Steve discussed the origins of the name, Bob Hall’s Sand which has been a topic of conversation for many years amongst WLHG members. Steve provided an update on it’s possible origins. Recent unrelated research has uncovered compelling circumstantial evidence about the identity and life of a local 18th century mariner, Robert Hall. The short was…

Andrew returned to the Society to talk about Norfolk’s windmills and watermills, and the stories associated with some of the machines and people that ran them.

John explained that throughout the time of pilgrimage, Walsingham was a small village on the east bank of the river Stiffkey, stretching south from the church.  In the meantime, pressure of pilgrimage caused the priory administering the Holy House to grow on the west bank.  In the middle of the 16th century, the village expanded…

Jeremy showed a film telling the story of the troubled life of the Victorian benefactor, Sir Alfred Jodrell, whose generosity helped restore many North Norfolk churches and gave us the cabinet of curiosities that is the Glandford Shell Museum. Using contemporary newspaper accounts and personal letters, as well as the ledger of Jodrell’s Bayfield Estate,…

Women are an integral part of social history. WLHG member, Maureen Dye, explored and views the lives of women living in Wells 100 years ago. Social status, standard of living, family and more were considered in this illustrated talk.

Author and social historian, Dale Wiseman BA, returned to the Maltings to present the life story of the last professional wherryman, Jack Cates, who skippered his own wherry as a 15-year-old teenager with his younger brother. Jack left the water in 1935, and during the second world war enlisted in the Royal Navy, when as…

Jim McNeill of the Stoke Ferry & District History Group gave an illustrated talk and led a discussion around the story of why conscription was thought necessary during the First World War and about those men who, often at great personal cost, chose imprisonment, solitary confinement, hard labour or alternative work rather than kill their…

Helen told us about the colourful Locker-Lampson family and the entertaining and illuminating history of the Newhaven Court, built in 1884 by the charismatic American baronet Sir Curtis Lampson and his daughter, Janie. The elegant Victorian mansion stood under the wide-open Norfolk skies for almost eighty years before its dramatic destruction by fire in 1963.Newhaven Court…

In 2017, Andrew set off on a quest to photograph every village sign in Norfolk. He returned over 500 signs later and has been researching the stories behind the images on them ever since. In his talk Andrew used a selection of the signs to chart the history of Norfolk, from the palaeolithic to the…

‘The story of life in the town at the turn of the century is told through the many varied and fascinating newspaper articles of the time,

Local historian and author of ‘Wells-next-the-Sea – The Long Last Century 1859 – 1999’, Roger Arguile, returns to talk about the fisherman of Wells and the fishing industry.