Reepham Life

By Janet Archer

We assume that the Reepham Life 2022 Calendar picture for January (below) was taken in Gibbs’ yard, now known as Merchants Yard.

One of the men in the cart is Stanley Watson, younger son of Frederick Watson, licensee of the Sun Inn in the early 1900s. The photograph below shows Stanley on Gibbs’ cart driving up Ollands Road.

Stanley was apprenticed to Gibbs’ ironmongery business by the time he was 16 and worked for the Gibbs family for many years.

His older brother Clifford became licensee of the Sun Inn in 1922 and in the same year Stanley married Grace Fanny Dewing at St Mary, Aldborough.

Her father had grown up in Reepham Moor and was a younger brother of Martin Luther Dewing.

Grace, before her marriage to Stanley, had already begun teaching at Hackford and Whitwell Primary School.

Wesley Piercy remembers that, in the 1930s Grace was teaching the pupils of Standards 1 and 2.

After Stanley’s death in 1930 Grace continued teaching and four years later married Walter Lawn, also a teacher.

The 1939 register shows they were living in Reepham and working for Norfolk County Council.

Walter is registered as a head schoolmaster, but this would not have been at Hackford and Whitwell Primary School since Chute Thompson was still the head at that time.

Both Grace and Walter served as ARP wardens during the Second World War, and both were active in the Reepham detachment of the British Red Cross.

The photograph below from 1966 shows them with Ben Stimpson and Mr and Mrs Harold Rump loading boxes ready for a meals on wheels delivery. Can anyone identify the people in this photo (from left to right)? Please email the Archive.

The Reepham Archive is open to the public on the first Wednesday and Saturday of the month from 10 am – 12 noon (or by appointment), upstairs in the Bircham Centre, Market Place, Reepham. For more information about opening times and current services, please email

By Janet Archer

The December photograph in the Reepham Life Calendar 2021 shows the performers from the Sunday school in a nativity play held in St Mary’s in the 1950s, which includes Mrs McCubbin, the then vicar's wife, in the centre.

An additional photograph (below) shows a more formal, smaller group on the same occasion. Identification of some of the individuals can be found on the Reepham Archive website.

Sunday schools began to be established in the 18th century to provide basic lessons in literacy, as well as religious instruction for children who were often working alongside their parents on six days a week.

Robert Raikes, a Gloucester journal editor, is credited with establishing a successful Sunday school for poor and orphaned children in July 1780. As word of his work spread, Sunday schools soon appeared in other communities throughout England.

In Reepham in the 1920s every denomination ran a Sunday school: St Mary’s and St Michael’s, Wesleyan, Primitive and United Methodist, the Salvation Army and the Plymouth Brethren. Even parents who did not attend church thought that their children should attend Sunday school.

The Wesleyan Methodist Church had its own purpose-built schoolroom, which was added in 1904. Lessons were held prior to the Sunday morning church service where the children would join later with the adult congregation, followed by another session in the afternoon.

There would usually be a summer treat, possibly to the seaside, and a Christmas treat. Another important event was the Sunday School Anniversary where the children would give recitations and songs and be presented with prizes for good attendance.

In Wesley Piercy’s time in the 1920s the Sunday School Anniversary was in July. “A platform was erected in the chapel, on which sat all the Sunday school scholars and teachers and the choir. All the children had to give a recitation; no recitation, no treat. These were some of the biggest occasions of the year. All three chapels followed a similar pattern and were always packed on these occasions, when ladies could show off their new hats.”

The Reepham Archive is open to the public on the first Wednesday and Saturday of the month from 10 am – 12 noon (or by appointment), upstairs in the Bircham Centre, Market Place, Reepham. For more information about opening times and current services, please email

The Reepham Archive has in its collection this photograph of an unknown man with a walking stick.

Does anyone have any information about who he is and when and where the photo was taken? Please send an email

By Janet Archer

Bertie Alfred Woods was born in 1894 to Samuel Woods and Lydia Elizabeth Seaman. The family lived in Barn Cottage and there were at least 14 children, most of whom went to Salle School.

Bertie first attended school in 1899: “Admitted Bertie Woods this week. He is over five years old and can do nothing.”

In January 1900, Bertie and two of his sisters, Kate and Ethel, are reported as absent with whooping cough but they apparently had not been to school since the previous August. March 23rd brings the comment that Bertie and Ethel are away again.

At the end of 1891 Mary Jane Lomax had taken over the position of mistress at Salle School. Her first tasks recorded in the logbook were ruling two dozen slates and drawing up a new timetable.

She lived in the school house and stayed at Salle School until the end of 1903, so it is probably Mary Lomax who appears in this school photograph (below) from 1900, and she will have written the above comment about Bertie.

Most entries in the Salle and Reepham logbooks are mundane: daily records of attendance, closures due to sickness or seaside treats, and visits from school managers and inspectors. So, the following incident is unusual.

From 1903 the schoolmistress was Minnie Elizabeth Druitt, and she recorded the following in the logbook in 1906. (By this time Bertie is now about 12 years old and probably keen to leave school and some of his absences may have been to earn extra money for his family.)

“Am sorry to say that Bertie Woods who is the most indolent boy in the school is also very spiteful (going home) to young children and girls. Wrote a note to his parents but only received a rude answer.”

When he next came to school the mistress asked him to write an apology on his slate.

His mother came the following day and said he should sooner leave than write it. Accordingly, she took him out of school and the mistress marked him left.

Both Bertie and his brother Jesse left Salle School and instead went to Reepham School (St Mary’s on Norwich Road) where Richard Cornall was the master.

When the First World War began Bertie enlisted in the 5th Norfolks at Dereham. Later he served with the Worcestershire Regiment.

He is recorded as having died of wounds, age 23, in August 1917 and was buried in Mendinghem Military Cemetery, Belgium.

His name is remembered on the memorial inside Salle Church, and he has a memorial with his mother and father in Salle churchyard.

Information from National School Admission Registers & Log-Books, 1870-1914, @findmypast.co.uk; military Information from ancestry.co.uk

The Reepham Archive is open to the public on the first Wednesday and Saturday of the month from 10 am – 12 noon (or by appointment), upstairs in the Bircham Centre, Market Place, Reepham. For more information about opening times and current services, please email