Kings Lynn
1749 – 1760
Kings Lynn on the Norfolk coast 98 miles from London was where the Burney family had their first home. It was a thriving seaport and market town well placed for traders from the Hanseatic League (Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck, Rostock and Danzig) who built fine houses and warehouses as did the local merchants. Plenty of prosperous middle and upper-class families wanted music lessons for their children.
Charles Burney had lung problems which forced him to leave London. He was offered a well-paid job (£20 a year raised to over £100 by local subscription) as organist at St. Margaret’s church (designated in 2011 by the Bishop of Norwich as Kings Lynn Minster) with the opportunity to build up private teaching which would help the finances even more. So he moved up to Kings Lynn in 1749. Esther did not go with him remaining in London with her three children, her mother, her business and the wet nurses. Charles was not happy. He complained that the congregation was made up of musical ignoramuses and as for the organ “the bad organ and the ignorance of my auditors must totally extinguish the few sparks of genius for composition I may have…”. He decided to leave at the end of the year after receiving the first quarterly instalment of his salary.
However, his attitude changed and on the 19th December 1751 he wrote a long and cheerful poem to Esther telling her to prepare to leave London promising her good wine, good music (if only from his own hand) and quiet evenings which could be spent in reading their favourite authors. He had quickly made friends among the clergy and physicians and gradually extended his social circle to the “principal nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood – Charles, third Viscount Townshend at Raynham; Sir Andrew Fountaine at Narford; John Hobart Earl of Buckinghamshire at Blickling; Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester at Holkham; William Windham at Felbrigg and most important of all, George Walpole, third Earl of Orford at Houghton. True to his hard working ethic, Charles busied himself organising dances, events in the Assembly rooms and became quite a celebrity.
Esther joined him with their three children (James, Hetty, and Charles) when he was established. While in Kings Lynn Esther had three more children, Fanny, Susanna and Charles, but she also lost two sons both named Charles.
The Burneys rented a house described by Charles as “pretty and convenient for 12 pounds a year” in Chapel Street for a short time; time enough for Fanny to be born there on 13th June 1752 and christened, Frances, next door at St. Nicholas Church where her two brothers were later buried.
The next move was to 84 High Street where they remained for about 10 years. In the 1750s large and fashionable shops were built on this street. Big barrel-shaped windows of many panes fronted spacious interiors full of merchandise of linen, carpets, glass, teas, sugar, coffee, chocolates, and hats.
Births, deaths, teaching, reading, studying languages, visiting, and developing friendships were the way of life as well as regular trips back to London for Esther to check on her business and family and Charles to maintain his contacts in the cultural world.
The Tuesday Market Place
Fanny’s Childhood in Kings Lynn
After the death of Fanny’s mother, Esther, her father remarried a widow from Kings Lynn, Elizabeth Allen. Mrs Allen kept her house in Kings Lynn and Fanny and her sisters stayed regularly in this house in the summer months of the late 1760s with their newly acquired siblings.
July 10 1768
“We arrived in Lynn very weary about six o’clock last night. Such a set of tittle tattle, prittle prattle visitants! Oh dear! I am so sick of the ceremony and fuss of all these fall lall people! So much dressing – chit chat- complimentary nonsense – In short – a Country Town is my detestation – all the conversation is scandal, all the attention, dress, and almost all the heart, folly, envy and censoriousness. A City or a village are the only places where I can be comfortable, for a Country Town, I think has all the bad qualities, without one of the good ones, of both.
We live here, generally speaking, in a very regular way – we breakfast always at ten and rise as much before as we please – we dine precisely at 2, drink tea about 6 and sup exactly at nine. I make a kind of rule, never to indulge myself in my two most favourite pursuits, reading and writing in the morning – no, like a very good girl I give that up wholly … to needlework by which means my reading and writing in the afternoon is a pleasure I cannot be blamed for…”
July 19 1768
“We have just had a wedding…Our house is in the Church yard, and exactly opposite the great church door – so that we had a very good view of the procession.…The walk that leads up to the church was crowded almost incredibly a prodidgious mob indeed…I am sure I trembled for the bride. O what a gauntlet for any woman of delicacy to run! – …O how short a time does it take to put an eternal end to a woman’s liberty! I don’t think they were a quarter of an hour in the Church altogether…”
“Tonight the whole household is disturbed by noise from yet another tedious ball in the Assembly Rooms!”
July 17 1768
“We attended a large party at the Assembly Rooms last night. My dance partner was handsome, but I danced only once as the room was hot and fatiguing…”
July 22 1768
She wrote from “Cabin” a little building that overlooked the river “I always spend the evening, sometimes all the afternoon in this sweet cabin…except sometimes, when unusually thoughtful, I prefer the garden…” In the summer months, the river would have been crowded with ships and along the quay, there would be hundreds of sailors. Perhaps it was from listening to them that she learned some of the language used by the rough Captain Mirvan in “Evelina”. In a letter to Fanny from her step-sister, Maria Allen (Mrs Rishton) in 1778, Maria contrasts her Belvedere or “Look Out” in her new matrimonial home in King Street with the Cabin. “This overlooks a much pleasanter part of the river, as we never have any ships laying against our Watergate… by which means we escape the oaths and ribaldry of the sailors and porters which used often to drive us from (the Cabin).”
The Walpole Collection
Through his teaching, Charles had contact with the great Norfolk families but in particular with Lord Orford at Houghton Hall, where he became a regular visitor and was encouraged to study the remarkable collection of paintings acquired by the Walpoles. Although this collection was sold to Catherine the Great and others to pay debts, the current Lord Cholmondeley was able to persuade the Hermitage Museum to lend them for an exhibition in 2013 at Houghton where they were displayed with the same furniture and in the same situation as they were in 1760s. It was very exciting to see this great collection of the 18th century and like everyone else who saw it, I was very impressed.
Esteban Murillo 1680 Walpole Immaculate Conception
Kings Lynn Map 1700's
Kings Lynn Map 21st Century
Painting in the Purfleet Heritage and Military Centre, Kings Lynn
My Trip to Kings Lynn
On the train trip from Kings Cross to Kings Lynn I spent the 1 hour and 50 minutes comparing my journey with that of the Burneys. Fanny describes one trip which took 2 nights and 3 days in a letter dated September 8 1769:
“Mama, Miss Allen, and Susette accompanied us as far as Thetford, where we saw the remains, which we visited carefully, of monasteries and abbeys…Called to supper. At Thetford we slept, [and the next morning separated. Miss Allen and sweet Susette looked weeping after us till the road turned.] Our first stage was very gloomy – we spent it in regretting the absence of those who had so much contributed to enliven our first day’s journey, which was really delightful – but we recovered our spirits afterwards, and were very comfortable – we slept at Hockrel [Hockerill, near Bishop’s Stortford] that night and on Friday evening got to town – rather slow travelling, but the same horses with our heavy large coach could not go faster. We dined that day on Epping Forest – what a delightful spot! We almost always go different roads to Lynn, which make a variety of prospect and novelty of view highly preferable to the high road sameness. Hetty was charmed even with the smoak [of London].”
The historic part of Kings Lynn would be recognisable to Fanny (though the newer, commercial area to the east would come as a rather unpleasant surprise with its road systems, supermarkets, shopping precincts). My first stop was the Tourist Bureau in the Town Hall. Kings Lynn is very proud of the Burney connection and there is a special brochure “A Walk through the Burneys Georgian Lynn”. The Assembly Rooms in this building were built in 1767 (Fanny complained about the noise from here in her Journal on July 22 1768) but the main part of the Town Hall was built in the 15th century.
Kings Lynn still has fine buildings from the Hanseatic traders and there is now a trade relationship developing with the current Hanseatic countries. In 2005 Kings Lynn became a member of the New Hanseatic League for trading. Its historic and architectural interest will continue to bring tourists to the town.
I hope to be one of those tourists to visit Kings Lynn in the summer and to have coffee on the Quay looking over the great river Ouse. But also, I want to travel, not on horseback with my book of Italian poetry as Charles Burney did, to see all the wonderful stately homes in Norfolk where Charles Burney taught the daughters (mainly) music – Holkham, Raynham, Felbrig, Bickling, and Houghton.
In the photos below you can see the address that Fanny used, St. Margaret’s Churchyard, when she was writing from here. There is a plaque erected, but despite the plaque this is not the actual 18th century house which Mrs Allen owned. The Tuesday Market Place was a grand square where the great merchant families lived when the Burneys came. But no longer. Even Banks have abandoned it.
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St Margaret's (now known as Kings Lynn Minster)
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Kings Lynn Town Hall
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Charles persuaded the Lynn Corporation to commission a new organ from Johann Snetzler in 1754.
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Immediately opposite the church is St Margaret’s Vicarage built in 1810 with a blue plaque marking the spot
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The site of the cabin
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Chapel Street where Fanny was born
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St. Nicholas Church where two sons are buried
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84 High Street Historic Plaque
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High Street 2019
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Small private Assembly Rooms where Charles organised his concerts and dances
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Tuesday Market Place
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Hanseatic Warehouse, King’s Lynn
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Kings Lynn Historic Centre
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The Quay behind St Margaret’s Vicarage, the Allen house
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Great River Ouse – looking across the river towards Lynn Minster. Taken by Ben Dickson