Charlotte Paton

Delve into the murky past of an elusive Norfolk legend...

When an elderly, scruffy mole catcher presented a farmer’s wife with a notebook filled with stories of his younger life as a poacher, she could perhaps have been forgiven if she hadn’t foreseen them becoming one of East Anglia’s best loved tales of country life. But when local writer Lilias Rider-Haggard read these engaging memoirs of the self-proclaimed King of the Norfolk Poachers’, she encouraged him to write more. His story became ‘I Walked by Night’, published in 1935.

Seventy years later, Charlotte Paton was struck by the similarity between the poacher’s description of a lodge in which he had lived, and her own house. As a keen genealogist Charlotte could not resist this tantalising coincidence and set out to discover if she did indeed share a home with one of Norfolk’s best-loved rogues. The first step was to find out his name: Frederick Rolfe.

This was to be the unexpected start of a seven year project researching this secretive man. Charlotte has presented her surprising finding in her own book, The King of the Norfolk Poachers.

Rolfe’s reputation is surrounded by as much hearsay as truth; Charlotte’s research reveals a man surviving through poaching in rural communities in Norfolk - around which he moved to keep ahead of the law - and Bungay, Suffolk in the early twentieth century. He left behind him a trail of broken laws, broken hearts and a complex family tree which took years to unravel.

Charlotte is as tenacious as her subject and has left no stone unturned in her hunt for the truth. She consulted court archives, birth, marriage and death registers, and tracked down the people who still remember Fred as well as the surviving members of his family. This has allowed her book to become an enlightening background to the lives of the rural poor and the ways of a poacher around Fred’s lifetime.

This has truly been a labour of love. It is the biography of a difficult and unreliable man who came to an unexpected and tragic end. You will want to dislike him, but instead you may suddenly find yourself willing him to win.

How to buy

Available in hardback or as an eBook (Kindle)

Hardback book, 224 pages inc. 16 pages photos, ISBN 978-1-905523-89-4
Published by Old Pond Publishing Ltd, 1st October 2009 £19.95

• Direct from Charlotte  by emailing charlottepaton16@gmail.com and indicate if you'd like your copy signed. Price: £15 + £5 p&p
• Visit Coch-y-Bonddu Books or Old Pond Publishing Ltd or any good book shop.
• Or buy either the hardback or Kindle Edition from Amazon below:

Buy now on Amazon

Award nominations

The King of the Norfolk Poachers, by Charlotte Paton, has been shortlisted in the Biography and Memoir category of the 2010 EDP-Jarrold East Anglian Book Awards, sponsored by The Writers’ Centre, Norwich and Community University Engagement East.

The long list for second biennial award of the East Anglian based New Angle prize for Literature has been released, judges have announced the best 13 books of the 40 submitted. The final 6 will be announced on 28th March 2011 The Judges said of The King of the Norfolk Poachers:

“Frederick Rolfe was a notorious poacher at war with the authorities and with his own inner demons for much of his troubled life. In this well-written first book, Paton has done an admirable job unpicking fact from fiction and placing Rolfe in his wider historical and social context. Highly recommended.”

Review, May 2023 by Matt

Hi I have just re read your book about Frederick Rolfe having read his book a few years ago,first of all thank you for such an informative book I, like many others have enjoyed reading your book as it shed a whole new light on Fred's life having one or two of my late uncles and Grandad who were not adverse to a bit of poaching themselves, in fact my old Dad taught me a trick or two but that's another story. The whole reason I am writing is to congratulate you on a great read that has inspired me to take a road trip to see the places that were written about and that you managed to trace I only live in rural North East Essex just over the Suffolk border so it will make interesting days out, thank you again.