Fonds BL/BG - Bradfer-Lawrence Collection: Bagge Family

Born in King's Lynn in 1887. He became a land agent and worked in Norfolk until 1935 when he was appointed managing director of Hammond's brewery in Yorkshire. He was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1924 and published a number of works connected with the history and archaeology of Norfolk. From his youth, he was an avid collector of books and manuscripts. His successful career as a businessman enabled him to make substantial purchases from the leading London dealers, and to build up a massive and important collection by the time of his death in 1965. According to his wishes, his executors deposited those manuscripts relating to Norfolk in the Norfolk Record Office in 1967, a similar gift of his Yorkshire manuscripts being made to the Yorkshire Archaeological Society at the same time. Died 1965.

The Bagge family were merchants and brewers of King's Lynn. In the eighteenth century, William Bagge (c 1700-1762), and his sons William (c 1734-1801) and Thomas (1741-1807), were merchants and shipowners, exporting corn and fish, and importing mainly coal and wine. They owned a brewery and a large number of public houses and acquired, through inheritance and purchase, very substantial estates in north-west Norfolk. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the overseas trade disappeared but the coal and brewery businesses continued.