The following pages contain lectures read before the members of St. Margaret’s Institute, at Lowestoft, with additions introduced to render the story somewhat more complete.
Lowestoft of the present day, with its harbour, its magnificent fishing fleet, and its fine marine terraces, is the product of the nineteenth century. But the Present is linked with the Past by the retention of the old Town on the Cliff as the nucleus of the greatly enlarged modern town.
The rise of Lowestoft was so much connected with the fortunes of Yarmouth that it would be impossible to tell the story of old Lowestoft without introducing a good deal that belongs to the history of old Yarmouth. Indeed, were it not for the records which have been preserved of the contests between the two towns about the Herring Trade, the materials for a history of Lowestoft would be almost nil. The history of Yarmouth is only introduced into this sketch so far as it is incidental to that of Lowestoft. But I feel that apologies are due to the larger and more ancient town for the partial manner in which its history is dealt with.
The materials from which these lectures have been compiled are furnished by Domesday Book, the Lay Subsidy Rolls, the Parish Register, and the ancient documents contained in Swinden’s History of Yarmouth, and Gillingwater’s History of Lowestoft. Other historical details of interest have been taken from those valuable old works, and from Nall’s History of Yarmouth and Suckling’s History of Suffolk.
Part I.—Introductory, Geological.—The Waveney.—The Silting up of the Estuary.—Burgh Castle.
Part II.—Domesday Book.—The Parishes of Lothingland.—Lowestoft in Domesday.—Neighbouring Parishes.—Herring Rents.—Live Stock on the Farms.—Condition of the People in Saxon Times.—Serfdom.—Craftsmen.—The Merchant.
You will think that I am going unnecessarily far back in commencing my sketch with a reference to that very remote period
“When Britain first at Heaven’s command
Arose from out the azure main.”
But if a thousand years or so would take in the origin of both Lowestoft and Yarmouth, questions have arisen affecting the relations of these towns which involve a much more extended retrospect.
It has long been a tenet of Lowestoft people that Lowestoft is a more ancient town than Yarmouth. In some of the numerous petitions presented to Parliament in connection with the disputes between the two towns about the Herring Trade, her greater antiquity was put forward by Lowestoft as giving her a prior claim to the herrings which visit the seas off this coast.
There is a story that the learned Potter, the translator of Æschylus, when vicar of the parish (about 1780) received a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury addressed to him at “Lowestoft near Yarmouth.” The vicar was indignant at what he regarded as a slight on his town, and when replying to the Archbishop, added this postscript “My Lord, when you direct to me again be pleased to write simply Lowestoft—Lowestoft does not want Yarmouth for a direction post, for Lowestoft was ere Yarmouth rose out of the azure main.”
Again, the question whether the Waveney ever flowed out at Lowestoft was a matter of warm discussion some 60 or 70 years ago, when the project of making a connection between that river and the sea, and providing Lowestoft with a harbour (an undertaking since so successfully carried out) was first mooted. The belief that the Waveney did once run out here, was supposed to give much sanction to a project which would only restore to the town an advantage which nature had originally given her.
These questions have been touched upon by writers on the antiquities of our neighbourhood, but not in a very satisfactory way. The tradition that the Waveney, or a branch of it, used to enter the sea at Lowestoft, has been reproduced by several writers as part of a picture which represents Norwich and Beccles, and other places on the borders of our marshlands, as ports and fishing towns on the shore of a large inland sea or estuary over which ships sailed freely, and to which herrings innumerable used to pay their autumnal visit which they now confine to the sea outside. That the sea at some time flowed over at least a great part of this area is probably quite true. No tradition would be required to satisfy the most ordinary observer that such a condition of things might have once existed, nor would anything more be needed to give rise to such a tradition. The question is when did this condition of the surface exist, and when did it cease to exist.
We will take as our guide to the solution of this problem a very interesting pamphlet by the late Mr. Edwards, the engineer employed in cutting out the channel for our harbour in 1829, entitled “The River Waveney—did it ever reach the sea via Lowestoft?”
He thus commences his account of the physical history of the Waveney Valley—
“First and in order of date, what can be gleaned from Geological evidence? It is universally admitted that the last great change of the surface of the earth, by whatever cause brought about, left the surface of the uplands very much in the same form in which we now find them.” p. 6.
Mr. Edwards refrains from expressing any view as to the causes which brought about this last great change. He was probably not familiar with the explanation with which recent geological science has furnished us. If you refer to any of the more recent treatises on the geology of Great Britain, you will find somewhere in the later chapters an account of the subsidence and elevation of these islands during what is called the Glacial Period—movements due to what may be generally described as the settlement of the earth’s crust. [3]
In no part of England is there more striking evidence of this movement than in the coast district of Norfolk and Suffolk. The old land surface which went down and was re-elevated nearly to its former level, is well known in these parts as the Forest Bed, which now forms the bottom of the sea at a short distance from the shore from Cromer to Kessingland. It appears as the lowest stratum of the cliff at Kessingland, and at other places on our coast. It is also disclosed in inland pits from which some of its most marvellous relics have been extracted. That the surface of this bed was once above water and covered with terrestrial vegetation, like that on which we now have our being, is proved by the stumps of trees which have been found fixed upright in it, as they were when alive and growing. A specimen of these old tree stumps is to be seen in the Norwich Museum. It is on this old land surface and more or less embedded in it, that the relics of an older world are buried, which so frequently make their appearance in the trawl nets of our fishermen,—the teeth and bones of Elephants, the Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, and other animals, which now belong to the fauna of countries far away to the south. This old land surface has been covered with some hundred or more feet of sand, clay, and gravel deposited upon it during the process of subsidence, and which after the re-elevation of the Island formed the surface soil of a great part of Suffolk and Norfolk.
The process of subsidence and re-elevation was probably extremely slow, producing an alteration of about two feet in a hundred years. An elevatory movement of this kind has been known to have taken place in recent times in the northern regions, and is said to be still going on in Finland.
How many thousands of years ago this movement took place is a matter for geologists to discuss, the important point that we have to bear in mind is that from the time this movement ceased all the alterations which have taken place are due to causes still in operation and acting in the same manner now as then.
What was done by the sea in carving out the surface into hill and valley during the process of elevation we know not, but Mr. Edwards is probably right in holding that when the upward movement ceased the contour of the surface, as regards highlands and lowlands, hills and valleys, was very much what it is now.
In considering the effect of the natural forces still in operation during the many thousands of years during which they have been at work, it is necessary to bear in mind that the level of the sea has all along remained the same, except so far as it is varied by the rise and fall of the tide, and by the exceptional exaggerations of tidal movement caused by the wind.
The operations of nature which have brought about the filling up of the hollows in the glacial land have been (1) the flow of water from wide drainage areas in Norfolk and Suffolk carrying silt into the lower parts and depositing it there,—(2) the incessant action of the sea in building up a shore boundary against itself, and blocking up the gaps in the glacial highlands through which its waters would flow inland. This action of the sea on our eastern coast is due to the inexhaustible supply of sand and shingle which is being constantly pushed along the shore southwards by the tidal wave. How persistent is the action of the sea in blocking up every outlet, whether river or harbour mouth, which man would wish kept open, has been a matter of costly experience to Yarmouth for some 800 years, as it has been to the Great Eastern Railway Company during the short time that they have undertaken the task of keeping open the mouth of Lowestoft Harbour.
The ground formed by the deposit of alluvial soil from the interior, and the drifting inwards of sand and shingle from the sea is in some places not easily distinguishable from the old glacial ground on which it has been imposed. As regards land well above high water mark, no doubt can arise however similar the sand of which it is composed may be to the sand on our shores. Such deposits must have been formed before the land had risen to its present level. But as regards deposits which are beneath or nearly on a level with high water mark, on the edge of what is now water or marsh-land, the difference in their origin may be difficult to ascertain and easily overlooked. The sand in our cliffs and on the shore is indeed the same:—the sea using the material which it has robbed from some projecting cliff, to fill up some bay or make an addition to the land to the southward. That the supposed ancient outlet between Lake Lothing and the sea was blocked up by sand and shingle in the same way as other outlets along the coast, was a very reasonable supposition, until the cutting of the channel for the new harbour disclosed a ridge of old glacial soil between the head of the lake and the sea, extending across the dip between Lowestoft and Kirkley, which proved that no deep river had ever flowed out there. This ridge was excavated to a depth of 30 feet below high water mark. “It consisted” Mr. Edwards tells us “not of horizontal stratified sand and shingle, as was found on the beach, but of precisely such strata of sand, as that of the rising ground on either side of the valley, the like of which may now be seen on Pope’s Farm.”
Although this ridge was too high to admit of a deep river running into the sea from Lake Lothing, it was not so high as to prevent a shallow overflow from the lake on to the beach, producing a small channel, between the lake and the sea. Evidence of the existence of such a channel in remote times has been preserved by its having been adopted as a boundary between the parishes of Lowestoft and Kirkley. It appears from an old enclosure map, that the boundary at this part had varied, as the channel shifted from north to south, until it reached the rising ground of Kirkley Cliff, where it formed the line of the existing boundary.
Tradition assigns to this part the name of Kirkley “Haven;” and the fact that the Roads along the coast from Pakefield to Yarmouth had in very remote times acquired the name of “Kirklee Road” is proof that Kirkley must have been known to sailors more than the other villages on the cliffs. It is probable that the low coast, and its proximity to the Roads, to which ships resorted for anchorage in remote times as in recent years, led to it being used by sailors as a convenient place for communication with the shore; which would be quite sufficient to give it the name of “Kirkley Haven,” whether any use was or was not made of the little channel in question as a waterway for boats or other light craft.
After the fens had been reclaimed, and converted into pasture lands, it became necessary to protect them from the inundation of the extraordinary high tides which occurred occasionally in ancient times, as now, under the influence of a prolonged spell of north west wind. An embankment or “fortification” was erected along this ridge with the object of preventing any irruption of the sea though Lake Lothing into the interior. We have a full account of the measures taken in 1660 for the reparation of a former embankment in the same place. In Queen Elizabeth’s time Lake Lothing was purely a freshwater lake, and it was called “The Freshwater” by Lowestoft people. The ordinary outlet for the water was not towards the sea, but through Oulton “Fen” into the Waveney. Camden writing at this time describes Lake Lothing as—
“That long and spacious Lake Lothing, which beginning at the seaside empties itself into the river Yare.”
A similar ridge of glacial deposit extending between Oulton Broad and Lake Lothing, formed the foundation of the ancient and existing roadway which connects Lothingland with the mainland. This ridge placed another effectual bar to the outflow of the waters of the Waveney Valley in this direction, though here again there seems always to have been a small shallow dip, the old “Mud-ford,” through which the water on either side was connected. No such ridges blocked the wide mouth of the estuary at Yarmouth, which was open for the flow of water out and in until the sea had blocked it up with an accumulation of sand and shingle to the depth—Mr. Edwards says—of some hundred feet.
The natural process by which the valley of the Waveney became gradually filled up with silt, and covered with aquatic vegetation is carefully explained by Mr. Edwards. How many thousands of years the process was going on before nature had converted the wide and apparently deep estuary into an expanse of fen and bog, with the Waveney, the Yare, and the Bure, flowing through it in well defined channels we know not; but Mr. Edwards mentions an interesting fact showing that nature’s process of substituting land for water is still in progress. We know that some hundreds of years ago man took advantage of the work already done by nature, and converted these fens and morasses into dry marshlands by raising banks along the river sides to keep out the flood and tidal waters. Between these banks and the river there are margins several yards in breadth called “rands” or “ronds.” These rands have been left open to the overflow of the river, and they are found to be raised from one to two feet above the level of the inclosed lands on the other side of the banks. Another process by which nature has been and is still slowly substituting land for water is the advance of the reedy margins of the broads and the gradual diminution of the water area.
The first evidence we have of the stage which the silting up process had reached during the time of man’s occupation of these parts are the records and vestiges of the presence of the Romans on the banks of the Yare and the Waveney during the first four centuries of the present era.
In his account of Burgh Castle Mr. Suckling gives us a map shewing the different positions occupied by the Romans in these parts in connection with their system of coast defences against the Saxons, or other tribes on the opposite shores of the North Sea, whose piratical visitations were as much a cause of fear to the British inhabitants of our island as they were several hundred years later to its “Saxon” inhabitants themselves.
According to this map we have the strong fortress of Burgh Castle placed in the northern extremity of Lothingland, in such a position as to command a view of the entrance of the Yare and the Waveney from the estuary, the diminished area of which is still represented by Breydon water. A short way up the Yare we find another Roman Station at Reedham where the river approaches close to the glacial highlands, and where an invading force sailing up this river would find a convenient landing place at the river side, not separated from the river channel by a wide space of impassable morass, or shallows only navigable at high water. A few miles up the Waveney we have another Roman Station at Burgh St. Peter (or Wheatacre Burgh) at the extremity of a tongue of glacial highland, which is again closely approached by the present channel of the river. The extraordinary position of the church, at the lowest and extreme edge of a parish which contains a large area of high ground proves that this spot had some mysterious importance in remote times, and the existence of Roman bricks in its walls, which may have been used in several successive buildings since they were made, points to the existence of some Roman fortress nearby to which they originally belonged; while the remains of human skeletons which have been found near the bank of the river buried in a promiscuous manner, as if the result of a battle on the river’s edge, add support to the view that Burgh Staithe, being a convenient landing place for the invader, was a place of considerable importance in ancient times.
If the low marshland through which the Yare and the Waveney now wind their way to the sea was at the time when the Romans established their system of fortifications, a wilderness of bog and fen, impassable either by ship or on foot, we can understand the importance of these spots on the river-sides where the enemy could get from their boats on to the highlands of Norfolk and Suffolk. The conflict of opinion among antiquarians as to the true site of the Roman Garianonum has made the conditions of the area immediately beneath Burgh Castle in the Roman period, a familiar subject of discussion. Whether Burgh Castle or Caister was the Roman Garianonum, the disputants took it for granted that it was some place near the entrance of the river from which it took its name; but they appear to have overlooked the point that if there were any river channel near either Burgh or Caister which could be attributed to the Yare, the estuarine condition of the interior must have already passed away. When this inland area was an arm of the sea, as it has been so often described, the rivers which meet at Yarmouth must have lost their channels and their names several miles further west. The Yare would have terminated at Norwich or Reedham, the Waveney at Beccles, and the Bure somewhere about Wroxham. The Yare could have had no claim to give its name to any place near the present coast, either Burgh or Caister. The Orwell is still an arm of the sea and it is not called after either the Gipping or the Stour. The Romans probably named their fortress at Burgh from the Yare, rather than the Waveney because the river Yare was the common waterway from the Roman camp at Caister on the Taes to the sea.
The massive fortress of Burgh Castle could be safely held by a small force for a long time against any enemy who might succeed in effecting a landing on Lothingland itself, and if cavalry were kept there, as we are told they were, mounted messengers could be sent off as soon as a hostile fleet appeared, who would be able to carry the intelligence to head quarters at Caister, via Oulton and Beccles or Bungay, before the enemy could get very far up either river.