The Old Town of Lowestoft

A paper written in advance of the creation of the High Street HAZ in 2019 

Lowestoft High Street and its adjacent areas constitute a township of the late Medieval and Early Modern periods, before  development of the harbour and  arrival of the railway (during the 1840s and 50s) greatly expanded the community and created the place we see today. Prior to its relocation around c. 1300, the settlement had been founded about a mile to the west-south-west, placed somewhere in northern sector of what is now the large municipal cemetery off Normanston Drive. There were a number of factors behind the move, prominent among which was the need to be nearer to the beach area because of increasing maritime activity – especially fishing for herring. It is also likely that land to the south of the original village was becoming more susceptible to water-logging (caused by sea-level rises and drainage problems) and that an increasing population required room for expansion, which was not available without encroachment onto surrounding agricultural land.

            The area chosen to site the new township was an exposed cliff-top area of poor heathland soil, used largely for rough grazing. With permission granted by an absentee lord of the manor, and under the direction of the steward and chief tenants, sale of the land was negotiated and a planned community established. Income for the lord deriving from heathland alone would have been small (deriving from grazing dues and payment for use of materials), but the establishment of houses and service buildings created a bigger, guaranteed income. After sale of the land had gone through, the creation of house-plots held under customary tenure by the occupiers produced an annual financial yield in the form of lord’s rent and periodic entry-fine payments as properties changed hands.

            On the evidence available, it would seem that the new town was established within a time-scale of about fifty years (1300-50). It was a remarkable community effort, both in terms of organisation and of the physical effort involved – especially when one considers that it was carried out alongside the farming and fishing practice by which the people sustained themselves. Additionally, the inhabitants also felt able to begin building a mighty, new, parish church half to three-quarters of a mile to the west, the tower and crypt of which were completed before the effects of the Black Death disrupted the work – leaving it to be completed over 100 years later, c. 1450-80. At 182 feet, St. Margaret’s is the third longest church in Suffolk (only St. Mary’s and St. James’s, in Bury St. Edmunds, being of greater length) and one of the county’s best examples of High Perpendicular architecture.

            The relocated town had one major task to be completed, before house-plots could be set out and dwellings erected: terracing of the cliff-face, to make it usable. This was a major engineering task (particularly given the tools available at the time) and its execution impressive. There are three steps cut into the cliff along most of its length, diminishing to two at the southern end as the ground-level slopes downwards. Although much neglected today and suffering from the ravages of time, the terrace-lines are still largely intact and remain an important surviving feature of Lowestoft’s past. Their basic structure is plain to see in the space immediately north of the Heritage Workshop Centre. Archaeological work carried out there in the year 2000, ahead of a new upper retaining wall being built, showed that an introduced layer of clay provided the footing for its predecessor – a technique that was probably applied up and down the length of the cliff. It is likely that the original retaining walls were made of timber, to be succeeded by masonry as time went on.

            Access to the Denes (or beach) area below – other than through the individual dwelling-plots – was provided by the scores, which had started life as surface-water drainage gulleys down the face of the cliff and are still observable in the course of formation in the parish of Gunton, to the north of Lowestoft. The word “score” itself derives from ON skora, meaning “to cut” or “to incise”, and gives a good sense of the action of water on the soft face of the cliff-line. Originally, there were as many as thirteen or fourteen scores over the whole length of the township, but the three southernmost ones have disappeared and there have been changes among the others. Most of the surviving examples are footways, walled along their length and stepped where required, but there are also three wider ones long used for vehicular access to and from the Denes. The most northerly of these, The Ravine, formed part of Lowestoft’s ancient ecclesiastical parish boundary with Gunton.

            The High Street itself is of sinuous alignment, following that of the cliff, dropping c. 50 feet over its total length from north to south (which once included what is now known as Old Nelson Street). Halfway along, a gridiron of five smaller cross-lanes extended westwards to St. Margaret’s Plain (once known as Goose Green and Fair Green), with another roadway running parallel to the main thoroughfare. Originally called Back Lane or West Lane, this later became (moving from north to south) The Hemplands, White Horse Street and Chapel Street and is now known as Jubilee Way – greatly extended in the late 1970s into an inner relief-road for traffic. In spite of the walls which flank it, Lowestoft’s original medieval street-plan remains largely intact, with the five cross-lanes currently named as Mariner’s Street, Compass Street-Dove Street, Crown Street East and West, Wesleyan Chapel Lane and Duke’s Head Street. Social geography was deliberately built in from the start, with the wealthier members of the community living along the High Street (especially on the eastern side) and the lesser people concentrated in the side-street area.

            In spite of the many subdivisions which have taken place over the years, it is still possible to ascertain the original layout of some twenty plots along the cliff-edge, from the top of town down to Herring Fishery Score, followed by a further seven running down to the bottom of Old Nelson Street. On the western side, five or six plots were situated north of Mariner’s Street, with a similar number running south down to the market place. Three large plots flanked the trading-area, with five more of varying dimensions on the opposite side of the road. Most of these basic “master-plots” were then progressively converted into smaller units as need dictated. None of the original dwellings survive, but seventeen buildings on the High Street date from the mid-late sixteenth to early seventeenth century, with nos. 27, 30, 31, 36, 43-44, 102-4 and 149 having particularly good, ornate timber-framing. Two fine, original, vaulted cellars are to be found beneath Nos. 41-42 and 160-161, while Nos. 57 and 149 have later replacements of considerable interest. All of this construction speaks well of the level of merchant wealth available in the town, as does the knapped flint exterior of No. 80 – behind which the Heritage Workshop Centre stands. No expense spared to impress the passer-by!

            It remains only to say something of the Denes – an area of beach and scrub of great importance to the inhabitants of Lowestoft and strictly controlled by the manor. It was used for the rough grazing of sheep and cattle (with payment made for the service), but its chief value lay in its providing a large open-air wharf for the conveyance of goods inwards and outwards, with ferryboats working between shoreline and vessels anchored in the roads (the local inshore waters). Once the harbour was built in 1827-30 and further developed during the 1840s and 50s, this function gradually ceased, but other uses continued – particularly the laying out of fishing-gear to dry after preservative treatment and various types of routine maintenance carried out on it. Also in pre-harbour times (before the creation of its specialist yards), ships and smaller craft were built directly on the shoreline, just above high-water mark, and cod livers brought back from the Iceland lining voyages were boiled down for oil (used to fuel household lamps and dress leather) in coppers located in a deep trench on the northern Denes. The location of this feature can still be seen today, as the material used to fill it in has produced different vegetation from that growing on the surrounds.

            The Denes probably always had something of a recreational function as well, possibly even from quite early on (for those who had the time, at least!). Certainly, by the middle of the eighteenth century, when Lowestoft was fast developing as a coastal resort, visitors who came to take the waters or visit the local soft-paste porcelain factory, were wont to take a stroll out on the Denes, breathe in the salt air and enjoy the local scenery. The town was probably at its most visually impressive at this time and former townsman, Edmund Gillingwater, in his An Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft (1790), speaks eloquently of the town’s handsome appearance from the Denes, stressing particularly the elegance of the houses’ “hanging gardens” – this, in reference to the way in which the cliff-terraces had been planted.

            It was at about the time of publication of Gillingwater’s book that the first houses were built on the Denes, at its northern end, showing relaxation of the strict manorial control which had previously prevailed. This was followed by more intensive development during the middle of the nineteenth century as the population increased by virtue of development of the harbour, the coming of the railway and the arrival of trawling from ports in Kent and Sussex. The southern end of the Denes was the area which saw the most intense development, leading to the creation of the so-called “Beach Village” (which the residents themselves always referred to as The Grit) – the country’s most easterly residential community and also one of the shorter-lived, as it was demolished in post-war clearance during the mid-late 1960s.

The paragraphs above are as cogent a statement of Lowestoft’s history and development as I can manage. I had hoped to condense everything into two sides of A4, but this was not possible. No sources for the information given are cited, but I have drawn upon two of my books for the content: Lowestoft 1550-1750: Development and Change in a Suffolk Coastal Town (2008) and Medieval Lowestoft: the Origins and Growth of a Suffolk Coastal Community (to be published mid-November, 2016). The original township and adjoining areas have great potential in heritage terms and something impressive and valuable could be achieved with a combination of funding and imagination. The town has suffered badly in the past from ill-conceived development, but there remains opportunity to redress some of the damage done with the right kind of thinking. Apart from the historical importance of the built environment, The Denes and adjacent cliff-face are of environmental importance to birds on both spring and autumn migrations and would benefit from sympathetic management – especially the neglected area, known as Arnold’s Walk, at the northern end of the High Street. Additionally, any restorative landscaping work would provide an opportunity for productive archaeological work to reveal more of Lowestoft’s hidden past.  

CREDIT: David Butcher – 5 August 2016.

Updated with minor adjustments – 8 August 2024.