Site contents © Copyright Michael Crouch, 2000. |
Site contents © Copyright Michael Crouch, 2000. |
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The Fulcher Family Norfolk Ludham is a small village near Potter Heigham in Norfolk not far from the coast. It is situated near rivers and marshland close by the now environmentally-protected areas of How Hill and Reedham Marshes. In the 1800's, much of the land was undergoing enclosure; those with small plots of land or little income were forced to sell up to the bigger landowners. In Ludham, much of the land was owned by the church. There were about twenty farms in 1800 and agriculture had long been the village's primary source of income. By 1851, Ludham's population reached a peak of 981. In "Ludham: A Norfolk Village 1800-1900" by Jean M. Snelling, the author describes the village as it was in 1842. She notes that "there were workshops and sheds oposite Staithe House, where James Fulcher, carpenter and wheelwright worked. Today, all have vanished ... Then came the Town House Row, owned by James Fulcher. These six dwellings once housed the village poor and had first been sold into private hands in 1790." James Fulcher was 73 years old and living with his second wife, Sarah, 63. His first wife, Hannah Turner had died earlier. James and Sarah were living with his and Hannah's grandchildren, Sarah Ellen, 10, and Matilda, 8. Although there are several other Fulchers in the village at the time, none are the parents of the grandchildren. It is known from a marriage certificate for the father, James, that he too was a carpenter, married to Rebecca. A search of other records shows that Rebecca had died a few years earlier in 1845, less than one month after the death of another child, their infant son, James. Rebecca's husband, James, turns up in the 1851 Census Returns as a patient of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. He died in the latter half of 1851 aged 33 years. Tragically, less than a year after the returns of 1851, Sarah Ellen's sister, Matilda, also died aged only 10. By the end of 1853, Sarah Ellen Fulcher, at age 12, was the last surviving member of her family. In 1868 she was living in Deal, Kent and it was there that she married a young Royal Marine conscript from Yorkshire named Samuel Robinson Jefferson. |
