The first house I ever researched (no murders here, that I know of)

My journey to becoming a House Historian or Historian of Home had many starting points, many roots (see my last post). But the first house I ever did any research on/into has been inspirational in a number of ways, and left a permanent mark on me.

After I left school (where I didn't study History at GCSE or A-Level) I began researching my family tree including my grandfather's father Wilfred Gurney Balls Neale (fantastic name, eh?) who was born in a house that his parents, his father's parents, and his father's mother's parents (William and Sarah Balls) had lived in, and possibly further generations before them. The Neales and Balls were all rural tenant farmers, "ag-labs", sheep-dippers and well-sinkers. According to various censuses, trade directories, voter registers, tithe and OS maps, the building was called "Peewit", sometimes "Peewit Farm" or "Peewit Hall", and it was near Balls' Lane (named for the family) between the villages of Thursford and Great Snoring in Norfolk. But modern maps and aerial images showed no building or access road, and my Granddad (born in the 1930s) didn't know what had happened to it.

A couple of trips to Norfolk Record Office and a few excursions into the countryside and I found what remained of Peewit. It had been a vernacular flint (or bungaroosh) and brick building, the materials of which had largely been removed and likely recycled when it was demolished around the middle to second half of the twentieth century. I found a small piece of flint and mortar and took it to my Granddad, and he was very pleased to have a piece of the building his father was born in and where generations of Neales had lived.

Masonry at site of 'Peewit', photo by Alexa H.L. Neale, 2010.

The building was likely called Peewit after the birds that inhabit the area, so called colloquially because of their call (which sounds like "pee-wit"), they are more properly called Lapwings. I heard some of them when I visited there, they're really beautiful birds. In honour of my ancestor's house, I had a peewit tattoo made in 2010 by Ollie Jerrold at Hope and Glory Tattoo in Swaffham (since moved to Bury St Edmunds), less than 20 miles from the site of the house called Peewit.

Peewit tattoo by Oliver Jerrold, Hope & Glory Tattoo, 2010. Photo by Alexa H.L. Neale.

When the building existed, it was right up against the river Stiffkey (locally pronounced "stookey"), which at this point resembles less of a river and more of a brook of barely a few feet deep. Having read and researched some nineteenth and twentieth century domestic archaeology, I believe that it was common practice for householders to throw broken domestic objects (plates, cups, glass etc.) onto the garden, or into the privy in the garden/yard. A chat with Alastair Owens, and an article he wrote with Nigel Jeffries, Karen Wehner and Rupert Featherby confirmed this for me. The article offers an academic perspective on what discarded household objects might be able to tell us about the everyday lives of owners/inhabitants.

The place that residents discarded broken household crockery at Peewit would have likely bordered the river, and pieces of household detritus drifted down onto the banks. I believe that in the years since the building was dismantled, the landowners have dredged or deepened the river, dug out the loose mud at the bottom and sides, probably in order to deepen the water and prevent the field on the other side to the former house from flooding (it's very marshy, down-slope from a crop-field, and almost certainly a floodplain). The material from the river has then been thrown up the banks, some of it into the floor of the former building, what remains of the walls and foundations providing a useful stop to the re-drifting of the material back down the banks. This explains why the floor and foundations are still there, but are covered by a thick layer of china- and glass- flecked mud, in which now grows a huge tangled bush of nettles, brambles, wild shrubs and small trees. It no longer resembles a house or farm but a really massive, seemingly-impenetrable bush. On one visit I crawled around in here and found little broken pieces of painted and glazed porcelain - fragments of cups, saucers and plates that my ancestors owned and used in the past.

It's my intention to eventually set some of these little pieces of history in metal to make some jewellery. I'm learning to make jewellery in metal at evening classes in Brighton, taught by local jewellery designer and maker Jo McDonald. She makes porcelain into beautiful and unique jewellery for her own collections.

I now collect things with Peewits/Lapwings on (brooches, prints, bags). By coincidence, my favourite yarn-manufacturer, Rowan, have a range of fine sock yarns named for different birds. My favourite colour, green, is named 'Lapwing' so of course I had to buy it for my collection of Peewit things. I'm teaching myself to knit socks at the moment, and planning a pair for myself for the winter in 'Lapwing'.

As you can see, I find Histories of Home inspiring in lots of different ways - academically, intellectually, creatively - jewellery, tattoos, knitting, all sorts! I'm sure there's something to be written here about senses of place and the past, about material culture, identity, historians with tattoos, and remembering my family's past... But for now, watch this space for my historical jewellery and Peewit socks...