Tas Cottage and Akela

As with so many older properties, there is no documentary evidence to give a clue for the date of the original building of these two cottages but an examination of the internal timbers by a buildings and landscape historian in 1983 suggested that they started life as much smaller buildings around 1680 to 1700 and may even originally have been a single house which was then split into two either side of the chimney. The original part of Akela was a single room, one and a half storey house, with an upper room in the roof space. Tas Cottage was rather smaller and both would have been thatched, perhaps with dormer windows, as on the adjoining cottage. At some point the building was extended and another chimney added at the southern end, perhaps forming the third dwelling referred to in the next paragraph.

The earliest known document of title from 1791 records a sale by of Tas Cottage and Akela then occupied by Margaret Newson and Simon Rayson by John Chambers to Simon Rayson together with his newly built "mansion" (Commerce House). Ten Years later Simon Rayson, who had moved into Commerce House, sold Akela and Tas Cottage to John Simmons, a Norwich butcher, as an investment for £105. They were then described as three dwellings in the occupation of Mary Newson who may have been the daughter or daughter-in-law of Margaret Newson referred to above and mother of the Margaret Newson referred to below, with Henry Sutton and George Points in the other two.

When John Simmons sold the properties in 1807 to Christopher Capon, a Norwich painter and gilder, the tenants were named as Jonathan Taylor, Henry Sutton and George Points but it isn't possible to track all subsequent changes and when they occurred, not least because many of the occupants were too poor to contribute to the parish poor rates as revealed in the surviving assessment books at the Norfolk record Office. In 1834 they do however record a lady by the name of Rhoda Whurr as a tenant of one of the properties, followed in 1836 by George Seaman, with a "widow Welch" being the tenant of another.

The 1840 Tithe Apportionment Award records that Christopher Capon was still the owner, and the occupiers were shown as Jonathan Taylor and others. The 1841 census records the occupier of what is now Tas Cottage as Margaret Welch, a 45 year old charwoman living with her 18 year old son William, an agricultural labourer, but with Jonathan Taylor, then aged 65, as her lodger. Margaret, nee Newson, had married Robert Welch in Tasburgh Church on 6th October 1823. Neither of them could write as they signed the register with their marks rather than their names. The middle cottage was occupied by Hannah Seaman, a 77 year old pauper, and what must have been two grandchildren, Robert 9 and Mary 7. It isn't clear whether George had been her husband or her son who had predeceased her. Another charwoman, Susan Kemp aged 35, is shown as living in Akela with her two daughters Isabelle 13 and Emma 8 plus her 75 year old mother Ester.

In 1844, Christopher Capon died having appointed his daughter Charlotte as his executor but she died the following year before being able to deal with her father's estate, so in 1846 the court agreed to the appointment of her brother, William Capon, to complete the task. Although he arranged for the majority of his father's properties, including Commerce House, to be sold by auction in 1847, it appears that Akela and Tas Cottage had been sold before that to Robert Bensley for £375. He was already the owner of the nearby watermill and windmill let to the miller, Zachariah or Zachary George.

At some point in the 1800s, a brick skin was added to the front of the house which was quite common practice and can be seen in Thatched Cottage next door and Manor Farmhouse, both concealing earlier timber framed properties. This would have been paid for by the owner at the time, perhaps Christopher Capon or the Bensleys. Note the higher arched lintel of the closed off central doorway now replaced by a window which might have been the middle one when the property comprised three dwellings.

By the time of the 1851 census, Hannah Seaman was still living in the middle part with her grandson Robert who had become a farm labourer, but William Cann and his family were in Tas Cottage. He was a general dealer aged 33, and his wife, Anne, was a needle woman. They had a three year old daughter, also Ann, and his 55 year old mother, Elizabeth, also lived with them. Akela meanwhile, seems to have become a shop, a use which continued into the 1890s. The first shopkeeper was Frederick Crane aged 27 and he had a 19 year old wife, Rachel, and a one year old son William.

The 1851 census also shows that William Welch had married and was living in Mill Lane Florden, still as an agricultural labourer, but by 1861 he had returned to live at Akela as a coal merchant with his wife Isabella running the shop as a grocer. His mother Margaret, who in the 1851 census was shown as living in part of Old Post Office Cottage, had also returned and occupied the middle cottage still as a charwoman, and Tas Cottage was now the home of Mary Rudling. By 1871 everything had changed again with Tas Cottage occupied by William Dickerson, a 21 year old brickmaker, presumably at the Tharston brickworks, and his wife Emily. The middle cottage was being lived in by Henry Rix, a miller, his wife Anne, her daughter from a previous marriage, Emma Horstead, and their own two young daughters, Ann and Caroline, and the grocer's shop was being run by Thomas Davey with his wife Clarrissa and young son Frederick.

In 1855 Robert Bensley, the owner of the property, had died leaving it in his will to his widow, Harriett. Following her death in1867 it is thought that her properties in Tasburgh including the Mill, were sold to the Honourable Frederick Walpole M.P. of Rainthorpe Hall. Quite when Tas Cottage and Akela ceased to be part of the Rainthorpe Estate and who bought them isn't clear but it must have been before 1929 when the whole estate was put up for sale following the death of Sir Charles Harvey, because they were not included in any of the auction lots.

In 1881 Henry Rix, now a miller's carter, and his wife were still in the middle cottage and had had another daughter Hannah. A 74 year old agricultural labourer, William Cocksedge, and his wife Susanna occupied Tas Cottage, and the shop had been taken over by Joseph Muskett who was still operating it as a grocers at the time of the 1991 census along with his wife Eliza and their 9 year old son Charles. By then, a shoemaker, George Shearing with his wife Charlotte and their five children were living in Tas Cottage and the middle cottage was still occupied by Henry Rix, his wife Ann, and their daughter Caroline, an assistant schoolmistress, presumably at the old school on Church Hill.

At some point, the thatched roof was burned out and replaced with tiles, but as pantiles do not need as step a pitch as thatch the opportunity was taken to raise the walls, as evidenced by the change in brickwork, thereby creating more space at first floor level. The most likely date for this seems to be around 1900 as the 1901 census only shows three dwellings on that side of the road between Commerce House and The Mill as opposed to six in 1891 and also in 1911. If it was the fire that forced Joseph Muskett to close his grocer's shop then that date would also fit with the opening of a grocers at Commerce House by John Lammas, following the death of the previous tenant, Mary Harwin, in 1900. William Moore in his memories also refers to the properties as "a pair of red brick dwellings of about 1900" and although he only arrived in the village in1937, he may well have heard that date from people in the village who still remembered the fire. An alternative date of 1922 was suggested by the buildings historian who looked at the properties in 1983 but on what basis isn't clear. In any event by the time of the 1911 census, the three entries along from Commerce House have Tas Cottage occupied by Thomas Ling, a fisherman, and his family, the middle cottage by a farm labourer, Edward Marjoram and his family, and the Akela end by George Kirby, a bootmaker, and his wife, Esther who was a school mistress, again perhaps at the village school.

Quite when Tas Cottage reverted to being a single dwelling, and the occupational/ownership details for most of the 20th century aren't known but it is believed Akela was tenanted by a Mrs Joan Bullen from 1945 until 1967 and then from 1968 it was home to George and Phyllis Hicks and their family before they sold it to Robert and Linda Taylor in 1982.