inserted in the 19^th C. Could it be that originally Jackaman’s and, what is now, the shop on the corner were in fact all one single large hall fronting a burgess plot? Charles Candler also states that behind the Ancient House, once known as the Brimstone Tenements, there had been the old Church School Room, reached by an outside staricase. One could only know for sure if one tiptoed up into the loft – the 19thC alterations to the butcher’s shop would very effectively mask any evidence of these two premises having originally been one. By 1838, the three dwellings we see today along Bullock Fair Close were already occupied by three discrete households – if this rear wing had started as a barn conversion it was a long standing one!

Butchers’ shops appear here in numerous censuses, sometime between 1851 and 1861 (judging by the children’s birth places. 1852 – 1854) the Bryenton family appeared on this corner next to the Bloomfields in the ancient house.  George Bryenton’s young widow carried on the business whilst raising 5 children following his death in 1863. 

Henrietta and some of the family stayed in town but ambitious son Ishmael wound up in New Zealand dyng there suddenly in 1895.  He was one of many sons and daughters of Harleston who set off for new lives in the colonies or the states in the Victorian era. Henrietta kept the business going until 1886 when Frederick Miles took it over.  As he was only about 20 at the time I suspect his father, a well to do local farmer may have been, at the very least, keeping a close eye on his investment. We don’t know for sure who put up the canopy as we see it today but I would suspect it was during the time that Miles was in charge here.  The 1891 census shows that by then the Mothersoles – watchmakers had moved inot the Ancient House, this is confirmed by Charles Candler’s fascinating history of the town of Harleston.  Still a young man, only 24 years old in the 1891 census, unmarried Frederick was supported by a housekeeper and two assistants.

 In 1898 Miles was diversifying, renting land out in Wortwell – we know this as he prosecuted a local poacher! In 1900 Miles was given a hefty fine for not having his child vaccinated (I am guessing Ida aged 2 in 1901) – presumably against the small pox? Young Ida was to be their only child. I am afraid that in 1901 Miles was fined for driving without lights – almost certainly a delivery cart not a car as we would imagine today.

Also in 1901, Miles was in the Bankruptcy Court.  This seems to have been the time he finally and totally gave up the butchers shop, moved into farming full time. 2 years later he was again in trouble due to having messed up his paperwork when moving pigs – 13 of them. He finally moved from Wortwell, his home village, to Palgrave where he became a cattle dealer. 

Miles might have gone slighly off the rails having been fined £1 14s in total for assualting a railway porter and using offensive language at Diss – I wonder if strong drink had been taken? Miles died in 1918, aged just 51.

This old image of the butcher’s show it being run by the Outlaws, Pulham based butchers – at this time it seems that the corner was no longer being lived in. 

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