Martham
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| Martham lies ten miles north-west of
Great Yarmouth.
Martham Church
In his memoir Earlham (see
Earlham), Percy Lubbock
describes how his great-grandmother lived at Martham
Rectory and how, in her spare time, she wrote a novel
entitled Earthly Idols. This is how he records
it:
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| 'I think she did
not write more than one; but one novels makes a
novelist, after all, and a novelist she became, she was,
she remained. Earthly Idols, two volumes in pink cloth -
it was a story of a dreadfully (but justly) afflicted
heroine, who set her heart upon idols of clay, who saw
them torn from here one by one, and who perished at
last, she herself - with a heart, I hope and think,
finally chastened and purified - in a storm at sea.' |
In the book, Lubbock also provides a rather bleak
description of the village in his great-grandmother's
day:
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'The outer edges of Norfolk can be dreary, in the barer
regions towards the sea. You reach Martham after leaving
everything else behind, and only then; it is a cluster
of cottages round a straggling green, and the diminutive
parsonage stands under the morning shadow of a great
square church-tower. A gaunt and dilapidated old pile
the church must have been, when Earthly Idols was
composed in its shadow; and the village had no
picturesque attraction. The sea-wind whines, though the
sea is not in sight.' |
Beneath Martham church tower there is a gravestone with
a surprising inscription. It was written by a
Christopher Burraway to commemorate his wife Alice and
reads: 'in this life my sister, my mistress, my mother
and my wife'. Burraway, who was the illegitimate child
of an incestuous union, returned to Martham later in
life and unknowingly married his mother/sister. The
connection only came to light after an identifying mole
was discovered.
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Links:
Read Earlham Online
St. Mary's Church |
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