Norfolk

With somewhere in the region of 12.5 million documents to choose from, there are all sorts of strange, unique and valuable items housed in the shelves and strongrooms of the county archive in Norwich.

During the early 1800s, the vicar of Middleton, a parish in the west of the county, began to make pointed remarks about his parishioners in the occupation column of the registers. These included “Publican and beggar maker”, “Chopper of chips” and the blunt “Whore and mantrap”. Or there’s “Golden Balls”, who was born in Aylsham in Norfolk in 1836, and baptised in the Primitive