Kathie Jones
COLDHARBOUR FARMHOUSE
My husband and I moved to Coldharbour Farmhouse in 1969 with our two teenage daughters. The house was owned by Edward Seago and had, I gathered, been used to house his guests when he was entertaining. According to Charles Fielding Marsh’s presumably fictional story, Shelter, based on Coldharbour Farmhouse, it got its name from the local farm-workers who did indeed think of it as a harbour from the cold. Whether this is true, I’ve no idea but it’s a nice thought.
The drying barn opposite did not at that time exist and the silence and the views from the windows were wonderful. From the front bedroom windows, one could see the ruins of St Benet’s Abbey whilst from the side window one could watch the sails go along the river Thurne and see the two windmills farther along the river. On the marshes, cows, sheep and horses grazed at various times and in the fields, potatoes, sugar beet and corn were, and still are, rotated.
At the bottom of the yard, there was a large, very old sycamore tree which had done a very good job of spreading its seed and the garden was overrun with saplings of varying ages and wild cow parsley. One of my early memories was of the beautiful hedgerows and verges with particularly large specimens of red campion and stitchwort among other wild flowers. These have largely disappeared, with the exception of the cow parsley, due to the constant grass cutting and possibly, weed-killers although the poppies have now reappeared. Blackberries grew in abundance, as indeed they still do.
The lane was, at that time, bordered by substantial hedges but, to enable the farmers to grow more produce, these were severely uprooted. This had a dramatic effect when, in 1979 a gale blew after a heavy fall of snow. The snow from the fields piled up on the roadway completely cutting my family off from civilisation. A tractor attempted to get through in order to attend to the cows in the dairy, down by the river, but got stuck and further snowfalls completely covered it and there it had to stay until the thaw. We were able to send for supplies by tramping across the fields, only to find that the village of Ludham itself was cut off for the same reason and supplies were getting very low. When eventually the snow thawed and a tractor was able to get through, we stood at the gate and cheered as the driver waved majestically.
A rather alarming practice was usual in those days of burning the stubble in the autumn, after the corn was harvested and it really was quite frightening when you saw those massive flames slowly creeping nearer even though common sense told you that the farmers knew what were doing and were in control. You did, after all, occasionally hear tales about the Fire Brigade having to be called out when stubble-burning got out of control.
The coypus apparently were causing a great deal of damage to the river banks locally and one day we had a chat to the Coypu Catcher who was employed to eradicate them and he showed us one in his van, in a long cage in which it had been trapped. It was quite large with vicious-looking yellow teeth and although I felt sorry for it, I would not like to have met it in the open. They were supposed to have been successfully eradicated in 1987 – the last one being seen in 1989 – but I gather that they have been seen again recently. I can only presume that the odd one seen in 1989 had a wife and they have been busy ever since.
When Edward Seago died and various things happened. The field opposite the farmhouse was sold and the drying barn erected and at the same time, the barns behind the house were sold and converted into a residential house, Coldharbour Barn.
The date on the barn at the back is 1871 and I have seen the Census Register for that year and it shows that a Robert Dawson, his wife and grandchild were living in a house in Coldharbour Road and was a farmer of 56 acres - this entry was not on the previous Census Register in 1861. In 1881, a boarder is shown, James Moy, who is described as an indoor servant. However, by 1891, James Moy has married the grand-daughter and they have five children. The farmer is now aged 80 and his sister is also living with them.
