Mike Harmer of Norfolk

Author & dealer in architectural salvage

If, heaven forbid, you were to have picked Mike Harmer up and given him a shake, the stories would have come tumbling out and you would have soon found yourself knee-deep in tales for Mike was a veritable goldmine of Norfolk lore – of characters and anecdotes, of fact, fiction and hearsay.

The son of a North Walsham horse trader and of proud Romany stock, Mike lived his life by his wits: an honest man, yet a wheeler and a dealer, a ducker and a diver. Storytelling was in his blood and in his first two books Kaka, Rokker Romany and The Romany Chal, he delivered memoirs of his dealings and his history with a cornucopia of characters: volatile relatives, ne’er-do-wells, swindlers, oddballs, bigamists, thieves and fools. He gave us a glimpse into a past which, though lively and full of character, was not always pleasant. There was many an injustice and life could be harsher than the nostalgia merchants would have you believe.

Largely self-taught and a voracious reader, Mike had a thirst for knowledge and was immersed in local folk and Romany history. His countless dealings brought him into contact with all that society had to offer: from lords to loners and with each encounter he walked away with a bargain and a story safely stowed for future telling. Driving around the backroads of Norfolk with Mike you would find that each byway, each dwelling had a story attached – where you or I might just see a barren field, Mike saw a landscape populated with human interaction.

His Romany heritage was at the core of his being. The outsider status it confers gave him both his canniness and his companionability. He was justifiably proud of it and was keen to share his knowledge of the language, the old ways and the old tales. He wrote in the tradition of George Baldry, Fred Rolfe and George Borrow – it is a folk tradition and he has given us books worthy of his forebears – they are not necessarily to be read from start to finish, but rather to be dipped into: the nuggets drawn out and savoured one by one. There are not so many like him left – and with his passing we have lost a Norfolk legend and the authentic voice of an oral tradition.

Kaka, Rokker Romany

The Romany Language

The Romany language first appeared in Northern India and is sometimes called Romanes or Romani, which is the language of the European gypsy. It took about five hundred year to reach the shores of Britain as a Romany language. Romany is a spoken language so you will often find multiple spellings of the same word…
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The Bigamist’s Wedding

On the left of the photo is Butty Lamb’s wife, old Mary Lamb, my mother’s mother. Next to her is Charlie Baker, known as the ‘jaw bone breaker’. He liked to coor (fight). He has just married my mother’s sister Milly. While on the far right is my father, Edgie, who was best man at…
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Ikey Wright

Ikey was a livestock dealer, and had a few bits of land around here, which he farmed. However on Spa Common near Bacton Wood Mill was a round concrete pillbox; it’s still there. Ikey used to keep ferrets in the old dark pillbox. It was dark as a grave. One day someone gave Ikey a…
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The Romany Chal

The much-anticipated second collection of wit, wisdom and general folk gospel according to Mike Harmer never fails to delight. Drawing on his prodigious memory and his insatiable curiosity, Mike once again serves up a heart-warming hotchi-witchi stew of Norfolk oddballs and eccentrics with a side dish of Romany lore and ways.

‘Anyone who’s spent half an hour in Mike Harmer’s salvage yard will know that he’s a brilliant storyteller. In this second collection of his tales you get a taste of his talk – sharp, funny, mischievous and true – and a vivid sense of the way of life of the old Norfolk Romany families, past and present.’
Hugh Lupton, Storyteller & Writer

‘People were poor as rooks and the women had the worst of it, but they knew how to survive on Spa Common…Mike is as much a charmer when he writes as when he deals.’
Jeremy Harte, Romany & Traveller Family History Society

King of the Commons: The Tales of Old Butty Lamb

Poor old Susan Gray, Butty’s mother and Mike’s great-grandmother, she came to a nasty end. With two marriages and two dead husbands behind her, she had come off the road and was to be found living in an isolated barn on the fens out in Feltwell with a mush faker by the name of Charlie Wilson.

In 1908 she was 72 years of age and enjoying a quieter life. She was stirring the broth upon the stove and awaiting her husband’s return when, on a rainy Sunday evening in October, Tugmutton came a-knocking with his hatchet…

Through tales handed down across the generations, Mike tells of the hardships endured by his grandfather, Old Butty Lamb, on the roads of rural Norfolk in the early years of the twentieth century. With the skill to which we have become accustomed, Mike paints a vivid picture of the lives of the heroes, villains and general oddbods that peopled this county in bygone days, setting humour against the harsh reality of a way of life that was becoming increasingly marginalised.

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