A Norfolk Wedding by Janie Hampton

The Norfolk wedding of Rachel Gurney & Rosslyn Bruce, 1908

Just one hundred and ten years ago this month my grandmother, Rachel Gurney married Rosslyn Bruce at Northrepps in Norfolk. Rachel, aged 21, was the oldest daughter of untitled landed gentry, and Rosslyn, 37, the 7th child of a poor but well-connected vicar. Both of them were descended from 11th Century Norman invaders. They met after Rosslyn, the rector of a Nottingham parish, broke his leg out fox-hunting and was sent by his best friend, a socialist MP called Noel Buxton, to convalesce with Buxton’s cousins, the Gurneys of Northrepps.
Rosslyn and Rachel fell in love. But it was not always easy. When Rachel’s nerves became frayed during their wedding preparations, she wrote to Rosslyn, ‘You Bruces are quite unordinary in your huge amount of love. I have got mine in me, only I can’t show it like you do.’ Rosslyn replied offering ‘double thoughtfulness, in thoughtful devotion, in not being too outwardly devoted.’ Rachel replied, ‘You don’t understand a bit… because you haven’t always lived in the same house with the same mother all your life and you are not very young like me, and you know all about the great world and I don’t.’ 

The bridal carriage was pulled by two new horses called
Bryant & May - because they were such a good match.

As Rachel and her brother Quintin trotted in the family carriage and pair through the village festooned with bunting, Quintin asked her, ‘I suppose you know the facts of life? Because I don’t.’

The year was 1908 and the Eastern Daily Press reported: ‘Never before had the inhabitants seen so large a number of such beautifully appointed and powerful motor cars. Within the church, the pulpit was treated with chrysanthemums.’ 

'Miss Gurney's wedding, bridesmaids, page's and travelling costumes' in The Queen

Rachel’s wedding dress of white, silk satin was described by her mother Evelyn in the Parish Magazine: ‘made en princesse, with a Court train of satin, it was lined with masses of chiffon. Over a myrtle wreath was a veil of lovely old Brussells lace, which had been worn by her mother and grandmother. She carried a choice bouquet of lilies, carnations and stephanotis.’ Her seven adult bridesmaids, all sisters or cousins, wore huge hats swathed with tulle and their trailing bouquets were attached to shepherd’s crooks. The two page boys wore scarlet woolen Peter Pan suits, in homage to Rosslyn’s friend, James Barrie. Rosslyn’s uncle who was a Bishop, aided by three other related parsons, took the service. The 14th century flint church was packed.

The bridal party (the groom still limping) left the church under a crimson striped awning. Evelyn conveyed the scene: ‘Brilliantly coloured beech leaves were showered upon the bride from baskets carried by children of the Sunday school’ in new scarlet woolen cloaks. ‘Meantime the wedding bells were firing away and ringing a merry peal.’ An arch of evergreen had been erected over the road bearing the mottoes ‘Health and Happiness to the Bride and Bridegroom’ and ‘God Bless You Both’. At the entrance gate to the bride’s home, Northrepps Hall, was another one reading ‘Joy and Happiness to Both’ and 'Success to Bride and Bridegroom'. 

The evergreen arch leading to the bride's home, Northrepps Hall.

After a reception in a marquee in the walled garden, the couple left for a five-week honeymoon in Italy. Thomas Cook’s first-class train tickets to Lugano cost £30 for two.
A few days later the villagers were invited to tea in the marquee to look at the presents. They included a silver tea pot from the parish committee, a travelling clock from the church choir and silver sugar tongs from the Sunday school. Rosslyn gave Rachel an upright Bechstein piano; she gave him a watch and a shooting stick. Rachel’s mother gave her a trousseau costing £404 and 2 shillings, which included three riding habits, six pairs of hunting boots, and enough serge suits, cloaks, combinations (knickers) and flannel nightgowns to last her entire life. Mrs Carter, the coachman’s wife was paid a pound for marking bodices, linen and 96 pairs of stockings. I inherited one of the dozen hand-embroidered white lawn night-gowns and wore it while ‘lying-in’ after the birth of my babies.
As a child, I watched my granny gardening in one of the Sunday School’s scarlet woolen cloaks. Beside her front door was a myrtle bush grown from her wreath, which she claimed came from the bush at Osborne House grown from Queen Victoria’s wedding wreath.

Rachel's satin wedding shoes and gloves, on the Sunday School cloak.

Just 63 years later I was married in the same Norfolk church; and two months after that Rachel’s funeral was held there too. At both events, the packed congregation included three of Rachel’s bridesmaids, and we all sang ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’.

The completed Bruce family at Northrepps in 1920.
Verily, Erroll, Rhalou, Lorema and Merlin.

www.janiehampton.co.uk

A visit to Ely by Adèle Geras

On September 3rd, a sunny Saturday, we went off to see Ely Cathedral and to take in the other glories of the city: Topping's Bookshop, and the Almonry Restaurant, where we had an idyllic cream tea with good friends in the shadow of one of the most beautiful buildings in the country - maybe even in the world.



I've been fond of Ely Cathedral for a very long time. "Tom's Midnight Garden" by Philippa Pearce is one of my favourite children's books. There's a lot about Ely Cathedral in that and though we didn't manage to climb all those stairs to the top of the tower on this occasion, I intend to do so next time. Also, Ely is the cathedral in the Roth Novels of Andrew Taylor, which I admire enormously. These are called THE FOUR LAST THINGS, THE JUDGEMENT OF STRANGERS and REQUIEM FOR AN ANGEL and I recommend them unreservedly.

We were lucky on the day we went. It happened to be the wedding day of Mark and Joanna, and though part of the nave (choir stalls, etc) was out of bounds, we had the benefit of the organ playing marvellous music, the sun streaming through the doors and lighting up the whole cathedral and hearing Mark and Joanna exchanging their vows, as well as what the presiding clergyman was saying to them about Etheldreda, who founded the Cathedral. The Cathedral website is full of information about its history.



Her story is fascinating. She wasn't actually very sold on marriage. She ran away from her first husband, and the marriage was unconsummated. She took shelter on the Isle of Ely and founded an Abbey. You can read all about her (and it's fascinating!) on the Early British Kingdoms website.

Cathedrals, as well as being grand and imposing buildings, built to glorify God and enthrall and awe a public that couldn't read and didn't have television (I'm not being frivolous here. The stained glass windows are a sort of permanent display of highly-coloured and exciting images and very beautiful they are too) also have small corners where eccentric things can be found. This, in one of the very oldest parts of the building caught my eye:



Something else caught my eye also, and I think is going to be an inspiration for some kind of story. Etheldreda famously embroidered vestments for St Cuthbert of whom she was very fond, and on a wall right by the Cathedral Shop there's this banner, showing the Saint, which is carried in processions:



Anyone who's read my work knows that I'm a sucker for handicrafts of any kind but best of all was this. I'm putting it up even though it's illegible what with the glare and the size of the print but you must take my word for it, that what it says is that the banner was embroidered by MISS YARNS ....yes! Can you credit it? She did the work in Bayswater in 1910 and I'm busy imagining what sort of person she must have been...watch this space.



After leaving the Cathedral and before going for our tea and scones, we visited Topping's of Ely. This bookshop is a treasure house and a model of what a bookshop ought to be. It was founded by Robert Topping (ex-Manchester Waterstone's Deansgate branch)and I'll be returning to it often, I hope. Anyone who's around this area (or in Bath where there's another shop) should definitely drop in.

What struck me, thinking later on about all I'd seen was this: various strands of my own history were woven together here. One of the friends we met for tea I've known since I was 18 years old and that's half a century. The bookshop took me back to my days in Manchester and seeing Robert Jones behind the counter was very nostalgic. Books set in Ely took me back, not only to the places they described but also to where I was when I read them....and so on. Everything seemed linked in very ordinary but still amazing ways and I saw all sorts of connections between things that I'd never seen before.

To finish with, here's a picture of me. This is what I looked like in Ely on a sunny Saturday in September.