The Freshwater Fishery

The large expanse of water on Lowestoft parish’s southern boundary provided a freshwater fishery for coarse fish, which had nothing to do with the town’s commercial sea-fishing activities. The mere was always referred to as the Great Water or the Fresh Water during the 16th,17th and 18th centuries (and probably before that, as well) – later becoming known as Lake Lothing during the earlier part of the 19th. A shingle bank separated it from the sea – a barrier breached periodically by surge tides, with salt water inundation affecting not only the lake, but the adjoining broad at Oulton/Carlton Colville and much of the surrounding marshland. One such flooding occurred in the winter of 1609-10 (See D. Pickering (ed.), Statutes at Large, vii (1763), pp. 248-9. It would seem that the fishery provided by the lake had been in existence for a very long time, but nearly all references derive from the late 16th century – and only because of infringement of the manorial rules concerning its use. No specific reason can be given for this, but it may be that the lake and its fish came under less strict manorial control during the 17th and 18th centuries and that fewer people concerned themselves with the catching and eating of such species (eels, pike, perch, bream, tench etc.) as time went on.

The earliest indirect reference to such a fishery occurs in May 1575, in the will of Richard Dericke (shoemaker and merchant), who left his freshwater boat to his son-in-law, William Wilde. Wilde (a merchant himself) was one of six people fined (amount not stated) at the Half-hundred tourn of 23 April 1589 – a manorial court held at six-monthly intervals, to deal with matters of general misdemeanour – for fishing in the lake with an illegal kethe. This device was a wicker eel-pot of some kind, but whether it was illegal in itself or because it was woven too closely (thereby trapping under-sized fish) is not revealed. The other five persons presented were John Wilde (William Wilde’s eighteen year old son), Symon Page (weaver), who was married to one of Wilde’s nieces, John Mayhew (mariner and merchant), Thomas Warde (yeoman) and Abraham Turnpenye (cordwainer). Whether the indictment is indicative of a one-off fishing trip carried out among friends and acquaintances or whether it reflects regular activity is not known, but the boat used might well have been the one bequeathed to William Wilde by his father-in-law.

Two other cases in local manor courts are to be found in the annual Lowestoft leet court minutes of 1582. The first of these resulted in six men each being fined 6d. for operating a wheelinge and thereby destroying fish. Again, some kind of eel-pot was the object of concern. None of the six features in the family reconstitution material, so they may have lived in other nearby parishes. Their particular offence may have been a breach of local manorial custom, but it was also a contravention of a statute of 1559 which sought to prevent the excessive destruction of young fish. By its terms, it was illegal to catch and kill, with any kind of net or trap, in any freshwater area or estuarine reach, the spawn, fry or brood of eels, salmon, pike and other species.

The second of the indictments concerned six men who were definitely from Lowestoft. John Lobbys, John Warde (barber), William Wilde (again!), William Barrett (barber), John Drawer and William Welles (merchant) were each fined 3d. for illegal fishing in the lord’s part of the water, near Mutford Bridge. Barrett’s inventory shows that he owned a freshwater boat and quite a large amount of specialist freshwater fishing gear, so it possible that all six men constituted a single party, using the boat perhaps on a regular basis. On the other hand, Wilde owned a freshwater craft himself, so it is equally possible that this particular presentment resulted from two boats being involved in the misdemeanour.

The specific reference to “the lord’s part of the water, near Mutford Bridge” may possibly refer to an area reserved for use of the lord of the manor only – right of piscary, as it was known (the term deriving from the Latin piscis, meaning “fish”), always being vested in the manor and its lord. Lowestoft never had a resident lord until well into the 19th century, so use of such a sector of the lake was probably some kind of vestigial manorial right going way back into the Late Medieval period, which was still in operation under the control of the manor’s steward.

Whatever the case, although the catching of freshwater species of fish was allowed, there would almost certainly have been a modest fee payable for the privilege – as this was standard practice for all kinds of manorial services available to tenants. Strange as it may seem to the reader of today, perhaps, not a great deal of sea fish was eaten fresh (except perhaps in coastal communities, and not always there) – simply because so much of what was caught was cured by salting and smoking in order to preserve it and give it an extended period of edibility. And so, coarse fish species (where available) were able to provide a source of food with different taste and texture. Though it would have needed soaking over-night, in water from a well, to draw the muddy flavour from it before cooking.

The last reference to fishing in connection with the Fresh Water is to be found on 9 June 1663, when town father James Wilde (merchant), grandson of the offending William referred to above, recorded expenses of 1s 2d incurred by him in fishing near Mutford Bridge during January that year (see Edmund Gillingwater, History of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft, p. 237). His object had been to catch enough coarse fish to provide a meal for the duly appointed gentlemen who had arrived in town to supervise the measurement of the seven-mile distance from  Great Yarmouth’s Town Quay, to a point on the on the denes at Gunton, marking the southern limit of its maritime jurisdiction. This does seem to suggest that the fishery served to provide a source of fresh food, by way of variety and change from the heavily cured saltwater species which the town produced so much of, both for its own consumption and for export elsewhere.

There is no reference to what kind of fishing-gear James Wilde used to catch the fish near Mutford Bridge, but it is worth noting that the first mention of rod-and-line being used in England dates back to the year 1496, when the Benedictine nun Dame Juliana Berners – born c. 1388 and Head of Sopwell Priory, near St. Albans – had her Tretise of Fysshynge with an Angle (this being the term for a hook) posthumously published in a work bearing the title The Boke [Book] of St. Albans. By way of a closing comment on the name Mutford Bridge, it is to be found in 16th and 17th documentation as Motforth Bregge – the latter word being a Middle English 

variant form of “bridge”, which had a wider meaning than the one in common use today. It referred to any means of crossing a stretch of water – not solely to a structure raised above it. The bridge itself, as we know it, was first introduced during the middle of the 18th century: a wooden one, to begin with, followed in c. 1760 by the brick one seen in this piece’s introductory illustration. Prior to this, an earthen causeway had, for centuries, provided means of passage between the two stetches of water at the point where they met (both of them extended in area, over the years, by the digging of peat from around their margins). The best description we have of this is to be found in the account of his travels around England during 1677-8, put together by Thomas Baskerville (topographer, traveller and writer). He visited Lowestoft in 1677 and described Mutford Bridge, thus: “a dam of earth between 10 and 20 yards broad, secured on the right hand [seaward side] with piles [piling] of wood to break the fury of the waves”. 

Of equal interest is the first element of the name, Mutford – which has nothing to do with the parish so-called, nor to the title of the former Half-hundred. And neither is it anything to do with “mud”. Mot is variant form of moot, which refers to the meetings held regularly in Anglo-Saxon times by the menfolk of each Hundred and Half-hundred, in the English shires, to adjudicate upon legal matters. These courts continued in changed form after the Norman Conquest and, even as late as the early 17th century, the six-monthly County Sheriff’s court – known as the Tourn – was being held  (though not in its original form) for the half-hundreds of Lothingland and Mutford, dealing with infringements of local manorial laws. 

The second element, forth, is probably an ancient use of the word to indicate distance from a place of residence. And this fits, because the Lothingland and Mutford moots and later tourns were held at a half-way point between the two jurisdictions, in the area where Commodore Road meets Bridge Road. A lone building, seen in old maps (more or less on the site where The Commodore public house now stands) almost certainly marks the spot where these ancient courts were held – and everyone living in the various communities, required to attend (jurors and offenders alike), would have had journeys of varying distance to get there.

Such are the vestiges of the past contained within the modern urban landscape of today.

David Butcher