…… groceries were ordered in advance from the Broadland village stores and were delivered to the boatyard to await your arrival, many holidaymakers travelled to Norfolk and Suffolk by train or coach rather than in a car, and your boat’s water tanks were topped up via the old village handpumps?
Horning Green Handpump 1932
There is a great thread running on the Norfolk Broads Forum at the moment which has some lovely memories of the Broads in times gone by, along with some interesting photographs from Broadland’s past. From reminiscences about growing up and working in Oulton Broad, to boating holidays in the 1950s and 1960s, there are some interesting snippets of local history to read there and hopefully more to come. The image on the right shows the old handpump which stood on the green at Horning, and also the large enamel jugs which were used to top up the boat’s fresh water tank. It dates from 1932 and is actually a still from one of two cine films I have of one family’s boating holidays with Herbert Woods in the early 1930s. They are a fascinating record of boating on the Broads at that time, and I hope to finally begin editing them in the new year with a view to making the footage available via the Broadland Memories website.
If you have any memories of living and working on the Broads, or recollections of boating holidays from the past, then I would love to add them to the Broadland Memories archive. There are already some wonderful accounts of boating holidays during the 1930s, 40s, 50s, right up until the 1980s within the personal memories section of the archive, but I am always keen to add more!
