Billy Lacey
One of the last marshmen who tended the reed beds, dykes and cattle of the Norfolk Broads
BILLY LACEY, who has died aged 94, was one of the last of the marshmen, a rugged band of individuals who made a living from maintaining the dykes, reed beds and grazing marshes of the Norfolk Broads. Despite appearances, the landscape of the Broads is entirely artificial – the result of inundated peat diggings from medieval times when peat provided an important source of fuel. In the 18th century a network of windmill pumps was installed to drain what had been an impassable expanse of bog. Marshmen were employed to tend the windmills and marshes, often living in isolation and only venturing into local villages to sell reeds for thatch.
But, as the pumps became electrified, the marshmen drifted away with only a few remaining to practise the skills – bunching, trimming and stacking reeds, clearing dykes, and tending hundreds of cattle – which had been handed down from generation to generation, along with the knowledge of the safe routes through the marshes.
Lacey became a marshman in the late 1950s, working on the marshes at Cantley, to the north of the River Yare, and later at Berney Arms, close to Breydon Water, an area which is now within the Halvergate Marshes Site of Special Scientific Interest.
“I can’t remember what made me decide to take the job on,” he told the Eastern Daily Press in 2017, “but back then you would accept any job you could get. I’ve always been a very outdoorsy person, so it really suited me.
“I did not realise how lonely it would be, I lived in a house in the middle of the marsh and there were only two other houses anywhere near me.”
To begin with, the house lacked electricity and running water, so Lacey used candles and oil lamps for light and a Rayburn for heat. For several years he drank rainwater.
During a talk for the oral history group WISE he described his routine: “There was some 400 acres and you worked alone. You had your own area and you were really in charge of yourself. The main things we did were [cleaning and removing weeds from] the dykes and drains in the wintertime and tending the cattle in the summer.”
His work would begin at 8am when he would prepare his tools for the day ahead: his scythe would typically need sharpening for about an hour and a half. The work was physically demanding and there was no time off for bad weather.
During the harsh winters of the early 1960s he would be out on the frozen marshes with little in the way of protective clothing; in thick fog it was difficult to find the way home.
The beginning of the end for the marshmen was the introduction in the early 1970s of diggers to maintain the larger dykes. With less to do, Lacey looked for other work and, after moving to Halvergate, where he bought a piece of land on which to build a bungalow, he tended other people’s sheep and began his own small flock. Later he kept cattle and did casual work for local landowners.
By the time Lacey retired after about 45 years on the marshes, there was only one marshman still working.
One of five children, William Lacey was born at Reedham, Norfolk on March 14 1927 and as a child moved with his family around Norfolk and north Suffolk. For six years his parents ran a pub in Burgh St Peter, and after his father took a job with the East Norfolk Rivers Catchment Board, the family moved to Haddiscoe.
Lacey attended school in Lowestoft, which was evacuated to Barnham Broom, Norfolk, during the war. After leaving school aged 14, he found work helping to look after cattle in Cantley, before becoming a marshman.
“It was a good life,” he told the EDP. “I really enjoyed the solitary nature of it – I worked for myself my entire life and didn’t have to worry about what other people were doing.”
Lacey’s wife predeceased him. He is survived by three children. Billy Lacey, born March 14 1927, died July 5 2021