Maurice de Soissons bought his
house in the village of Brancaster Staithe in 1969 and is readily recognised
as a local historian.
A prominent member of the community, Maurice's interest in the local
fishing industry prompted his research and eventual publication of Brancaster Staithe: The
Story of a Norfolk Fishing Village. He has since gone on to publish The Holkham
People, a local social history and is currently researching about people in the
fens.
Born in London in 1927 Maurice is the son of Louis de Soissons, the architect who
planned Welwyn Garden City and he was brought up in the town. He was educated at
Marlborough and served in the Royal Armoured Corps in Egypt and Palestine 1945-48.
From 1950 until 1963 he lived in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, working on tobacco
and cattle farms and on various farming journals. He was then senior PRO with
The Construction Industry Training Board 1967/1970.
Moving to Brussels, he was public relations manager for the International
Iron & Steel Institute from 1970 to 1984.
Now a freelance journalist, writer and publisher Maurice writes farming and countryside
articles as well as researching for his books.
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Maurice
de Soissons
Author and Publisher
of
'Brancaster Staithe' and 'The Holkham People'
A story from 'The Holkham People'
Gamekeepers of Character
Joe Hibbert, a Holkham gamekeeper, had been a prize
fighter in his youth, and was persuaded by a visitor, Sir John Shelley, to fight him for a
purse. Joe was evidently a wise and oldish man, and looked at his younger opponent
with a cunning eye. He put on a pair of boxing gloves, but then removed them,
declaring loudly, 'not for twice the money would I strike a gentleman.' Let's hope
he received twice the money of the purse without having to fight.
Polly Fishbourne was the daughter of a gamekeeper who lived in one
of the lodges. She must have spent her childhood and youth roaming the woods and
fields and learned the gamekeeper's work from her father. However, like other
daughters of Holkham families, she was put to work in the hall, and went there as a
kitchen maid. All was well until the shooting season opened, when, at the first
shots fired, down went the saucepans she was carrying, she leapt over the kitchen
table and was off.
So she became a gamekeeper, and was described as 'the terror of poachers'. A
contemporary account suggests that most of her father's duties were performed by his
daughter who, in local parlance, was much the better man of the two. She was
described as 'a veritable Amazon, possessing not only the strength but the appearance of a
man, and her fearlessness was as great as her spirit was untameable.'
She was said to have intimidated a savage bull, and once locked two young men,
guests at the hall, in the belfry of the church when one tried to snatch a kiss from her.
In later years she became very weatherbeaten, but was said in her youth to have
been 'unquestionably a pretty girl'. She was highly regarded as a tough and
independent spirit by the Coke family, and had her meals at the hall. The other
servants objected to her sitting down with them in the Servants' Hall, and she was given
her food in the nursery dining room after the children of the family had had theirs.
This contact was remembered with pleasure by one of those children.
Polly ended up as an old and rough keeper on an estate in Yorkshire. She had
a rent-free cottage, kept three cows and rode a nag.
She cut her hair short, wore ancient clothes and a man's hat.
Holkham
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