1500s

Annot’s Free Grammar School

The single most important event in the process of public education in Lowestoft during the early modern period came in June 1570, when Thomas Annot (merchant) founded a free grammar school. A summary of the original deed of gift is to be found in the Rev. John Arrow’s Memorandum Book (he was Lowestoft’s parish priest, 1760-89) – Norfolk Record Office - PD 589/92, pp. 13-14. And it is also present in Edmund Gillingwater’s An Historical Account of the Ancient Town of Lowestoft (1790), p. 299.

Among the many interesting features to emerge from close study of the 507 wills and 100 probate inventories which have survived for the period indicated in the title are the rates of literacy able to be determined in the various occupational groups which formed the town’s socio-economic structure. Even today, there would probably be argument (or at least discussion) among specialists in the field as to what literacy means. The same holds true for historians.

The first almshouses in Lowestoft were provided by John Manyngham, the parish vicar from 1457-78. The exact year of institution is not known, but they were located on the north side of Fair Lane (now Dove Street) near its junction with West Lane (now Jubilee Way). And they seem to have remained in operation, in some form – undoubtedly with alterations made – into the final quarter of the 19th century, when White’s Directory of Suffolk (1874), p.

For centuries, the use of alms boxes in parish churches throughout the whole of England was a means of collecting sums of money for charitable purposes – particularly the relief of poverty where it was known or seen to exist. During the 16th century, as a result of general cost inflation (aggravated by Henry VIII’s mindless extravagance and debasement of the coinage, to say nothing of the social and economic problems caused by the Dissolution of the Monasteries), the alleviation of financial distress in the lower levels of society became more and more of a challenge.

(Parish Register Entries)

The register entries below are presented in as close a way as possible to the original handwritten ones

Authorisation for this Elizabethan taxation was granted by Parliament on 18 December 1566 and the official date of collection was 24 February 1568. Lowestoft’s stated contribution of £34 19s 8d was 47% of the Lothingland total of £74 8s 6d and its 112 tax-payers constituted 42% of the half-hundred’s contributors (267 in number). These figures confirm the town’s dominant position in its local area, just as those of the 1524-5 collection did over forty years earlier. The 1568 Subsidy was structured differently from its predecessor in the way that the assessment was made.

The Lay Subsidy of 1524-5 (1) see also (2)

This national taxation measure was approved by Parliament in 1523, to raise money for war to be waged with France and Scotland (who else!), and with a hoped for total of £800,000 as its aim. As with previous countrywide levies, it was based on the value of lands held and rented out (where this was the major source of income), on movable goods (where these served the same purpose) and on wages for men of labouring or servant status.

Comparisons of Lowestoft with other Suffolk communities

Suffolk’s Top 25 Townships (1524-5 Lay Subsidy) (2)  see also (1)

Order by wealth

Lowestoft Rental (1545) – Suffolk Archives, Ipswich 194/A10/71

(Formerly North Suffolk Record Office, Lowestoft) 

A Lowestoft rental renewed there on the first day of June, in the thirty-seventh year of the reign of our Lord King Henry VIII, by the grace of God King of England, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith in the said land(s) and Supreme Head of the Church of England and Ireland – relating to the annual rents of the town of Lowestoft, Shadingfield, Ellough and Willingham. [Translated from Latin]

The Town of Lowestoft c. 1720

This map was created by Ivan Bunn (former archival assistant at the North Suffolk Record Office, Lowestoft) and the writer, working in collaboration and using manorial documentation as the primary source. See end of text for numbered locations, which are also referred to in the narrative.