Bulmer Then and Now can be viewed in full by following this link ..........,  and all books listed can be purchased from good booksellers or by emailing info.bulmerhistory@gmail.com

First edition published 1979 by the Bulmer branch of the W.E.A. Second edition published 1990 by Simon Harris

In 1934 the parson at Bulmer wrote to C.F.D. Sperling at Ballingdon Hall asking if the latter could help in the matter of Bulmer's history. The reply began as follows:
“Dear Pannell,
Happy is the place that has no history. In such a category you may place Bulmer...''
There the matter could have been left, but after W.E.A (Workers Education Association), talks on the area's soil, buildings, dialect, literature, art and, yes, local history, some of Bulmer's residents decided it was time to question the truth of this slighting dismissal from a neighbour. They always were a funny lot in Ballingdon. That's why they were put into Suffolk. What follows is the work of many hands. Sperling was right, but only to the extent that Bulmer had no written history.
This is Bulmer's attempt to give itself one.

To view the book you can find it here.........

Peter Rowe was born in l940 in "The Ancestral Home", where the "mod cons" included
oil lamps, a flickering candle to light your way to bed and freezing excursions outside
to experience the delights of the outside privy.

He relives the old time harvests with their binders, threshing machines and stubble
scratched legs. Fun and games on the farm, including rotten egg Battles!

Starting at the village school. The communal tin mug for water from a pail in the porch.
Playing in the hay after the school meadow, cum playground, was mown. Boys playing
truant and the school attendance officer.

Bussing to Sudbury school. Kind and cruel teachers. Folk dancing, the nature club,
27-nil football scores! School and village cricket. Fossil collecting and bird watching.

Starting work in the building trade. The pranks and tricks of workmates, working with
old soldiers. Dangling from a rope 56 feet aloft to fix slates.

The ups and downs of courtship, marriage and parenthood.

Interesting finds from 45 years of renovating old buildings, from a souvenir programme
of Lord Nelsons funeral, to an ancient shutter window uncovered in Lavenham.

Village fetes, fairs and frolics. Insights into the local flora and fauna and much more.

The first 100 pages cover the first twenty-five years of Peter's life in some detail.
The remaining half century or so, are touched upon more lightly in the last 50 pages.
Contains about 280 illustrations, mostly photographs.

Copies of the book can be purchased by emailing this site at info.bulmerhistory@gmail.com or the Sudbury Tourist Office in the Sudbury Library, priced at £9.00.

Just over fifty miles north east of London is the Essex village of Bulmer. I grew up in Bulmer and, even though I’ve been in Australia 40 years, I’ve now written a book about it and all because of a remarkable coincidence.

Read in full here........

Alter my parents died some of my father’s things were shipped out to me and with them came a totally unexpected treasure trove: a shoe box with over a thousand negatives, all the photographs that my father had ever taken. Some went back his childhood in the 1890s and at least a quarter of them covered my own childhood in Bulmer. These pictures now form the backbone of this book, my part being a description of life as I saw it as a village child.

I wrote this book to be enjoyed. It’s not a social history, it’s a personal
retrospective. Moreover, it’s the sort of book that you can pick up and put down at any time. Best of all, perhaps, it’s an ideal Christmas or birthday present since it doesn’t matter if you’ve never ever heard of Bulmer or Essex.

Finally, a word about the map of Bulmer in the middle. It’s not as Bulmer exists today or even yesterday but simply as I remember it. That’s why it has places marked on it that won’t be found on any other map.

A Bulmer Craftsman’s Memories - Edited by Robin Rowe
The writings of Philip ‘Tulip’ Rowe begin in 1828 as a descriptive perambulation around his home parish of Bulmer. As the journey progresses digressions in the form of anecdotal local history, his life working on the land, its natural history and Tulip’s family, spring from the pages. To make this miscellany of material more accessible to the reader, the editor has collected together passages relating to specific subjects and formed them into chapters resulting in a modest volume of rural life in a north Essex parish. The domestic processes of baking, brewing, the curing of hams and straw hat plaiting are intimately observed and indeed were practiced by Tulip. Like all Englishmen he talks of the weather and his recollections here are of severe instances of wind, rain, snow, frost and heat – a ‘Black Tuesday’ and ‘That Windy Friday’ were etched into the local psyche. The conflict between poacher and keeper is also lodged deep in the rural mind. It is not hard to decide which side Tulip is on, after all he had a great grandfather who was ‘a poacher of the Highest Class,’ and even his father, who had become a night ranger, because he was unable to carry out his farm working duties owing to a severe farm accident, made sufficient noise whilst on his rounds so that the would-be-poacher had the chance to get away. The day to day work of the farm labourer and craftsman is described and discussed from an intimate working knowledge of such activities as hedging, ditching, weeding, thatching and threshing, culminating in that highlight of the countryman’s year, the harvest. Tulip, a one time Lord of the Harvest, had many times lead his team scything barley and hay and in 1881, when a schoolboy, witnessed the first binding machine to be demonstrated in a Bulmer field and on one rare occasion had watched as wheat was harvested with sickles.

A landscape History of Bulmer, Essex - Edited by Robin Rowe
When writing the landscape history of an area there is no better placed person than the man-on-the-spot. Philip ‘Tulip’ Rowe was certainly that. He had explored Bulmer’s every corner, worked its soil, made intimate observations and, like any historian worth his salt, questioned all he saw. The result is a descriptive journey through narrow lanes, deep hollow ways, isolated hamlets and farmsteads and a patchwork of ancient enclosed fields strewn with long-neglected pollards – all crucial landscape features of the Essex Till. The inhabitants are not forgotten for they and their ancestors had shaped that landscape – over 260 names are indexed. The whole perambulation is illustrated with route-maps showing intricate field patterns, major agricultural sites, important buildings and references to textual anecdotes. Descriptions of and incidents relating to all manner of matters are included: farms and hamlets, church and chapel, school, police, country crafts and industries, fields, woods and pastures. Copious footnotes explaining and embellishing points of local history compliment the text. Written by a farm labourer-cum-country craftsman who had left school at the age of twelve, the whole is an amazing compilation, which inadvertently creates local and landscape history. Tulip was in his late fifties and sixties when he carried out the work to while away the time whilst unwell, but nevertheless always with a ‘reader’ in mind and perhaps, not doubting that one day it would be presented to a wider audience of those interested in such matters.