9 Broad Street
This was an old house – a very old house that extended a long way back from the gabled end we can see in the old pictures taken from the street. Sadly, the images we have are generally only partial but looking at the image of the fireplace mid demolition with two men sitting in it but either side of a smaller and later infill, we can get some idea of the grandeur of the place. Again, interpretation but this fireplace looks to have been added to the end of the building at some point, either replacing a smoke hood or a central hearth that would have just allowed the smoke to trickle out of vents in the thatched roof. and would have rivalled the one that still stands in the former kitchen and now main bar of The Swan Hotel.
Whilst Muskett’s had been, in its day, a renowned institution and money had obviously been spent on the attractive shop frontage, it may well have been that the single gentleman who rattled around inside this large building for decades with only a few assistants and servants to help fill the rooms may have lost interest in the structure and let it decay somewhat. This, combined with a less sentimental attitude to buildings that had outlived their usefulness, and the need for a splendid new bank sealed the fate of a building which, had it remained, would have been an impressive entry point into the town with its pan tiles (that would have replaced the original thatched roof), ornate bargeboards and pre Victorian style shop front.
In the early 20th Century the building was demolished to make way for a temple to commercialism – the London & Provincial Bank. Within a decade that was doubled in size; today we have no banks in the town at all merely a rota of banking agents in a former shop front!
We don’t know who was there before James Muskett the Fressingfield born chemist who appeared there in the 1838 tithe map – although he was advertising from 1830, but I think we can safely assume he would have shared his home with a number of assistants – indeed in the 1841 census James has a 17 years old assistant Charles Muskett, his assumed mother Eliza Muskett (40) and a housekeeper in residence – still a lot of house for just a few people! According to a web site entry James was one of 8 children born to William Muskett (originally of Tivetshall) and his Fressingfield born wife. In spite (or perhaps because of) being from a large family James never married nor had children – instead dedicating his life to his business.
By 1851 it was just 53 years old James, an assistant and two servants – one an older housekeeper the other a young general servant. This was a pattern that continued for the next 30 odd years – Susan Self who appears in 1871, was still there in 1881 by which time James Muskett, the chemist, was 83. He actually survived to the age of 88 – probably working (or at least supervising) until the end!
His work extended beyond pills and potions (which he would have mixed up and prepared himself) and included animal cures, ginger beer powders and remedies for ailing farm stock! He would also have been an agent for various proprietary medicines such as Widow Welch’s Female Pills which seem to have had several purposes. With a hefty dose of Iron (and laxative to cancel the binding effects) in small quantities they were believed to be a form of tonic, in large quantities they had the double purpose of terminating inconvenient pregnancies – although this was rather unreliable. Dealing as he would have done, with those too poor to afford a doctor, Muskett would have been a rung or two below the local Doctors, Lawyers and Clerics – treated in this very hierarchical society as being on a par with any other respectable tradesman. He also, as an educated and literate man, became executor for other local men of similar standing – for instance in 1855 he was showing the Jays Green Mill following the death of the then owner, Thomas Barber.
Muskett’s was so renowned locally that 50 years after the building was demolished, the local chemists was still selling medicines to his recipe!
In 1891 a H(enry) G(eorge) Mumbray was running the shop – living by himself and choosing to retain the branding of Musketts presumably due to the high reputation of James? As a young man, in London in 1842, Mumbray had a handkerchief worth 7d stolen from him by a labourer, the labourer was transported for 10 years – either a very harsh sentence or a chap who had ‘previous’? Mumbray came originally from Dover and would have been in his late 60s when he took over the business. He was one of two brothers who had taken up the trade – in fact in 1851 when he was 30 he was working as an assistant for his slightly older brother in Manchester.
He had struck out for himself by 1861 – on Sun Terrace off Gt Cheetham St. This terrace was named for the Sun pub that stood on the corner and would have then been newly built. It seems he had a mixed career, either going bust and selling his Manchester business in 1879 for £170, or raising a mortgage against the business for that amount – tricky to tell. Two years later, in 1881 he and his wife Rebecca plus child seemed to have bounced back – one can only wonder what brought him to Harleston, he had left his wife behind in a small house in the suburbs of Manchester! Perhaps the plan was to later move his wife down to the relative peace and quite of this bustling Norfolk town – whatever his plans, they were to come to nought as later on in 1891, Henry Mumbray died and was buried in Manchester – the shop was demolished about 15 years later.