Author Margaret Dowland
The Bloom family has lived in the village for over two centuries. James Hevits Bloom was born in Southrepps in 1808 to William Bloom and Hannah Stewart.
In 1838 James married Elizabeth Bacon at St James Southrepps. In 1851 their son William was born; they also had four daughters, Hannah, Charlotte, Ann and Elizabeth. The family lived in Lower Street. In 1880 William, a farm labourer, married Sarah Whitwood (she was born in Skeyton). At this time they were tenants of Matthew Gotts who lived at Brook House opposite the shop in Chapel Road Lower Street, which Sarahs’ father owned. James died in 1887 in Southrepps, Elizabeth went to live with her daughter Hannah in Thorpe Next Norwich.
Sarah had always helped her father John Whitwood in the shop and continued to run it following her fathers’ death in 1881.
William and Sarah had one son, Robert born in 1882. Sadly his father died two years later in 1884. In 1887 Sarah married again, her new husband was Richard Bayes. They continued to run the shop. In 1888 their daughter Sarah was born.
Robert helped in the shop and on the small holding that Richard and Sarah had developed by buying adjacent plots of land as they had became available. The family also owned the sand quarry that was behind the chapel and Clematis cottage.
In 1907 Robert married Sarah Denis, known to everyone as Annie, and they moved into Rose Villa (now known as Windrush) that Richard and Sarah Bayes had built in 1887. The family gradually expanded with Winifred May born 1909 (known as May), Daisy Maud 1910 known as Betty and finally George in 1913. The family continued working the land and helping in the shop. In 1936 May married Walter Thompson, and they moved out of the village. Betty married Arthur Fox known as Jim in 1939. They moved into Cartref (now known as the Nook) a chalet bungalow built on the land that Richard and Sarah had bought. During this time Sarah Denis’s sister Daisy moved into the house attached to the shop with her husband Charles. They later swapped houses with George and Ruth who were living down the road in Fair View.
In later life Robert was in great demand as a Water Diviner. At first, he was sceptical of his gift until a ‘dowser’ friend invited him to experiment with a stick. The trial proved he was even more sensitive than his friend. A newspaper article from 1938 relates some of his finds.
In Overstrand a lady owned two fields and wanted to know whether they would be suitable for building. Robert found there were eight underground springs and that the site was unsuitable.
In Watton he was engaged by a Norwich Well borer there he found water at 80 feet which subsequently yielded with an electric pump 800 gallons an hour.
In Bradfield Road he divined a field for Mr. Burton. He suggested that water would be found at 14 ft and that turned out to be accurate.
When asked as to the symptoms of water divining, he said he felt a drawing sensation, and a numbness at the back of the skull. The tingling lasted for several hours and on the following day he felt languid and tired. He said the process seemed to affect his whole nervous system.
When trying to discover cellars or subterranean passages he would arm himself with an empty medicine bottle in one hand and a hazel rod in the other. When he was over the actual cavity the reaction was so strong that it force the bottle out of his hand.
He could also find lost jewelry.
In 1939 Sarah and her grandson George were living in the house attached to the shop and running the shop. In 1943 Sarah Bayes died and left the shop to Robert, although it was George who ran it with his new wife Ruth, nee Perkins, who he married in 1948.
It was a close knit family with Sarah Whitwood’s sister Elizabeth marrying Edward Bloom, William’s brother. They moved away from the village but by 1939 they had returned and lived in Number 1 Bayes Cottages.
Ruth Perkins was born in Lincolnshire in 1920. It was the war that brought her to Norfolk as she was visiting her twin brother Francis, who was serving in the army here before being posted abroad. Sadly, he later died in the Italian campaign. Ruth herself first joined the Women’s Land Army before enrolling with the ATS. She married George in 1948; at first they lived at Fairview but later moved into the house that was behind the shop.
On George’s death in 1989 she continued to run the shop. In an interview later in life on being asked when the shop opened, she replied, “when I think the first person going to work might need something” And when do you close “When I think the last customer has been in” The interviewer commented that it was certainly open all hours. Everyone was welcome there, especially children (certainly the old pupils of the school tell of how they would visit the shop in the lunch break as well as to and from school). The interviewer continued; My wife and I took it for granted that whatever we ran out of anything Ruth would be able to provide what was needed. There was a real crisis when her Norwich wholesaler, who delivered every week, was taken over by a bigger firm which informed her that they would deliver once a month and would take no orders for less than one thousand pounds. Ruth refused to let them close her down, did her paperwork and carried on under the new conditions, which was no small feat of organization. She said “My auditors tell me I’m not making much money but I’m not losing it either and so long as that goes on, I’ll keep the shop open because I like meeting people”.
The closure came in an unexpected manner in the late 1990s. Over the years the shop had been guarded by a faithful and effective gander. Sadly, when going out to feed him on a frosty morning, Ruth fell on the ice and broke her ankle. It was a complicated fracture that never healed properly and although efforts were made to keep the shop open no one could replace Ruth. She moved to Rose Briar, the bungalow she had built on land next to Bloom Barn. When she could no longer cope she moved to a nursing home, where she died in 2007.