Miller's Row was one of the first developments on land which for centuries before its enclosure in 1800 had been part of Hethersett's Common, known as Lynch Green. Before taking its present name it was called Ranters Row. Primitive Methodism was established in 1810 and their preachers were called Ranters. It could have been that sometime after the 1689 Toleration Act, dissenters gathered on this part of the green to worship.
So I thought I would uncover a little more about Ranters. They are an interesting group of people, mainly commoners, who came to the fore in the time of Oliver Cromwell and actually came before the Primitive Methodists. They had no leader but the movement was fairly widespread throughout England.
They were though to be heretical by the established church and as a nuisance by the Government who saw them as a threat to social order - in other words troublemakers.
They had some strange beliefs such as sin being only part of the imagination. They also believed that private ownership of property was wrong. I'm not sure how calling a group of cottages after them really fitted in with this last point.
I am reminded if the following song lyric, however.
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Ranters believed that God existed in every creature which reminds me of a day at the seaside when my two sons were very young. I had taken them to Great Yarmouth for the day and we had just bought some chips which we were eating whilst sitting on the seafront. I have no idea how the subject arose or who brought it up but one of them suddenly announced that God was everywhere including sitting on the bench with us and in the chips. To which the other replied "Well in that case I've just eaten him?" Some things remain in your mind forever. I think I probably choked on my coca cola with that one.
Ranters believed that everyone had the ability to become Godlike - even chips off Yarmouth market. Apparently they often took all their clothes off - now you don't see that kind of thing very often in Lynch Green, Hethersett.
There was another group of dissenters called the Diggers who didn't have a connection with Australia due to the fact that country wasn't really in existence at the time. Now the Diggers thought that the Ranters showed a "general lack of moral values or restraint in worldly pleasures." Seems like being a Ranter was something of a good gig.
In the mid 19th century the term Ranters was often applied to Primitive Methodists due to their crude and often noisy preaching.
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Here's the question of the day. If you have a plateful of food and there's one particular item that you love - do you eat it first or leave it until last? I have taken a liking to pickled gherkins. If they are on my plate I always leave them to the end. I know somebody slightly weird who eats meals in sequence. So if, say for example, he has steak, chips and mushrooms. He will eat the mushrooms, then the chips and finally the steak. Does this make him a bad person?
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Tomorrow I will bemoan the lack of a village pantomime this year - the first year for over half a century that there has been no show.