HETHERSETT VANE.
An amusing record of old country superstition survives in the proceedings arising out of the theft of seven cheeses at Hethersett in 1797. A Mrs. Wissen, whose cheeses had mysteriously disappeared, instead of consulting a magistrate, a lawyer, or even the parish constable, went to a “cunning woman,” or white witch, who, after much supernatural mystification, told her that the missing cheeses had been stolen by a woman with a prominent mark on her nose. Whether the “cunning woman” really meant any particular person or not does not appear, but there unfortunately was a woman, a Mrs. Bailey, so nasally decorated, living hard by. The owner of the cheeses thus spirited away must have known the owner of that carbuncly, or otherwise, marked organ, but she seems to have been loth to act upon her information, or to do more than talk about it. At any rate, we do not hear any more of her; but the affair was not ended at that, for one Chamberlain, a local shoemaker, coming on one occasion into violent dispute with the unfortunate Mrs. Bailey, taxed her with the robbery, saying, “she showed her guilt in her nose and couldn’t get it off.” The owner of that compromising nose was naturally indignant, and brought an action for slander against the shoemaker at the Norwich Assizes; but the jury of country folk, equally susceptible to superstition, looked with suspicion upon that organ, and brought in a verdict for the defendant.
From Hethersett we make for Cringleford, and down the winding, tree-shaded descent past Cringleford church to the level where Cringleford mill sits serenely beside the weedy river Yare. Not only is the descent winding, but it is narrow as well. Yet, not so very long ago, it was narrower still, for a tablet in the wall at the foot of the hill tells us, rather grandiloquently, that—
This Road was Widen’d
13 Feet
Anno Domini 1823.
Garratt Taylor Knott,
Surveyor.
Prodigious! Careful pacing discovers the fact that it is only twenty-five feet wide even now. By what careful driving, or special interposition of Providence, did the Norwich Mail and the stage-coaches succeed in escaping disaster at this point, when the road measured only twelve feet in breadth? One accident is, indeed, recorded to have happened to a coach described as the “Newmarket Mail” in 1846. It was an overturn at Cringleford Gate, and was not very serious, the only results being a general distribution of bruises, and a broken arm and collar-bone.
