Out of the Long Ago

by Maud Milgate

Culford

One June holiday I went to stay with Adelaide's brother Bert who now lived in a new bungalow at Barrow having moved from Ashfield Green where we had visited him on our first visit to Norfolk. This was Cornwallis country. The estate of little Saxham 2 miles away had been purchased by the 1st Marquis Cornwallis while he was Governor of India and Bert told me the owner of the land on which his bungalow was built had said she had a number of old Cornwallis documents which had come to her when she had bought the land. Unfortunately this lady had left the district before I came on the scene, so had no chance of seeing them.

As I needed the rest I did very little that holiday but sit in the garden or go for short walks along a Ridgeway or Peddars Way which was just above the bungalow The country around here lay high and I could see for miles across rolling cornfields to the Iveagh memorial on the skyline. This was on the Elvenden estate of Lord Iveagh. One way along this Ridgeway led to the village and the church, and the other way struck across country in the direction of Culford. I was told this was the path to the church used for funerals before the more modern road below had been thought of. Along this lonely Line with its wonderful view of fields and sky I took many a quiet stroll and I felt I never walked alone.

I had kept up a correspondence with Mrs. Storey at Culford since my first visit in September 1958 so I wrote and told her I was staying in Barrow. Her reply was to ask if I could visit her after church on Sunday evening and they would bring me in their car back to Barrow if I could manage to get to them. I had done nothing whatever but rest on this holiday, but I did want to see Mrs. Storev so I took a bus into Bury St. Edmunds which was much too early to go out to Culford so went to the Methodist Church for evensong, it being the nearest church to the bus station. It was a nice service and I saw Dr. Cristopher Storey's name on some of their literature. The Storeys were Methodists and Culford School had a Methodist Foundation I took a taxi and arrived at the Head master's Lodge at the arranged time of 8 p.m. This was after evensong in Culford Church which was used by the boys on Sunday evenings as their chapel. After church Mrs. Storey was free. With her many duties as headmasters wife she had little spare time. She showed me into her drawing room and left me while she went to make sandwiches I stood by the long windows and looked across the vast lawns and beautiful trees laid out by Humphrey Repton in Marquis Cornwallis' time and felt deeply moved to be there. The room was lovely. The fireplace was of pink marble with medallions of cameos cut in pastel shades of blue. A grand piano stood in a corner with the music of Mozart on the stand. On the walls were pictures of Old Culford Hall. Mrs. Storey's told me later these given her were photographic copies by Lord Iveagh of Elveden. I showed her one I possessed which my Friend Elsie had reproduced for me. Mrs. Storey admired it so much I gave it to her, as it compared well with those of Lord Iveagh’s. which were of the old Elizabethan house and a later Queen Anne one. Elsie’s reproduction showed another alteration still and the 3 pictures made a good record of the changes that had taken place over the years. During coffee, Dr. Storey came in and we talked of the Methodist Church I had attended that evening and of the Cornwallises. I showed them the pedigrees I had and my photographs We talked of Culford Hall and also of West Stow Hall which was bought by the Marquis is because it was next to Culford. This very remarkable old Hall was now a show place the owner was a very old man, who lived alone with his butler and servants but who never the less would show his house to anyone who was interested. I should love to have seen it. but lacked opportunity and lack of transport prevented me making the opportunity. My interest in this house was because according to Whites Almanack of 1844 lent me by Musky a William Bilham lived in West Stow Hall. I had a photograph of a William Bilham who was Adelaide Bilham's brother and my mother’s uncle and when I showed it to Mrs. Storey she remarked how much he resembled the Cornwallises. Was the William Bilham who lived at West Stow Hall related to the man in my photograph, his uncle perhaps? I may never know and West Stow Hall was one of the places I only saw romantically through the gloom when Dr. and Mrs. Storey drove me back to Barrow. The park at Culford is vast, we passed the great front of the Hall, and saw the marquee on the lawn where 150 people had congregated the day before for Speech Day, passed the cricket pitch laid down by the Coenwallis and still in use, and the lake and the bridge over the River Lark which the 1st Marquis had built from cannon sent home from India. It seemed miles down the main drive and out into the road, and though lonely and lovely country, if only I could have seen it properly in the gathering dusk. I went to Culford a number of times over the years I usually let Mrs. Storey know when I would be in Norfolk and if her duties permitted we met.

I remember going on one occasion a few days after the Blunderfields had taken me to see Thompson church and I told Dr. Storey about this very old church and how fascinated I was with it. He said he had often passed the signpost to "Thompson" and wondered where it led. Then he said ‘let us see what Arthur Mee has to say it" I and fetched the book from his study I sat gazing out of the window on to Culford's beautiful lawns while he read to me of Thompson and the Shardelows and I thought if they were my forebears, what a wonderful setting it made to be read to of those days long since gone.  He closed the book and Mrs. Storey announced lunch.

On another occasion in Mrs. Storey and I had lunch alone and over a glass of sherry I toasted her book and she my search. She told me of a visit she had recently made to Audley End and described how interesting it was to see the likeness to each her;in all the Cornwallis portraits hanging up the great stair case. Then we got immersed in the seven volumes of Copenger’s "Manors of Suffolk” because she had found mention of a Lady Eliza Shardelowe in one of them. Lost to the world in our search we were amazed when Dr. Storey came in from the playing fields to say it was time for him to take me into Bury to get my bus back to Palgrave wwhich Idare not miss.

Many scenes occur to me as when a doctor friend of Mrs. Storey's called with the slides he had made for a lecture she was giving on Culford. The tragedy of it was he only had a manipulated voice the result of a severe operation. He could not work so amused himself making slides etc. She saw him in another room because to be introduced to me would have embarrassed him. Life demands a lot of some people.