Female experience and domestic insights are strangely lacking from history. Unless you have a fantastically detailed document like the diary of Mary Hardy.

Mary compiled her log of everyday events over 36 years from 1773 until two days before her death in 1809, creating an extraordinary record of ordinary life. Over 4 volumes, 500,000 words cover the weather, household comings and goings, births and deaths, marriages, illnesses, accidents and bankruptcies. She wrote about workforce gatherings, boxing and wrestling matches, tithe meetings, elections, child-rearing, gardening and coming-of-age dinners.

Mary (born 1733) married William Hardy from East Dereham. They took over the lease of a maltings, brewery and small farm at Coltishall, involved in everything from sowing hops to delivering barrels. It’s here the diary begins, in a small rented house by the River Bure, three weeks after their daughter was born. Lie on the river bank and let the diaries take you back in time.

In those days the Bure was busy with keels and wherries, sailing from Great Yarmouth deep inland to Aylsham Staithe, once a bustling landing stage. Over 1000 boats a year carried cargo from the sea to Aylsham, a market town made prosperous by trade. One wherry was the ‘William & Mary’, belonging to the Hardys, plying their business along the waterways, carrying hops, coal, barrels and bricks.

In 1781 the Hardys moved to the grander Letheringsett Hall near the north Norfolk coast, where they now lie, peaceful in the family vault at Letheringsett churchyard.