3-7 The Thoroughfare
The block of buildings adjacent to an old Hall House fronting on to the marketplace and standing on the footprint of what is now the left-hand side of the old bank, ran all the way to the edge of what we now know as Old Chapel Yard. It was named not for the Old Chapel that stood by the clocktower and was demolished in the 1870s but for a non-conformist chapel that once stood in the Yard. The building remains but has not been a chapel for many years. The Ironmongers that stands there today may be named Cooper’s but many of the older generation still refer to it as Denny’s!
This building is believed to be 17th C, the brick frontage arrived in the early 20thC as the whole area was redeveloped, and it was probably around this same time that the balustered parapet was added. This parapet did not last long – probably being replaced by the existing plain brick parapet that exists today when the bank was further extended. The pan tiled roof normal to the town that we see today is another to be a later addition – I suspect the rather attractive dormer windows were removed when the roof was redone leaving just a few glass tiles to allow light in. Would this have been in the early post WW1 period when the Dennys moved out of the old shop and back into private housing? The old chimney stack on the right-hand end of the building was long gone by then – the impressive stack abutting the new bank on the left had a slightly longer life
Running all the way back to 1763 a surgeon by the name of Collett (maybe the predecessor of the Pharmacists) let this block to Robert Poll, watchmaker to be replaced a short while later by William Brown a clockmaker – he was doing so well that within 10 years he expanded into Ironmongery with a partner William Colby and the 250 years (and counting) history of an ironmongers on this site was launched.
The partnership continued on – Brown and Clowe appear as the Ironmongers in an 1830 directory by which time John Brown was the Clock maker.
The Colbys and the Browns don’t seem to have inter-married however the Colbys and Dennys were closely linked – a William Denny married Hannah Colby in 1840 and Browns and Colby went to the same chapel in Wortwell in the 18thC.
In 1838, Jane Brown –wife of one of Wm Brown, one of the descendants of William Brown originally from Yoxford, was in the unusual situation (for a woman) of owning this block of what was then 3 separate households. Her son, Henry Brown had a house and shop on the left hand side, John Brown the smaller one in the middle and William Colby the one on the corner of the Yard. The 1841 census indicates that John Brown was a watchmaker and William Colby a hairdresser – this seems to have been a period in the history of these buildings when they were not primarily an ironmongers shop although since the Jonathan Rayner who also appears in this census somewhere in this block was claiming 10 years later to be an Ironmonger – I suspect the Ironmongery was then largely a sideline as unusually for this period, the Ironmongers seems to have been run with a series of managers – instead of the proprietor living over the shops and there is a very tangled mesh of Colbys and Dennys marrying each other.
Willam Denny Snr and his wife Hannah nee Colby had just one son, a late one, William Jnr, born in 1852, orphaned when his father died within days of his son’s birth, followed soon after by his wife Hannah. The orphaned lad was raised by his aunt and uncle, Jospeh and Elizabeth Colby – Ironmongers of Thetford. Widowed Sarah Brown (henry the Watchmaker’s relic) appeared here in the 1851 census, a widowed annuitant presumably living off the income from renting out the rest of her inherited property – this was in a 3 generation household with two of her daughters being a Milliner and Dressmaker and Straw Bonnet maker respectively. By 1861 the Ironmongers was in full swing with Israel Greenacre, Henry Jackson and Johnathan Rayner in two households, all working in the Ironmongers although there was no one living in the corner dwelling.
1871 is the first time the census actually reports the building as being an Ironmonger’s shop although Henry Jackson had been promoted, Greenacre had left and the now elderly (73) Jonathan Rayner was still at work too. Orphaned William Denny – a skinny 5ft tall chap had come over from Thetford to assist in the business, assisting Ann Denny nee Colby. Family legend is that her husband Edward was a lazy so and so ! The business was doing well as the ironmonger’s warehouse was also listed in the yard behind. In 1881 Edward Denny, tailor was on the corner along with a niece Edith Coleby – some sort of relative of the William Coleby, Hairdressers. We also find Edward’s son, George Denny, and Edward’s nephew William Denny in the house – both Ironmongers assistants. With the supervision of Ann and the dedication of William the business did well and cousin George took William into the business as a partner. Unfortunately, following her death, without the steadying hand of Ann, and with George being a notoriously heavy drinker, the business stumbled and William went back to Thetford. An unlucky man, by 1896, this puny but charming orphan had not only lost his stake in the business but his wife – and things got no better.
Back in Harleston, the formidable Mary Everson, wife of the very clubbable George finally took matters into her hands following her husbands premature death in 1903. The family moved back into the ancient building although they moved the shop to the right hand side of the range and had their accommodation moved to the left – this is after the hall house to the end of the range had been demolished and a bank erected instead. Within a few years, the bank extended to take in the Denny’s former dwelling are and the Denny’s moved in over the shop for Sydney and his son Moreton to continue a 4 generation line of Denny’s running the store. We are fortunate to have an image, even if slightly blemished, of the interior from the turn of the 19th into the 20th C.