Diss Community Partnership

Author Archive

Museum manager Basil Abbott has identified his father, Pip Abbott, as the boy sitting on the ground on the right. The boy behind him is Alfred ‘Teddie’ Nunn. But who are the others? Can anyone spot fathers or grandfathers on this Diss Church School picture from 84 years ago?

The museum often gets enquiries about evacuees during the war; but we find that there is little recorded information about them.
We tend to think that a trickle of children arrived by train and were billeted with local families.
But, in August 1939, 382 children arrived at Diss railway station to be dispersed around the area.
The records of Raglan School, in Bush Hill Park, north of London, describe the mass exodus to the country.
“28.8.39 to 31.8.39: Full staff on evacuation registration. All gas masks were fitted and replaced if necessary. Every member of evacuation party labelled and given iron rations. Party assembled at 9am. State of party – 173 boys, 143 girls, 66 infants. Total 382. Teaching staff 36. Voluntary helper escorts 36. Roll called. Prayers said by the Vicar of St. Mark’s Church. 10.30am – party left school premises to entrain at Bush Hill Park Station for an unknown destination.”
“Has proved to be Diss in Norfolk. There the Raglan School party was most kindly received; and eventually, after the last bus and car load of children had been dispatched to billets, teachers, by then very weary, tried to accommodate themselves to strange surroundings and conditions, and wondered what the future held in store.”
“By the end of the first weekend the staff had located all children and completed registers of addresses etc; and it was then that we realised how completely the Raglan party was disintegrated, for staff and children were scattered over 17 villages of the Depwade area, stretching from the Norwich boundary in the north to the Bungay district in the south. The difficulties of caring adequately for all the needs of the children in these conditions can be imagined, but the job was well and faithfully done through the almost superhuman efforts of the teachers and a grand team of helpers.”
“Before long a steady trickle of children was returning home, and it became apparent that the educational needs of pupils in the home districts must be met.”
I am indebted to Mr. Colin Walker for this information. He visited Diss recently, for the first time since the war, and recognised the White Horse pub, where he and his family were billeted.

Basil Abbott

On Boxing Day 1944 some of the evacuees were waiting for a bus to take them from Diss to a party at the Thorpe Abbotts base.
When the bus was late, one boy ran out onto the frozen Mere, near The Nunnery, and went through the ice. His brother ran to try and save him but, being weighed down by overcoats and hobnail boots, both went under.
One was drawn dead from the water, while the other died on the bank. They were buried in the Heywood Road cemetery.
Eric Hancock, now 80 years old, and the other children never got to the party. He had come from Middlesex and lived in Alger’s Square, a tiny courtyard on the south side of Church Street.
There were lavatories at the end of the Square and a water pump in the middle. He remembers being there and seeing hundreds of German bombers coming over.
Although the museum has a plaque expressing gratitude from some of the girl evacuees for the kindness they were shown, Eric says that the boys, in their Jackie Coogan hats, were hated. They really had to look after themselves; and there were frequent fights. You could, though, end up the best of pals with someone with whom you had fought.
One of the perks of the time was being able to crawl under the barbed wire of the Rectory Meadow prisoner-of-war camp and spend the day with the Italians.
They were well treated, with a pail of beer daily for each hut, had the run of the town and were popular with the ladies. The prisoners, in specially patched uniforms, worked as farm labourers, played football on the meadow and made models, like rings and cigarette cases.
A model car made by them was exhibited in the Diss Publishing Company window. When a Flying Fortress crashed, bringing down another plane with it, the area was scattered with perspex, which helped in model-making.
Many of the Italians were in tears when they had to go home. Some even stayed as farmers. Eric also stayed here and actually lived in one of the Nissen huts after the war.
He did his National Service in Malaya with the Suffolk Regiment, enjoying the four-month voyage there and back. He wonders why the country ever did away with National Service.
He worked in the Brush Factory where he met his wife, Gladys, when they were 14. She biked from Mellis each day and he used to cycle there to see her. Her father used to chase him angrily off the premises, even following him back to Diss, until he came back from Malaya. Then he found he was welcomed as though the sun shone out of his rear.
He subsequently worked for Ron Chapman, the baker in Church Street, for 20 years.
Eric uses the expression “at that time of day” for “in those days” and refers to me as one of “you youngsters”, when I could easily be a grandfather.

Interviewed by Basil Abbott at Eric’s house in Mount Pleasant on 16 August 2011.

Footnote: I was able to tell him the date of the drowning, as I had seen the grave. He mentioned the fairs on the Uplands meadow, another glimpse of the vanished past.

Over 800 people have attended the events in Diss Museum’s Friends in High Places festival commemorating the Manning family.
Diss Corn Hall hosted the visit of Everest climber Cathy O’Dowd, the Real Live Sherpa, the art & textile exhibition by local groups and the talk by a former Tibetan MP.
In October the Tashi Lhunpo monks will be coming for a week of workshops and a concert.

Diss Museum has entered each of the last four carnivals and, this year, came second in the Walking Tableau category with their Alice in Wonderland. The group picture shows George Utty (White Rabbit), Diana Courtman (Mad Hatter), Clive Davies (King of Hearts), Jen Cranshaw (Queen of Hearts), Emma Cranshaw (Alice) and Basil Abbott (Lewis Carroll).

Diss Museum features the history of the Manning family, thatching, fossils and much more of interest. Click to see the latest acquisition: Thomas Manning Returns

Preparing to commemorate the Manning rectors, Diss Museum has discovered church angel figures unseen for 150 years. They would have been created when the church was enlarged in 1857. But, being of dark wood high up in the sanctuary, they are almost invisible from the ground. Photographer Mark Bullimore’s pictures bring them alive again.

Diss Museum is commemorating the lengthy ministry of the Manning family, rectors from the time of the American War of Independence to the First World War. 2011 is the bicentenary of Thomas Manning’s journey across the Himalayas to meet the Dalai Lama, the first European to do so. There will be a museum display from mid-March and a colourful programme of events. Click for poster: Friends in High Places festival

Walking through the shopping streets of Thetford you pass one medieval church and then another one.

  There was a time when you could have done that in Diss. You could have left St. Mary’s Church, walked up Pump (now Market) Hill and found another.

  Weavers Restaurant, which many will remember as Aldiss and Hastings gents outfitters, is built on the site of the St. Nicholas Chapel.

  This was a guild chapel in the 1500s, until such institutions were suppressed by Henry VIII.

  The Pulham Pennoyers School still features part of a similar chapel, with Victorian additions.

  Opposite where the St. Nicholas Chapel stood you can still see the Tudor House, with its medieval corner post with carvings of the annunciation and nativity. The building was probably the Guildhall for the chapel. Gaze’s, next door, is built on the chapel graveyard. 

  The guilds acted as a kind of friendly society. You paid them a penny or so a week, partook of their hospitality and made sure that they prayed for you after death.

  Such Catholic practices were rendered obsolete by the Reformation. So the chapels were no longer needed and fell into disuse.

  We can only imagine what the chapel looked like; but there is a clue spotted by historian Simon Knott.

  The nearby Greyhound inn has a Tudor gable on its west side but not to the east. Knott thinks that the gable was the re-used west face of the St. Nicholas Chapel, while the pub’s characterful porch was its re-used door.

  The east face of the chapel would have had a window and would not be so useful, so was not retained.

 The date of 1580, according to Pevsner, for the building of The Greyhound would be just at the time when parts of the decayed chapel might well have been recycled.

 

It has been a year when Diss Museum gained local, regional and national awards.

  The citation for the museums ‘Oscar’ we received said that the Tom Paine Festival “successfully brought together the whole community. It took a creative and lateral approach, maximising effort and resource for great impact.”

  These prizes added to our trophy cabinet, which includes gaining Accreditation by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council in 2008, and winning a Gulbenkian Award for the greatest improvements achieved with limited resources in 1993.

  Outreach work has included visits to schools and day centres, talks, presentations and tours. A powerpoint presentation on the history of Diss Common has proved popular, while the Denny Centre enjoys a specially written panto.

  In February Amy Gibbons joined us for a Murder Night and gave a dramatic reading of Diss girl Ethel Le Neve’s autobiography, as part of the Crippen murder centenary.

  In July we helped out with a Problem Solving Day at Diss High School, on the topic of Big Cats.

  In October, Dickleburgh School invited us to give a presentation on Victorian toys. So Canon Manning turned up, with top hat and cane.

  When Diss Library wanted to take part in the BBC High Street project we were asked to lead a tour and talk about the old town.

  I was pleased to hear that many people avidly read the museum columns and even cut them out to keep them.

  The small size of The Shambles building has always limited our education work. But a new chance has appeared.

  We have been invited to be a kind of heritage partner with the Corn Hall. They are bidding for big money and have realised that more boxes are ticked by our input.

  It could mean that we have greater education space and more scope to put on events.

The local junior schools have all received a booklet about the forthcoming commemoration of Thomas Manning’s 1811 journey to Tibet.

  Friends in High Places: The Manning Story will feature many memorable events. See the Diss Community Partnership website, under Friends in High Places.

  The schools will be most welcome to take part.

Basil Abbott