The famous diarist, the Revd James Woodforde (1740–1803), lived for 27 years at Weston Longville, twelve miles northwest of Norwich. He began his daily diary at the age of nineteen while at Oxford, continued it as a young curate in Somerset and then as a fellow of New College, Oxford before moving to Norfolk in 1776. [1]  

The Parson Woodforde Society was founded in 1968 to develop knowledge of James Woodforde’s life and the society in which he lived, and to provide an opportunity for fellow enthusiasts to meet together in places associated with the diarist. 

The Parson Woodforde Society’s redesigned website, launched in March 2024, is a valuable resource for those researching family and local history. It is especially strong on all matters affecting the clergy and parish administration, but also covers a very wide range of other subjects.  

Indexes to a treasure trove of research 

Feel free to browse this exciting new site with its mass of colourful images. All 207 of the Parson Woodforde Society Journals published since our foundation have been scanned and uploaded; more will follow as they are issued. You can download all these editions, with their scholarly articles, for free. You can also download the index, divided into five categories, which accompanies them. Each cover is displayed on the Journal webpage, a single click opening the full edition.

The full text of James Woodforde’s extraordinary diary in seventeen volumes has also been published. The index to this voluminous work is available for download for free: a treasure trove for family and local historians. You can find details on how to buy individual Diary volumes and our other publications using the website’s Publications page. [2] 

The Journal articles, the unabridged Diary and the new website dispel two common myths about Woodforde: that he was a glutton preoccupied with large meals, and that he had little in the way of spiritual motivation. In fact people did not help themselves to all the dishes on offer; and Woodforde’s religion infused his actions. He was much given to spontaneous prayers and thanksgivings in his diary and other notebooks. 

Links with holdings in the NRO 

The Norfolk Record Office holds many documents of direct relevance to Woodforde’s diary. Family historians are used to trawling through parish registers filled with untidy entries in crabbed hands. The Weston Longville parish register presented to the parish in 1783 by the local squire, a staunch friend of Woodforde, provides a welcome contrast. 

The first entry is for Frances Anne Custance, the fifth child and eldest daughter of John and Frances Custance of Weston House. Her father purchased the new register a few months before her birth, and had the title page elaborately inscribed. Two of his children are entered on the opening page, Emily’s birth following Frances Anne’s fourteen months later. In his diary for 20 and 23 February 1783 Woodforde describes the gift to the parish of ‘a very handsome register . . . bound in red morocco leather’. 

The rector made careful entries in his neat, clear handwriting from the start of the register; his signature is at the foot of the page. He gives the date of birth as well as baptism—a boon for family historians. Many other Norfolk clergy were sloppy over their record of baptisms and burials; Woodforde, well trained by his clerical father in Somerset, is unusually methodical. 

A painting by William Beechey of Frances Anne Custance with her parents c.1786 can be seen at the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery. [3] 

You can read about the Custances of Weston on the Parson Woodforde Society website. Their family pew in Weston Longville Church is featured as one of twelve objects through which we can explore Woodforde’s life and times. [4]  

A small item like the cream jug once owned by Woodforde’s clerical neighbour sparks a study of loneliness among the Norfolk clergy and ways in which they could overcome their sense of isolation in the countryside. [5] 

The NRO’s episcopal visitation returns: a much under-used resource 

Every few years the clergy were required to answer lengthy printed questionnaires from the bishop; the see of Norwich has an especially valuable series for Woodforde’s period. They provide historians with vast amounts of data about the parish and the people in it: the schools including Sunday schools, the number of communicants, tithe problems, the number and type of Dissenters and many other matters. 

The loquacious diarist is surprisingly reticent, even evasive, in his replies to the bishop, as described in a study of his parochial work on the Society’s website. [6] His responses for 1784, 1794 and 1801 are held under Sparham deanery in the NRO (DN/VIS 29a/9, DN/VIS 34a/7, and DN/VIS 38/6). In common with other official sources in the eighteenth century the diocesan records give the name of the parish as Weston, and not Weston Longville. Apart from one occasion, its name as given by Woodforde is always Weston. 

Church regulations required the clergy to avoid baptising a baby privately, if at all possible. The parents were expected to bring their newborn to the unheated church for the christening ceremony. However the kindly Woodforde, in common with most Norfolk clergy, allowed himself to be prevailed upon to conduct a private baptism soon after the birth, whether the child were in danger or not. He differed from his fellow clergy in not being prepared to own up to the bishop about his departure from the church canons. The parish register and his diary log his approach to the tricky issue; he was noticeably prone to give the Custances a good deal of latitude. 

The Marshams and today’s Marsham Arms 

And what became of the little girl with whose baptism the Weston register opens? In 1804 Frances Anne Custance married Robert Marsham of Stratton Strawless Hall, also born in 1783; they went on to have a large family. She died in 1874. Her husband was the grandson of the famous naturalist Robert Marsham, FRS (1708–97). In 1832 Frances Anne’s husband founded a hostel for homeless farm labourers on the Holt road in Hevingham parish. By 1845 this had become a public house, the Marsham Arms—still very popular today. [7] 

[1]  https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/diary.html 

[2]  https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/publications.html 

[3]  NWHCM: 1990.232: F © Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/mr-and-mrs-john-custance-of-norwich-and-their-daughter-frances-1332 

[4]  https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/features-object-custance-pew.html 

[5]  https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/features-object-duquesne-jug.html 

[6]  https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/features-object-weston-tablet.html 

[7]  https://www.robertmarsham.co.uk/about-robert-marsham/the-marsham-family-estate 

Note: all these websites were accessed 1 April 2024. 

by Margaret Bird, President and Acting Chairman of the Parson Woodforde Society, 1 April 2024