Phyllis and
Thomas Goodey lived at Crossways on the corner of Norwich
Road and Lovers Lane in Ludham in the late1930s and during
World War 2. They were prolific letter writers and wrote
to their daughter almost every day. We are not sure how,
but these letters came into the possession of The Ludham
Society probably during the 1970s.
The Chairman of the Ludham Society was Martin Walton and
the letters stayed in a box at his house until 2024 when
the Ludham Archive Group were given the chance to copy and
transcribe the letters.
Typical letters from the collection.
Written on low quality or re-used paper, often in green
ink.
The letters are full of information about the general day
to day lives of the Goodeys. They chart the difficult
times in wartime Ludham Village in fascinating detail
covering the events in matter of fact style. We felt we
had to preserve the letters.
Nigel photographed all the letters so that they did not
deteriorate any more and then Bron and Kathy set about the
task of transcribing them. Paper was hard to come by in
wartime Ludham and many of the letters are written on very
thin and poor quality paper. Some are on headed paper from
the Goodey's former home in Welling, Kent. They are all
difficult to read and Bron and Kathy have worked really
hard to transcribe them. Inevitably, there are bits that
can't be read and some had missing pages, but mostly they
were able to work out what the letters said. They make
fascinating reading.
You can now read the letters for yourself. Just click on
the year and month below to download the letters. Please
note that the ones listed below are the only ones we have.
We realise that this is not the easiest of reads, so in
2024, Bron gave a presentation to the Ludham Archive Group
picking out some of the highlights. You can watch this
presentation by clicking on the video below.
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