50 High Street

In 1720, the site of Nos. 49A, 50A & 50B High Street is described as being one messuage, divided into two tenements. It was held by Mrs. Mary Stroud, widow of John (mariner) - her husband having died in November 1718. He had acquired the property in September 1710, on forfeiture of a mortgage he had provided for Grace Betts (the tenant of the time) in January 1688. The sum of money lent is not stated in the manorial records.

The building seen today is a later replacement of what was present in 1720, and the abbutalments of the messuage then were given as the plot of No. 49 High Street to the north and Lyons Score (now Crown Score) to the south, with the High Street to the west and land belonging to No. 49 to the east. This shows that, at some stage, the property had either been been created from land formerly belonging to No. 49 or that No. 49 had acquired land belonging to it.

The Manor Roll of 1618 names William Hayward as property-holder, with tenants called Bransby and Davye preceding him - in that order. There is also reference made in the manorial records to Thomas Annot (merchant) as being a former occupant of the messuage. He died in November 1577 and was the founder in 1570 of a free grammar school for forty local boys, who were to be taught "the Rules and Principles of Grammar [English] and the Latin tongue and other Things incident and necessary to the said Art". The original schoolhouse was a building abutting onto the east wall of the parish churchyard - but when this became "decayed", after about 100 years of use, the school moved into the upper room of the Town Chamber which once stood on the site of the present-day Town Hall. CREDIT:David Butcher

We've got an advert here, haven't we? For a shop. So this is the next building  down in actual fact. This is 50 High Street.   You'd notice as well, unlike most streets, the High Street houses are numbered sequentially so we get 49, 50. We don't get odd numbers on one side and even on the other. So this is Frank Wheatley's. To read his advert,   he's 'Old Established and Best General and Fancy  Draper in Osborne House' on Lowestoft High Street.

We've got jackets, hosiery, towelling, mantles, millinery (that's hats), calicoes, linings,  under clothing, handkerchief, fall nets. I think they  could be net curtains. Because we don't know,   it's difficult to to say. It's not the biggest of buildings   as we shall see in a moment... where all those  departments crammed onto the ground floor and Mr Wheatley and his family lived on the top floor? Or did he have a big house somewhere away from here and it was only the staff that lived in. It's a world different to the one  that we're familiar with today. We also know he had other   drapery stores elsewhere in the town as well. Further south on London Road North and I think there's a possibility  that he actually moved from the High Street  as the centre of commerce in Lowestoft moved from  the ancient High Street into London Road North, he had a very large shop there,  certainly in the early 1900s.  So he was one of the big businessmen of Lowestoft. It's very, very difficult to, to pinpoint the year of the advert because I tried using the census but I can't find him. The census is every ten years, obviously a lot can change in ten years. But I can find him being a general and fancy draper in a shop   almost opposite here in the late 19th century.  So it's very, very difficult to pin this down. He's still in the period where people  would know what a mantle is!
It's so typical of   the... a wonderful fascia there. The windows  again are typical Victorian sash windows that slide up and down rather than opening out and of  course right at the top we do have a garret there.   Today the shop is gone, and in  the 1980s it was converted you can see where the shop front has  been removed from No.50 and been bricked up. Quite nice front doors put there and  the whole property has been converted.

So now we've   got 50 and 50a because they subdivided. A friend of mine who was a surveyor, he says he looks upon houses as being  more or less and properly organic. They change with the needs of each generation   There might be a day,  probably won't be anymore, but  when this could be converted back into  a shop. We know Hayes the ironmonger  further up was once a big house. 
And it became a shop. The way high streets are going at the moment  I think it's on the cards that we'll see more shops close and become converted into apartments and flats    CREDIT: Ivan Bunn from transcript - Poetry People - High Street Histories