Tom Higdon was eighteen when he’s younger brother William died in 1887, but sixteen years later, after being in Norfolk for little more than a year, he would have a sixteen page extended poem published by Jarrod & Son’s Ltd of Norwich. Called ‘To the Departed’; apart from the publishers mark on the last page, and an image of All Saints Church, East Pennard on the cover; there is no further information.

The poem is an evocation on death and loss, written in a direct, and personal form. Any reader would not fail to realise that the lines had come from the heart of painful personal experience. The seventh stanza opens; ‘Here I my brother mourn…’ the eighth; ‘Oh, cruel Death, that this my brother stole’ – and the thirtieth; ‘And I for him as for a brother mourn’.

‘To the Departed’ has now been republished by the Strike School Trustees to raise funds for the upkeep of the school.