Decorative graphic of Dotesio & Todd, 36 High Street, Lowestoft...

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 co

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 t

The most ancient record in which we find any mention of Lowestoft is Domesday Book.  As this is the case with nearly every other town and parish in England, Lowestoft is not behind other places in evidence of antiquity. But Lowestoft not only appears in Domesday as a parish and a village, but it appears as a Royal manor—or at least as one of the numerous estates or demesnes held by William the Conqueror, as his private property—as the successor of Edward the Confessor and Canute.  On the strengt

Lowestoft lies hid in oblivion for some 300 years after her appearance in Domesday.  During this time great changes had taken place in the country at large as well as in Lowestoft.  A new regime had been established, under which Saxon and Angle, Dane and Norman, had been welded into one nation, and laws and institutions were in force, which are familiar features in our present legal and political system.  Although still 500 years from the present time, England, in Edward III.’s reign, was much m

The free trade policy of the Statute of Herrings had not the desired effect of reducing the price of herrings, and the condition of Yarmouth was getting worst.  Her haven was again becoming unnavigable, and merchants were leaving the town.  On the cliff, a mile south of the mouth of the harbour, the little town of Lowestoft was growing up, and beginning to take an important share in the trade on which Yarmouth depended for her existence.  It was under these circumstances that Yarmouth petitioned

Unfortunately the records of the contest between Yarmouth and Lowestoft furnish us with no information as to the actual wealth and population of Lowestoft at this period, and we have no local records to help us in forming an estimate of either.  But we are not altogether at a loss for information on these important questions.  Among the decayed and fragmentary relics of the old Lay Subsidy Rolls in the Record office, we have a complete detailed return for the 1st of Edward III., and another for

Much light has been thrown on the character of Lowestoft some 300 years ago by the copies of the parish register, published in the “Parish Magazine,” which, I doubt not, many of you have been in the habit of studying.  The existing parish register dates back to 1561.  The first volume of the book, so to speak, which would tell us who were living or dying in Lowestoft in the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary, was unfortunately burnt in the fire which destroyed the old vicarage house in

Two hundred years had passed since the termination of the Parliamentary contest about the grant of Edward the III’s. Charter.  Lowestoft had not only established her right to exist, but was becoming an old town, and the events of the old contest had become matters of ancient history. The Yarmouth bailiffs were still exercising their right to take tolls from ships loading or unloading in “Kirkley Road;” but the amount received from these tolls during a whole year, as entered in the Town Ledger, w

At the beginning of the 17th century the decay of our fisheries, and the consequent loss of sailors, on whose services the country depended for the protection of our shores, coupled with the warning which the Spaniards had given us, had caused a sense of national danger, which was realised by many besides ministers of the Crown.  During his imprisonment of 13 years in the Tower of London, poor Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a pamphlet, which he presented to James I., in which he complained bitterly of

It was while our merchants were suffering from their losses caused by the great fire, that the Yarmouth people made a third effort to enforce the privileges of their ancient charters now confirmed and strengthened by the charter of James I.  It appears that for some years before 1659, they had sent boats into the roads off Lowestoft to exact harbour dues from fishing boats, but in this year they took a much stronger measure.  They had in their harbour a large ship, probably the Queen’s ship whic