160 High Street
Current
160
High Street
Lowestoft
United Kingdom
.
History
160 High Street. Old Address: 156 High Street West side When built: The present building was erected in 1899 after the widening of the High Street. Brief history/features: On the demolition of the earlier building on this site in 1897 (No. 156) an ancient vaulted crypt was uncovered and now forms the cellar of the present building. This crypt dates from the early 15th century and is Grade II listed.
It was the cellar of a 19th century beerhouse known as the “The Pilot Boat”, formerly the “Hole in the Wall”. Former Notable Owners: Messrs Bullard & Sons of Norwich, brewers. Little known fact: In his comprehensive “History of Lowestoft” (1790) Isaac Gillingwater notes that standing 30 yards to the north of Swan Lane (Present day Mariners Street) there stood “. . . an old gothic building, faced with black flint, about 16 feet high and 12 feet wide having the appearance of a very ancient building . . .”
This coincides with the exact location of the old “Hole in the Wall”. Gillingwater speculates that this old building might have once been an ancient chapel.
Lowestoft's oldest building - the 14th century cellar beneath No. 160 High Street, along the with lower stages of the tower of St. Margaret's Church and the crypt beneath its high altar. The oldest house on the High Street is No. 36 - parts of which date from the mid-late 15th century. CREDIT:David Butcher
Architecture
No. 160 High Street is one of a row of late 19th century shop units, with living accommodation above, erected after the High Street had been widened on the west side and earlier buildings demolished as part of the redevelopment. It stands above a late medieval cellar surviving from this work of reconstruction, which is something to be grateful for, relating as (it does) to the town's earlier history.
The area to the north of Mariners Score (on which No. 160 and other, adjoining buildings stand) was freehold land which had once formed part of the North Field - one of the town's three main arable sectors (the others being the South Field and the West South Field). Most of the built-up, urban area stood on former manorial waste, onto which the community had relocated itself during the first half of the 14th century and where all the building plots were held by copyhold tenure, with annual ground-rents payable to the lord of the manor.
All changes of tenancy had to be entered in the manorial records, whereas freehold property did not have to undergo such procedure - which means that it is far more difficult to access details of use and tenure, historically, in the part of Lowestoft where No. 160 is located.
It is difficult to be precise regarding the origins of the cellar beneath No. 160, but it is possible that it dates from the first half of the 14th century and the town's act of relocation. The late Alan Carter, of the University of East Anglian (and Director, at the time, of the Norwich Survey) scrutinised the cellar with this writer during the mid-1980s and was of the opinion that it might originally have been a drinking establishment of some kind, located below street level. Such "dens" or "dives" were not unknown in late medieval times and the space below No. 160 is of ample size to have served such a purpose. Equally, it might also have been a storage area for a merchant of the time.
The coal chute present dates from some point during the 19th century. CREDIT:David Butcher
TM5593NW HIGH STREET 914-1/8/47 (West side) 03/10/77 No.160
GV II
Early C20 range of shops, No.160 being built over a early C15 cellar. Shop of red brick with plain tile roof. Cellar of limewashed and colourwashed brick. 2 bays of quadripartite rib vaults divided by a chamfered transverse rib. The vault ribs are hollow chamfered and rise from moulded corbels. Shute access from street protected by an iron grille. Later brick dog-leg stairs rise to interior of shop. CREDIT: Historic England
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