Agnes Palmer was ten years old when she moved to number 121 King Street with her parents. For 71 years, Agnes lived in a sub-divided space that is now the room at the Southern end of ‘Old Barge room’, and died at the age of 81 in the Spring of 1913 – the year before the first World War began.
‘The Wyll and Testament of Agnes Palmer’ is inspired by Isabella Whitney, arguably the first female poet and professional writer in England. There are other female poets who write before her – namely Julian of Norwich and Aemilia Lanyer – but what makes Whitney the exception is the fact that she published non-religious material and was of the lower middle class.
Dragon Hall’s Tudor heritage, and the excavation of Agnes’s names in the archives, has prompted this emulation of Whitney’s mock-testament, infusing the trope of generosity, trade, service and social history.
(Image courtesy of Norfolk County Council Library and Information Service at www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk)
The Will and Testament of Agnes Palmer
After Isabella Whitney
The author, in single state and living of ‘own means’, in this brief abridgement of my will I make: my soul to the skies and body to the ground. I hereby appoint Dragon Hall of King Street to serve as the Sole Executor of this will to see her legacies and bequests carried out.
In the present time, I walked out into the yard, and met a friend who said, in stammered speech severe, “if you regard your health, you’ll move out of St Julian’s alley, for soon it will be cleared of poverty’s plague”. Not fearing death, nor seeking it, I thus write this Will and Testament in morning of April ninth, nineteen thirteen, in my own hand with Pen, Ink and Paper present as my witnesses – and Time left as my only kin.
The time is come – I must depart from you,
Dragon Hall. I am no man: I am a
feme sole, shaped a life according to mine own.
Though I am grieved to go, I have lived
despite no vote, no credit, nor education.
I never bore child, nor wedded,
but never did I regret it.
There’s too much work in being a wife.
If I had married a man, I would have
been mother, maid, nurse, housekeeper,
launderess, seamstress and scrub.
What legacy can a cordwainer’s daughter bequeath to you?
Words… To emulate a woman who remains yet wholly known,
I set to replication: in imperfect stanzas, absent metre,
Yet with a steady scrape of ink, to construct
a home in the house that the word built,
to deter further acts of wilful erasure.
Indeed, my father, William, and four brothers:
Samuel, Ellis Edmund and John, lived here,
but here too lived my mother, Maria,
and sisters, Alice and Elizabeth.
One girl married, one invalided,
single and died, leaving me at the head.
Now, let me dispose of the things that I shall
leave behind. Being in sound and healthy memory,
I first of all to Dragon Hall leave, because
I’ve been here since I was ten,
for Merchant’s cloth store, a rare first floor,
lavishly adorned and crown post roof & trusses
from ‘Great’ numbered timbers, felled in Spring.
Between rooms below: a level ground,
faced with knapped flint from the front.
At each gable, I leave a pair of carved corbels:
two heads at peace, two squabbling.
For newlyweds and lovers eloping:
an ‘ogee’ door to make their wedded entrance.
In Foyle’s gallery above a crystal aisle,
I leave an open sky between every word.
Between the middle, I leave a rectory,
where resides a priest, for those in need of
peace, or prayers, a place to contemplate.
To protect from defected spirits and demons.
I leave 50 witchmarks: burnt, etched,
painted, scratched, at windows, doors and fireplaces.
For wallpaper, patterns of worn-out age,
there, scraped back to bare essence,
is lavender, lilac, once watery blue.
I, one carved dragon, leave, in Baltic oak,
To ponder its thirteen lost companions.
For those who seek to settle, on the footpath
once between cliff and river, I leave
a Saxon hut in the cellar to shelter ordinary life.
I will leave six chief dwellings, three storeys,
between ‘blood and guts ’ and the block.
And next such shops, for Mary Wiles,
I leave Atwood’s room, dwelling with her daughter.
Then for their food, I leave Swatman’s butchers,
with tender knife, sinew, saw and bone.
By Wensum, they shall have fish processing
and curing house , to dine on fish thrice weekly.
For each day’s sustenance, at Heydon’s Bakers,
smooth white rolls and plump loaves rising.
For Mrs Lark, a cherished shop, so your
days be filled with joy and sweetness.
Because these goods will need a store,
you shall have an undercroft full
of worsted cloth, dyes and spices .
And for punters who call at Old Barge Pub,
wines, liquors, spirits for their fuel.
For weary workers seeking rest, I leave
pressed sheets and our second-best bed.
Now when all within have fed and dressed,
From what has been such far given,
For empty stomachs and voiceless mouths,
should ill health, TB, diptheria, or flu
run through a family, let them have doctor
to care for the sick and no visitors.
I leave one oriel window open to catch
some air as swansong flutters in.
Where warm air hails from river, I leave
A yard, two hundred and fifty square
squeezed in between a rookery,
beds of flowers bordered by bone, and
buttery hellos of nodding daffodils.
In thoroughfare, amidst the bustle,
I leave a packhorse gently nuzzling oats,
its frame strapped to a cart.
I leave portraits from Lound and Squirrel:
Four chickens, wearing skirts of feather,
musing over buckled stones.
To the woman headed St Julian’s alley,
she’ll have my black shawl and best mantle.
To the washerwoman by the window,
I leave my mother’s mangle and all my finest aprons.
In Lound’s pastels, I leave a smudge faced child,
pearls that are her eyes, nestled in her mother’s side.
I leave Old Barge yard, not yet cleared,
Give unto Seamus Yates, and wife,
the fireside chair. For Sarah Hardy,
to be put up safe and sent to her,
a box of China dogs. To Eleanor Green,
with babe in her arms, the sum of 29 silk squares.
A dowry of bovine wealth, Black cattle,
gently walking north to the use and profit
of Henry, Ann and their five children.
Elizabeth Postle shall have my silver spoon
for stirring jam, the fat vases and bone-ash plates.
Mrs Armes should have the mirror from over mantel,
crooked limbs of furniture, in darkest walnut
and the tread of a stone-cold floor.
The East End at Number 16, will have
Plaster cracked, coursing veins of dirt;
half of my towels hanged out to air
Behind toothless gaps of picket fence.
I leave furs and great coats so
bodies sprawled over the cobbles may
Fold themselves into the rough grown groves.
I to watermen leave a black-sailed trading wherry
for navigating the river’s hum and flow.
For women weaving, I, by the loom, have
left a boy, curly-haired as soft and black as
soot, will help you guide your threads.
For women shall you petticoats have,
Of silk, camlet, callimanco, there I leave
a sister pinning back the seams of
fabrics to black bosoms, white waists
of velvet, fustian, satin, silks, carmine,
lace-edged, and razored scissors.
Boots and shoes from finest leather in any size,
For men who tan, saddle and bind.
Behind the warehouse at river’s edge,
I leave the wharf for traders to hurry
bundles of cloth to be sold,
in Low Countries and beyond.
Tailoresses you shall have with haste,
Stitching garments on demand.
Leatherworkers and cordwainers,
Shaping waxen hides with hand.
Carters and porters, strong and true,
tinkers and bone merchants bringing wares,
Steeds groomed and custom for ostlers,
A full cart for milk sellers, serving with pride,
and milk pure, for infant’s faces with parched
mouths that suck at empty teats.
Give to scavengers toiling tirelessly:
so they may have their efforts endured,
and rags for pickers to gather busy in labour’s lane.
By Youngs and Crawshay, there are
charwomen, draymen, and brewer’s servants,
hearths clean and ale casks rolling.
I, women waiting in doorways, leave to observe
what is past, passing, or to come.
On wet days, I leave the scurry of a rat
feeding the decay of things, filth, waste, foul,
and a drain throwing refuse into rancid dampness.
Loops of linen on sagging lines – their
melancholic tapestries through hanging threads.
At five o clock, I leave a girl on St Ann’s who
walks for the second time in her life,
and a man, fine suit, starched handkerchief,
who engages her in conversation.
In sweltering heat and mingled stink,
And the warm, wet spread of sweat:
There you’ll see one child you know
who cries out loud, unable to contain
himself, you’ll stop him crying.
On Saturdays, for the oldest child
To jump in first, I leave a tin bath,
two copper saucepans, warmed by fire,
scum skimmed off the water top.
For after, to keep your regulars,
one spoon full of figs syrup, and a
liquorice to take the taste out your mouth.
On Sundays, I leave a dozen children playing
in the slow business of growing, near to
daughters in’t’yard who should never be ruled.
When I am gone, I leave generous citizens
with purse to live, lending what to debtors owe:
Ask money of any and they shall give it.
By the cottage, I leave a persons, to write books
and alter their contents so that one may find
stories whispered in every fastened stone.
For you: most treasured reader, I leave
the door, unlocked,
to step inside Dragon Hall.
Author’s note
Born in an age of the first cholera epidemic in England, Agnes Palmer was ten years old when she moved to number 121 King Street with her parents William Palmer, Maria (nee Leeds) and her siblings. For 71 years, Agnes lived in a sub-divided space that is now the room at the Southern end of ‘Old Barge room’, and died at the age of 81 in the Spring of 1913 – the year before the first World War began.
Agnes worked as a seamstress and lived with her sister, Elizabeth Palmer, who was also a tailoress and head of the household. When Elizabeth died, Agnes inherited the role of ‘head’. The Victorian seamstress was a precarious position to occupy, teetering just above the poverty line. Dressmaking was both an art and a plight – with workhouses producing garments, paying low wages and selling clothes for much less. Agnes found herself in the rare circumstances of controlling her inheritance and finances, yet it offered little security against the relentless demands of Victorian survival.
Property rights and marriage acts of Agnes and Elizabeth’s time meant that once women were married, their properties were governed by English law which required that any property women took into marriage were absorbed by their husbands, whereas single women, as long as they remained unmarried, could maintain control over all of their property, including their inheritance. Married women could not make wills or dispose of any property without their husband’s consent.
This piece is inspired by Isabella Whitney, arguably the first female poet and professional writer in England. There are other female poets who writer before her – namely Julian of Norwich (up the road!) and Aemilia Lanyer – but what makes Whitney the exception is the fact that she published non-religious material and was of the lower middle class. There is very little concretely known about Whitney due to history’s tendency to overlook or to record women in the archives – though we do know she was living in Abchurch Lane, London, during the October of 1573. After this, there is a question mark as to her existence.
Struggling to make a living as a maidservant because of the plague outbreaks in London, finding herself ‘unchaperoned’ on the street, in addition to the fact that she could not get ‘credit’ nor earn money, Whitney turned to her pen, desperate to survive. In the conclusion of her volume, A Sweet Nosgay (1573), Whitney published a long poem called ‘Wyll and Testament’ – where she takes London as her possession to bequeath and appoints London as both her executor and a recipient of her will – it is a powerful form of writing with a strong flavour of the sixteenth century London. Dragon Hall’s Tudor heritage, and the excavation of Agnes’s names in the archives, has prompted this emulation of Whitney’s mock-testament, infusing the trope of generosity, trade, service and social history.
About the author
After eight years of teaching English in Hull, India, and Norfolk, Lucyl Harrison is now a PhD researcher with the Living with Death: Learning from Covid cluster at the University of Hull. She is currently researching the ‘new’ language and literature that have emerged as a response to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Find her walking along the beaches of North Norfolk, always accompanied by her chocolate-coloured spaniel, or co-hosting ‘Pandemic Pages’ – the literary podcast delving into the realm of Covid fiction.
A Tapestry of Tales
Who lived at Dragon Hall? What have these old walls witnessed? Whose story hasn’t yet been told? These are the questions that formed the foundation of a project undertaken by the Story Makers, a group of a participants that generously gave their time and skills to discover, share and celebrate Dragon Hall’s heritage.
Combining historical research and creative practice, the Story Makers spent ten sessions engaging with Dragon Hall and the surrounding King Street area in a variety of ways, before using their creative skills to produce personal interpretations of the history they uncovered.
From poems to pamphlets, videos to pop-up books, we invite you to explore their work in our digital collection.
Stepping into Dragon Hall is made possible by Arts Council England, National Lottery Heritage Fund, Norwich Freemen’s Charity and Wolfson Foundation.
