Old Catton :: Robert Rogers, Catton Place, The Firs

This is the only contemporary comment on Robert, which I could find, that gives any clue to his character. It is why I am starting with his obituary. When John Goodman, who was mayor the year before Robert, died the Norwich Mercury printed the fact without comment.

Robert Rogers was born at Little Dunham near Castle Acre, the second son of Thomas Rogers(1). In 1716, when Robert was probably seven, his father was High Sheriff for the County and died in office. His eldest son, Thomas, aged twenty, was appointed to succeed his father (2).

Robert was apprenticed to John Langly, Worsted Weaver, in the parish of St George’s Colegate, Norwich, where Robert continued to work for the rest of his working life(3). Wymer Ward and Over-the-Water had traditionally been the centre of weaving in Norwich(4). He was given the Freedom of Norwich in June 1730 (3). Most apprenticeships lasted seven years and the usual age to finish was twenty one.

By 1731 Robert was paying the land tax(5) and in the 1734 election he voted Whig(6). He married Ann, daughter of Framingham and Mary Jay of Cley, and their first child was born in 1733. Ann died in 1737, when only twenty eight and all their three children also died young. In view of the house Robert built in c.1758 it is worth noting how he lived in Norwich. Three years after his apprenticeship the Window Tax Return shows that he was living in one of the larger houses in St George’s, Colegate, and by 1756 he was paying the second highest window tax in the parish(5). Ann must have brought money into the marriage, because the size of his house in 1733, in no way reflected his business, or in 1756. There seems to have been a certain prodigality about Robert even in his early twenties. John Harvey ‘acquired an ample fortune by exact economy’.

The land tax returns show that Robert’s business grew and then in 1747 ‘Robert Rogers City of Norwich worsted weaver’ bought Copyhold land on the Manor of Catton(7). It was for a third of an acre of land, with a ‘tenament’ (8), known as St Margaret’s Well. Catton, two and a half miles from Norwich, had been one of the traditional Weaver villages since the 14c.(9) and the 1734 Norfolk Poll Book shows that then, there were still Worsted Weavers at Catton. St Margaret’s Well was most likely bought as a property, which would bring in rent.

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1	Thomas Rogers has moved from Dersingham to Little Dunham by 1708 because he presents the rector that year – Blomfield IX pg. 480.
2	A monument in Little Dunham church, put up by Robert for his brother Thomas, includes the words: He was the eldest son Thomas Rogers Esq., late of Dersingham in this county., upon whose death whilst High Sheriff in the year 1716 He was appointed to succeed in that office.
3	St George’s Land Tax Returns and The Freemen of Norwich 1714–1752 by P. Millican. He would probably have been about 21 when he finished his apprenticeship.
4	Unpublished thesis on Weavers to 16c. by Allinson.
5	Explanation of the Parish and Taxes on page 11.
6	1734-5 Norwich Poll St George’s Colegate – Robert Rogers voted for Thomas Vere.
7	Explanation of Copyhold tenure, see Manor of Catton page 10.
8	Messuage and tenement seem interchangeable descriptions of houses. From houses so described and still standing in Catton, they were timber framed and brick infill. But in Robert’s will he refers to his ‘houses’ in Norwich and refers to Catton Place as a ‘Capital messuage’.
9	Unpublished thesis by Allinson.

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