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Updated: June 14, 2025
As his step-daughter observed to me, the proper way is by water; to get to the house by land—at least as I did—you walk along the rail for a couple of miles, then break off across a bit of a swamp, to a little lane that conducts you to Oulton Church—a very ancient one, which, however, is in a state of good repair and is noted partly on account of the fact that the steeple is built in the middle, and partly on account of its containing, so it is said, the earliest example of a brass to an ecclesiastic which is to be found in England.
Just after he was seventy, in 1874, the year of Jasper Petulengro's death, Borrow left London for Oulton. He was no longer the walker and winter bather of a year or two before, but was frequently at lodgings in Norwich, and seen and noted as he walked in the streets or sat in the "Norfolk."
Often, at night, in the winter, when I was walking home from Lowestoft school, I would see the farmers riding to the rendezvous in the dark, with their horses' hoofs all wrapped up in sacks, to make no noise. I lived for twelve years at Oulton. I learned how to handle a boat there, how to swim, how to skate, how to find the eggs of the many wild fowl in the reeds.
MacOubrey, the Henrietta of “Wild Wales,” who had a sincere affection for him, was his constant attendant during his last illness, and was with him at the end. He was buried at Brompton Cemetery, where his body lies beside that of his wife. Not long after his death, his Oulton home was pulled down.
Borrow had other occupations than preparing his manuscript for the printer's hands. He was ill and overwrought, and small things became magnified out of all proportion to their actual importance. There had been a dispute between Borrow's dog and that of the rector of Oulton, the Rev. E. P. Denniss, and as the place was small, the dogs met frequently and renewed their feud.
Much of the "Romany Rye" was written at Oulton Broad, where, after his marriage in 1840, Borrow lived until he removed to Hereford Square, Brompton. At Oulton, it is worthy of record, gipsies were allowed to pitch their tents, the author of "Romany Rye" and "Lavengro" mingling freely with them. As a novel, the "Romany Rye" is preferred by many readers to any of Borrow's other works.
Edmund Skepper had married Anne Breame of Beetley, who, on the death of her father, came into 9000 pounds. She and her husband purchased the Oulton Hall estate, upon which Anne Skepper seems to have been given a five per cent. mortgage. The boy inherited the estate, and the girl the mortgage, worth about 450 pounds per annum.
"During his latter years," writes Mr W. A. Dutt, "his tall, erect, somewhat mysterious figure was often seen in the early hours of summer mornings or late at night on the lonely pathways that wind in and out from the banks of Oulton Broad . . . the village children used to hush their voices and draw aside at his approach.
Borrow may have felt more at liberty to make the change now that his mother was dead, although whilst she was at Oulton he was as little company for her at Great Yarmouth as he would have been in London.
I was born at Oulton, in Suffolk, in the year 1672. I know not the day of my birth, but it was in March, a day or two after the Dutch war began. I know this, because my father, who was the clergyman at Oulton, once told me that in the night of my birth a horseman called upon him, at the rectory, to ask the way to Lowestoft.
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