Beccles: Suffolk from yesteryear brought to life in book

Social history, particularly the history of Suffolk, has always fascinated Gillian Campbell, a former social worker. 

During the 1980s, when she was working in Beccles, Mrs Campbell realised that time was running out to preserve a Suffolk that was fast becoming a thing of the past. 

“It was getting evident that society was changing,” said Mrs Campbell. She decided to interview everyday people, many of whom were in their 80s and 90s, to capture the Suffolk of their childhoods. Nearly all of these people have since died. 

Gillian Campbell first started work on her book in the 1980s. Image: Gillian Campbell (Image: Gillian Campbell)

The sketches for Mrs Campbell's book were provided by the late artist and farmer, John Constable Reeve. Credit: John Constable Reeve (Image: John Reeve Constable)

The book recalls the memories of people who grew up in Beccles. Credit: John Constable Reeve (Image: John Constable Reeve)

Mrs Campbell found that, rather than an idyllic childhood in the countryside, life for her interviewees could be hard. Credit: John Constable Reeve (Image: John Constable Reeve)

Now, 40 years later, Mrs Campbell has compiled an analogy of these recollections, which will be published next week. And I Looked Back: East Anglians in Their Own Words tells the stories of those born in the early 1900s. 

“I quickly found that there is no such thing as an ordinary life,” said Mrs Campbell. For her interviewees, the idea of a ‘teenager’ as we know it today did not exist. They would leave school at 13, to begin their working lives. 

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Far from an idyllic life in the countryside, life was often incredibly hard. And I Looked Back tells the story of a boy put to the plough with a horse at just eight years old; another who went to sea on a storm drifter; and a mother who gave birth in a workhouse. 

One woman, known as Betty, lost her mother at the age of 10. While her father went out to work, walking from Beccles to Darsham each day, Betty was left to raise her three younger brothers. 

"Betty feels that today, the children would have been taken into care,” said Mrs Campbell. “But the family of four stayed together, united. It’s staggering.” 

And I Looked Back is available from Halesworth and Beccles bookshops and Beccles Museum.