Locally known as the Old Bank House, don’t be mis-led by the Georgian exterior – this house is old, very old!  There are records going back to 1573 that name this as Perosies, an unusual name for a very old Inn.  Later it became the Half Moon and was used as one of the several meeting places in the 17^th C for the town churchwardens in the time before there were council offices.

A large building at some point it was divided into two halves, but in 1838 it was still a very large and impressive single structure owned by the East of England Bank and lived in by William Cann.  This was before the Church was built, instead the bank, with its own impressive grounds abutted a most impressive house that was demolished to make way for the Church.  George Hall, whose entrance is now down the side of this house, was not to be built for another 80 years. The three small garden bays that still exist to the front were clearly marked on the 1838 map. There is on the side of the house abutting the lane up to George Hall and impressive, if brutally cut off piece of carved timber.  Is that original or a later addition or transplantation? Such ornate work was normally reserved for the front of a building. There is also a half chopped off piece of relief work to the side of the right hand doorway – again, is this original or a later addition, what does it represent?  All questions as yet unsolved!

William Cann, bank manager reappears in the 1841 census with his wife, two children and two servants.  His 20 year old son, William Jnr was working as a wine merchant, a career he was still pursuing 10 years later but in his own nearby premises. It maybe that in the few years between 1838 and 1841, the property had been divided with elderly Pleasance Hambling, a well to do widow living in the left hand side.

By 1851, William Cann’s neighbour in the smaller left had side seems to have been Charlotte Thirkettle – a lady who had inherited land from her husband, a successful carpenter. As mentioned above William Jnr was nearby – in an area called Bank Plain, neighboured by Simpson Backhouse another bank manager who originated from Cumbria!  It is actually quite a challenge to keep track of the ever changing place names in Harleston

Th 1861 makes things no clearer – William Cann’s bank had morphed into the Hudson and Harvey Bank – there is a very complicated family tree of regional banks which would only be of interest to the specialist!  This census indicates that this bank was actually on the Thoroughfare but since this does not tie in with other entries I believe this to be an error on behalf of the census taker. It is quite possible that the East of England Bank, now represented by William Fox (also county court solicitor) was sharing premises with the Hudson and Harvey Bank. Embarrassingly, when William Cann Jnr went into Bankruptcy in 1857, it was Fox who dealt with his affairs.

By 1871 the house had reverted to private occupation, in two halves with a shiny new bank, Gurneys, up on the corner of Old Market Place and Exchange Street, having been in town since 1865. The building continued to have a variety of occupants, all making their own alterations and additions to what had originally been a large rectangular structure and now sports a number of extensions of various eras – all part of the evolution of a property.  It was still very much in the minds of the residents as being a bank and when, in 1872, a protester objecting to the new restricted pub opening hours set of a minor explosion opposite the new church, a number of the old Bank windows were broken. When, for some years in the late 1870s it was a private girls’ school run by the Misses Durrant, I strongly suspect the girls would have been housed in the upstairs attics! This was a short lived enterprise and by 1880 this grand old building became a true house of Multiple Occupation. During ww2 a number of short term tenants drifted through although the Lushers, parents of WW2 casualty Noel (who married the daughter of the landlord of the Magpie) remained until the death of his father, William, in 1952, aged 80.