Norton sub Hamdon Local History Society
Reports from Meetings & Events
Somerset Privies
Thursday 13th March 2003
Over thirty members and visitors attended the lecture on the history of privies in Somerset given by Hilary Binding (author & Chairman of SANHS) at Norton village hall.
It turned out to be a fascinating and informative evening presented with obvious enthusiasm and knowledge by Hilary. She took us from the large communal lavatories of the Romans (with their shared sponges on sticks in lieu of paper) through garderobes to privies and briefly onto the flush toilet.
Having been brought up as a southern jessie, knowing only the flush toilet, I was chastened to discover that over half the audience had had hands on experience of the privy. As age increases the number of nocturnal visits to the thunderbox, thanks to Hilary, I will no longer complain of the inconvenience - I could be wearing a path across the garden with my candle in hand and wondering if the spiders in the privy have grown since the last visit. Apparently the chamber pot was introduced to spare the needy a trip down the garden path - however, its use was very much discouraged except in the direst emergency.
Hilary described modest single seater privies, hardly more than lean-tos, through double seater's (with children’s seats next to the adult’s) until finally we arrived at grandiose six seater's housed in manorial splendour.
Privies could be more than just functional, the local practical jokers took advantage of their vulnerability as described in the following letter from Will Power. ‘Dear Miss. Our gran ad a privy next door to you before war first. I wer a boy at second wen aunty Flo wer ere as well. It wer un eight familie three ‘oler as we calls um. Uncle Albert wer in LDV Home Guard later and he wer a rite caution for when Auntie went in round back he dropped a thunderflash int bucket. Privy wer never same again nor were aunty.’
Without a doubt all present found Hilary’s talk informative, enlightening and amusing and for that we thank her.
Shaftesbury & The Larmer Tree Gardens
Wednesday 25th June 2003
Gold Hill, Shaftesbury
The Larmer Tree Gardens
‘Sir John Popham, 1531-1607’
Wednesday, 24 March 2009 Norton sub Hamdon Village Hall
Talk by Douglas Walthew Rice
Douglas Rice is a former English master at Blundell’s School in Tiverton, a school that Sir John Popham helped to establish. After graduating from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge he taught for a year in Malawi and subsequently worked in Kenya and Nigeria as an editor for Oxford University Press. He later studied at the Institute of Education at London University and then taught at Blundell’s School. On a teacher exchange to Maine in 1980 he came across Popham Beach, named for George Popham, who was persuaded by his uncle, Sir John Popham, to found a settlement in Maine, which regrettably lasted only a year, but is still commemorated in the name of the area. His connections with Maine and Tiverton led Douglas Rice to write Sir John Popham’s biography, which was published in 2005 by Farleigh Dickinson University Press in the United States.
Sir John Popham was born in 1531 at Huntworth manor near Bridgwater, which his family had held since 1285. His father was Steward of the nearby Buckland Priory and bought the Priory’s estate on its dissolution in 1539. His early career was somewhat racy for he was reputed to have been briefly abducted as a boy by gypsies and, even after he trained for the law and became a barrister in London, he was said to have acted as a highwayman. Nevertheless he became Recorder of Bristol and its Member of Parliament for Bristol in 1571 and Speaker of the Commons in 1581. He served as a JP in Somerset from 1573 and an Assize judge from 1578. In 1579 he was appointed Solicitor-General in 1579 and Attorney-General in 1581. He became Lord Chief Justice for England in 1592 and a Privy Councillor in 1599 and was acting Lord Chancellor in the year of his death, 1607.
Although he was prominent in the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh and the Gunpowder Plotters, his interests were always wider than the law. He was an investor in a privateer, in settlements in Munster in Ireland and in Virginia, and in drainage projects in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, where a waterway still bears his name, ‘Popham’s Eau’. He was among the founders of Blundell’s School and built a mansion for his family in Wellington in Somerset, where he died in 1607.