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Morston History








Morston History













Coming soon   
"East Anglia; Birthplace and Home of the Powditch's;
Part 1. Norfolk"
++++++++









Morston History













Coming soon   
"East Anglia; Birthplace and Home of the Powditch's;
Part 1. Norfolk"
++++++









Morston History













Coming soon   
"East Anglia; Birthplace and Home of the Powditch's;
Part 1. Norfolk"
A Brief History of Morston
© J.J.R.Wingfield, 2003
36 acres of tidal water and 418 acres of foreshore

The people of  Morston alias Marshtown, looked over by their Saxon church  
(nave and  chancel rebuilt pre-1289) are justly proud of their heritage. Down
the ages, as the Point moved relentlessly westwards at around 8 metres a
year, advancing from Cley (c. 1100s), to Blakeney (c. 1400s) to Morston
(c. 1600s), some important and intriguing people  lived in - or had connections
with this unique marsh village. For example King Harold's younger brother
Guert apparently held 30 acres here before 1066. In 1087 Morston consisted
of two manors or estates:

The principal one - part of the Bishop of Norwich's manor of Langham.

Part of William the Conqueror's manor of Holt, run by Godric Dapifer,
progenitor of the prolific Norfolk and Virginian Calthorpe family.
From the 1530s to 1730s the fascinating Powditch family lived here. Originally
yeomen they started trading in wool, with great success, and from 1720 spread
out, via  Wells, (where they followed five "marine" callings) across the country
and to Chile, Australia and New Zealand. 200 are traceable today, 40 overseas.
 In the 16th century, with the coming of privateers-cum-pirates, some - such as
one of the Cornish Carew family -  had to watch out for the Lord of the main
Morston Manor:   Sir Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, who rigidly applied the law.  
Through Nathaniel Bacon's daughter, the main Morston manor next came to
the Townshends. And Charles Townshend, the 2nd Viscount Townsend, Knight
of the Garter  (died 1738), one  of the Regents of the Realm in 1714, was the
famous agriculturist - from about the 1730s who was known as "Turnip"
Townsend.        
In 1724 when touring through "Masham" (Morston), Daniel Defoe (five years
after writing "Robinson Crusoe"), noted that at Morston "the art of
smuggling was so much in practice". At that time it was mainly loychfish
(cod, lob and ling), Geneva (gin), brandy and tobacco that was smuggled.
And it may have helped the smugglers that in those days an arm of the creek
came right in to South Close, the road crossing-point being called "Bridges",
but more usually smugglers unloaded the contraband on a distant beach.

In 1817 (eight years after the government initiated a Preventive Guard to
prevent successful smuggling) Major Loftus of the local Yeomanry Cavalry
noted 15 carts standing by at Morston, "awaiting a signal from a smuggler
offshore", the on-shore smugglers having sent men to get the dragoons drunk
in the Swan at Cley. These Morston smugglers told Major Loftus: "We can
tie up the preventives" - as the coastguard were first called - "but we don't like
them dragoons' pistols and swords." In the following year the Preventives
were placed under the Treasury - and in 1822 the Preventive Men were
merged with the Revenue Commission to form the Coastguard.
Its duties were defence of the coast, provision of a reserve for the Navy and
"protection of the revenue against evasion by smuggling".

The staff establishment for Morston Station was a Chief Officer, a Chief
Boatman, two Commissioned Boatmen and four Boatmen, a total of eight.
Unpopular, they were experienced seamen, often ex-Navy, coming from over
twenty miles away, including, for example, from Wells, Cornwall, Kent and
Ireland - so that collusion with local smugglers was minimized. Nobody would
rent them accommodation, so they paid rent to live initially in inns and later in
purpose-built accommodation. Pre-1830 they had accommodation in the
Townshend Arms (west of the Anchor Inn), before moving to either China
Row or Sunnyside on Quay Lane until 1891. (Indeed the area of Coastguard
House and Cottages and China Row -with its present boatyard - was still
known as the Coastguard Station in relevant house deeds up till the 1950s).
The Coastguards were up all night (except half of them rested on the five
nights of full moon) on watch or on rowing patrols or on land patrols, each
armed with two heavy pistols and a cutlass.

In 1830 the Morston coastguard seized a 30-ton fishing vessel, "believed to
have been involved with the recent smuggling." It was in that same year that
the Chief Officer of the Morston Coastguard was reduced to the rank of
Boatman and posted away for negligence: in that he "went into" a band of
smugglers without having his cutlass drawn or his pistols ready (and so was
overpowered). Coastguard House was built in 1836 for Morston's new
Captain of the Coastguard, Lieutenant George Thomas, and the watch-house
on the Point was built from the same delivery of stone.

In 1865 the Coastguard came under the Admiralty; and the Morston
Coastguard establishment was cut, a Chief Boatman instead of a Chief
Officer now being in charge; and this lasted until after World War I.   The
present Coastguard Cottages were built in 1890-91.   

In the 20th century the Coastguard were to be controlled by six government
departments in turn! When war broke out in 1914, as the Naval Reserve, the
Coastguard were immediately drafted into the Royal Navy, but after the
disaster of the three Cressy class cruisers in September, the irreplaceable
coastguard were returned to their watch-house duties.   In 1925 Morston's
Coastguard Station was closed down.  
Back in 1794 came the Stiffkey and Morston Inclosures - which in Morston
allocated land between the four 15-foot private ways or roads and the road-
bordering estates to those who managed such lands - in this instance: the
Marquess of Townshend (sometime Field Marshal), and his three Morston
tenant farmers: one of whom was a son of the owner of Wiveton Hall:
William Buck, Jr., then "in occupation of the Marquess of Towshend's
Farmhouse". (Built in the early 1700s, after later additions this later became
today's Morston Hall Hotel).  These four farmers were required to fence their
new land and provide stiles and gates upon it. In 1817 the 62-year-old
Morston farmer and Gentleman, William Buck, Jr.  (1755-1835) - who was
to become very rich and was to inherit nearby Wiveton Hall - registered his
76-ton brig, the Cruizer (Yarmouth, 1802, 9ft draft loaded  with cargo, still
extant 1835). Buck probably traded anywhere north of Cadiz in Spain. His
surveying port in 1817 was Cork in Ireland. The Cruizer's captains were
L. Jerry until 1826, followed by R.Craske - perhaps kin of Morston's William
Craske (1775-1854). William Buck "coined" his own beer tokens,
inscribed "ONE MORSTON PINT" and on the reverse: "Success to the
Cruizer of Morston" - which tokens he issued to his captains and crews for
use in the local pubs - perhaps from Cley to Wells (which had 13 pubs) or
perhaps just in Morston. The full-rigged ship shown on the token was not the
Cruizer of Morston -  which would of course have had two masts - but probably
the standard ship imprint depicted on local dyes.   

"1 Morston Pint" Token (courtesy of E.Hamond)
In 1818 William Buck, Jr. owned twelve cottages in Morston, from Beehive
Cottage to the five cottages at China Row (built "circa 1820", now called Tides
Reach), owning these last "for a great many years".  A story has been carried
down in the Longe family (originally of Bale), who in Napoleonic times (1796-
1815/16), lived in these five cottages. (They were apparently christened
"China Row" in or by the 1890s, because the building seen at dusk from
Morston Chase looked like "Chinatown" - if not because Chinese sailors off
the colliers sometimes stayed there overnight).

The Long(e) owner of that time "had a little earner" - but a very dangerous one
- of hiding escaped prisoners-of-war - French officers - in his Morston house,
the future China Row (which displayed the "code sign" of three oyster shells
over the door), pending their escape out of Morston Creek and across to
France. Besides the Hamoaze (Plymouth) prison ships, and the camps
("depots") for usually up to 6,000 French and Dutch prisoners - on Dartmoor,
at Portchester Castle (Portsmouth) and near Pembroke, - two of the biggest
camps, each for 6,000 prisoners, were at Norman Cross (now under the A1
Motorway) and Yaxley Barracks nearby, both just south of Peterborough.
In 1798 -1809 at least 27 prisoners "got clean away" from Norman Cross.
Escapees usually avoided the direct route to King's Lynn and headed for the
Lincolnshire coast or the north Norfolk coast. The presumed "hiding-hole" -
now thought to be a cupboard - for the escaped French prisoners of war,
which was at the creek end of China Row-cum-Gull Cottage, was discovered
in about 1975 when the building was being refurbished.
In 1857-1866 the local railways were transforming life in north Norfolk, and in
1882 the Lynn & Fakenham Railway planned to build a line from Blakeney
through Morston village, then curving northwards to the southern edge of the
Pit (or habour), before returning on a single track to the village and continuing
westwards to Stiffkey; but this never came to fruition. From medieval times,
in the good weather months,at least three quarters of inward cargoes passing
through the Pit were cargoes of coal from the area of Newcastle. Today
older inhabitants of Morston can remember the barges of about 20 tons,
having trans-shipped coal from colliers off the Point - by the time-honoured
method of the jump, no doubt  - being winched or hauled up the creek, from
one pair of stout mooring posts to the next pair. In this century the Morston
coal bunker- and mussell-grader - stood just west of today's National Trust
Lookout- whereas the sheep bridges, which spanned the creek to the
Morston Salt Marshes, lay to the east.
In the 1860s to 1870s the great athlete, "C.G." Wood (1861-1937) was
brought up in Morston at Lower Farm and then at Morston Hall, as one of ten
children, before he moved to farm in Stiffkey. He was known as "the Ghost
of Stiffkey" - since he trained on the marsh track between Morston (his old
home) and Stiffkey (his new one) at dawn or dusk. In 1886 and 1887 he
held the English Record for a Quarter of a Mile, the French Record for
100 metres and for 400 metres, the European Record for 220 yards,
as well as the World Record for 150 yards (14 4/5 seconds), 220 yards
(21 3/5 seconds), and 250 yards (25 ½ seconds). "C.G." was also involved
in the resurrection of the Olympic Games in 1896 (by Baron Coubertin and
Lord Rothschild); and he held his 220 record for 25 years.
In the 1st World War three men from Morston lost their lives. In 1914 Leading
Stoker (Coastguard) John Morris and Leading Seaman Alec Gray (son of the
Townshend Arms publican) were both lost at sea. And in 1916 in France
Private George Balding of the 9th Norfolk Regiment - just after the first ever
tank skirmish (with one tank, in the "Attack on the Quadrilateral" near Ginchy
and Leuze Wood in August 1916 - George was shot "going over the top"
and died of his wounds in November. Balding's platoon sergeant was
"Diamond" Bean, also of Morston - who was later in the war awarded the
MM and DCM.  And Philip Hamond, (who at Rooival in the Boer War in 1902,
had become the youngest regular officer - at 18 - to that date to earn a
DSO), reinlisted in 1914 in the Norfolk Regiment and won an MC and (as a
major), a second DSO. He was later attached to the Tank Corps at Cambrai
and in 1918 was sent to the USA as British Liason Officer for Tank Warfare,
at Camp Colt, Pennsylvania, instructing alongside Major "Ike" Eisenhower.
(Ike was to become D-Day C-in-C and Supreme Commander Allied Forces
in Europe ("SACEUR") and in 1953-61 President of the USA ).
On the morning of 3rd September 1939 the future President of the Royal
Academy, Alfred Munnings was painting Morston Church from by the pond
to its northeast, when a "harvesting waggon laden with corn (he wrote)
passed along the road."  The Morston boy on top - Morris Pye - called out:
The war's started!" And indeed Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister, had
just announced on the "wireless" that the UK and Germany were at war. Later
he checked in Stiffkey that the Morston folk actually knew what they were
talking about!

Two permanent 4.2 inch mortar positions were constructed on the marshes;
and young Morstoners enlisted or were later called up, including men from the
village's martial families of Balding, Bean, Gotts, Hamond and Starman.
Four young men were to lose their lives. In 1942 Gunner Edward Balding, RHA,
(the nephew of George Balding above) at Rommel's Siege of Tobruk in Libya;
and Petty Officer Leslie Docking, R.N., at sea off Gibraltar. And in 1943
Captain Renton Walker, Royal Norfolk Regiment attached to the RIASC,
in India, and Sapper Frederick Starman, at sea off Libya.      

During the war Morstoners were accustomed to the roar of Australian, NZAF
and RAF squadrons taking of from "Langham Airfield " - which was
constructed in 1942 on land in Cockthorpe, Langham and Morston. The
elements in Morston parish included part of Runway 25 (east to west), part
of the perimeter track, the Sergeants' Mess and quarters, some officers'
quarters, football fields along the Langham Road, and the really dangerous
parts: the bomb dump and the fuel compound

Tidal surges (rages) have occurred about every quarter of a century, the last
two being in 1953 and 1978. They are likely to be more frequent in future and
so we trust that the flood banks at Scaldbeck, at the upper quay N.T. car park
and the one along which runs Footpath Number 3 to Blakeney will all hold.