Notes on a fieldtrip to Thetford
On this journey to find you , I board a train to Thetford , ancient capital of East Anglia , and the town closest to where you grew up . According to the Essex Cultural Diversity Project ’ s website which provides instructions for a self-guided Maharajah Duleep Singh Family Heritage Trail , the town of Thetford is the place to begin .
It is a sunny March morning and the landscape outside the carriage is green and flat , thick tufts of grass and scrubland for miles under a deep blue sky , punctuated with small white clouds . There is something in the scene ( the sunlight ? The pigment of the sky ? The green or flatness of the scrubland ? The vastness ?) that makes me think of journeys to my family ’ s farmland in India .
I discover that Thetford Library in fact holds a copy of the photograph album ‘ Elveden Views ’ – it does not hold the original as promised . Nevertheless , the photographs are highly evocative , particularly of the gardens of Elveden Estate as well as the Hall itself . There are some photographs of the family , also , but I have seen most of these before , in the historical books of Peter Bance and in Anita Anand ’ s biography . And there are no photographs of you , Sophia .
The librarian , who has worked here for over twenty years , says that a team came , some years ago , to collect and securely store the original archival materials relating to the Duleep Singhs , but she doesn ’ t know where they have gone .
It is frustrating that the Duleep Singh family ’ s archive is so dispersed and therefore so difficult to track down . If only it were all housed together in one place ! Sometimes , it seems the further I travel , the further the archive retreats .
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At Ancient House , I ask the woman on reception , Lynne , for information about the Duleep Singh family and their archive . There is so much of it , she tells me . Most of it is still in storage and being sorted through by volunteers . Peter Bance owns the largest collection , but otherwise there are parts of the archive in London , especially in the British Library , and also in museums and record offices in Norfolk and Suffolk .
I ask her if we know of any living descendants here in Thetford – illegitimate , of course . And she smiles and looks embarrassed for a moment , but then composes herself and says , ‘ No ,
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