100 High Street

If you look carefully at the [cellar] ceiling, here - when you’re down below - you’ll see steel ships’ plates affixed. Done by Edwards Outfitters during WW2 to make an in-house bomb shelter for staff during air raids. The recycled window shown has high-quality, 18th century glazing bars, with delicate profiling, and under the cemented floor I think there could be a capped-off well present. Once, when I was down there (years ago, when  ”Come and Sew” occupied the premises), the damp surface had a darker, regular square shape in the middle of what would have been a small communal yard. It was the right size to have indicated a well-shaft. CREDIT: David Butcher 

Nos. 97, 98, 99 & 100 - described in 1618 as one tenement, held by Elizabeth Pacey and previously by Robert White (fisherman-mariner). Stayed in the Pacy family’s occupation until into the 18th century, when it was in the possession of William Pacy (merchant), who came into ownership in 1723. This particular branch of the family had become Lowestoft’s wealthiest merchants by the third quarter of the 17th century, based on fishing and maritime trade. CREDIT: David Butcher 

So if we move up the road this  is a number 100 the High Street and it's    Greens the hatter. If you look carefully along  the bottom here you can see. DEAN — Every kind of hat!   IVAN — Every kind of hat and if you see the description  here it tells you there's more than just hats being sold there. And Mr Green was a Yarmouth man  and judging by the census for the best part of   40 years the same spinster lady managed the shop  and lived there. DEAN — Okay. What era are we talking about? What year is this photo? IVAN — I should think this is late 19th century. DEAN — 1890s then? IVAN — Yeah. DEAN — Hats were really popular then weren't they? Every man wore a hat. IVAN — Yeah. Oh definitely. DEAN — And every women tended to wear a hat. You can see a sort of straw boater in the front there and they were really   fashionable at that time. IVAN — And as a hatter,  which was actually a profession, you could train   to be a hatter, are more than likely the lady  who managed this shop was able to actually   make a custom hat for you as well, you could go  in if you could afford it and be measured up   and have a hat made for you by a professional hatter. DEAN — That'd be great. I've got a really large head so I have trouble with getting them off the peg because they've always gone. IVAN — So if you look at this bit here over the doorway of the next building. DEAN — Where that arrow is. IVAN — Yeah, where that arrow is, and it's still there. The front of this building,  the front of number 100 has changed beyond recognition quite how or why, I was told front of this was badly damaged in the Second World War when the building opposite took an almost direct hit from a bomb, so this might have been this cladding here. And also again post-war, post Second World War that is,   it's almost another way of saying look at us  we've come into the post-war era  with a smarter looking building. But talking about  the shopfronts and that, if you look here   you can see that although this building's changed  radically that the pediment here, over the doorway   into 101 is still exactly the same as it was seventy, eighty, ninety years earlier. 
   CREDIT: Ivan Bunn from transcript - Poetry People - High Street Histories