The 9th (East Norfolk) Regiment of the Foot, known as the ‘Holy Boys’, were sent to Canada in 1814 to prevent the US’s threatened invasion. During a brief lull when the soldiers were granted furlough, many of them returned to their villages in Norfolk. One of them was drummer Nathan Dyble from Potter Heigham, sold to the regiment by his pauper father when he was just 10 years told. Now returning at 16, he came home to find his father dead, mother re-married and no home.

He pitched a tent on the common land outside the village in his red military jacket with its shining buttons. It was clear in his face that had been tanned by the Spanish sun and bore on his cheek a long scar, his eyes holding secrets of a war which had left the boy both wounded and fearless.

Lizzie, a young girl from the village found the drummer boy handsome and he thought Lizzie the prettiest of all the girls. Lizzie’s father warned her off Nathan “he ain’t no good, a redcoat on furlough has only one thing on his mind, you’ll not see him again, never!”

Distraught, Lizzie sent her friend to tell Nathan she would come to the common land to see him after her father had fallen asleep. That night was bitterly cold; in the morning there was a skin of ice on Hickling Broad that thickened with every passing hour. By the setting of the sun it was strong enough to take a man’s weight.

The drummer boy skated across the ice as she waited expectantly, under the clear winter moon, they lay down together in unbridled happiness. Night after night he skated across the ice to the beat of his drum into the arms of Lizzie. Until one night she saw him skating towards her, his sticks hitting the drum but there was no sound. He stepped onto the ground and embraced her, “My love… you are so cold” she said. As she grabbed his arm her fingers closed around water. Filled with terror she ran onto the ice, but it creaked and groaned and she was forced to return to the edge of the broad. Thick cloud covered the moon and she could see nothing ahead of her. Defeated she returned home to her bed.

The following evening her father told her the young boy had been fished out of the broad in his full military uniform with his drum. It is said Nathan Dyble’s ghost is still seen on Hickling Broad in winter when the ice is beginning to melt.