KETT'S CASTLE

I know of only two events which relate to the life of the Rev Henry R Nevill, one-time incumbent of St Mark's church, Lakenham, in the city of Norwich. The first occurred on the evening of March 17, 1857, when Henry rose to his feet at the School Room in Lakenham, in front of an audience of parishioners, to deliver a lecture titled, 'Kett's Castle.' The second, which may have happened the following day, was when members of his grateful flock pleaded with him to allow them to have printed copies of his talk made available for sale, at their expense.  
Whatever the precise detail of the affair, the fact remains that within a very short time someone took his manuscript to Thomas Priest, printer, in Rampant Horse Street in the city, and that sometime later copies of a slim 32-page booklet were duly delivered. The price was sixpence each, and profits from the sale were to be given to Lakenham's Parochial Library and Reading Room.
I know these things simply because, several decades ago, I found a surviving copy in a Norwich second-hand bookshop, and bought it because I thought the title, 'Kett's Castle,' was of interest. In effect, however, the main subject of the Rev Nevill's lecture was not the old Thorpe Hamlet ruin, but the Kett Revellion of 1549 in its robust generality.
This, quite naturally, I also found fascinating because for several years we lived not far from Wymondham, which was home territory to the Kett family and the centre of the early events in the Rebellion; and earlier still, lived in Thorpe Hamlet next door to what was then called either the Gas Board Land or Jubilee Heights - the actual place where Kett parked his artillery to bombard Bishopgate - and only a stone's throw from the ruins of 'Kett's Castle'itself, which was used as a rebel observation post.
The Rev Henry described the ruins of St Michael's Chapel, as it is properly called - and accessible in 1857, apparently, through a gap in a hedge near a windmill - with the north and west walls still standing. But by page 12 he is on to the Rebellion itself.
Henry's enthusiasm for and interest in the events of 1549 are clearly evident, but so, too, is the dilemma which faced him. Kett may have had some good social and political reasons for causing trouble, he seems to be saying, but not that sort of trouble, and not in that way.
'The end,' he says, 'does not justify the means. That a cause, however just in itself, can never prosper if it be not lawfully and quietly run . . .  a French Revolution, a Kett's Rebellion, a Chartist riot, a workmen's combination to destroy machinery, it is all the same. They may destroy, indeed, but they cannot build again.'
He believed Robert Kett had lived in a house, still standing at the time of the lecture, at Dykebeck, which is on the Hingham Road about a mile outside Wymondham; and that Dussin's Dale, the location of the decisive battle, was between Magdalen Hill and Denmark's Lane, whereas today it is thought to have been closer to Thorpe. And he also said there is supposed to be an annual service of thanksgiving for the restoration of law and order celebrated in the city each August 27. I have no knowledge of when it fizzled out.
Incidentally, one of the very early histories of the Rebellion was written by a certain Alexander Nevill. Whether he was a forebear of the Rev Henry, I do not know.
(Kett's Castle: A Lecture by the Rev Henry R Nevill. Thomas Priest, Norwich, 1857)