Eras

What you see is the remains of the base of a beacon, one of a pair erected in 1552 (on the orders of the Marquis of Northampton), to warn of attack from the sea. Its companion was located just to the north of what is now the junction of Gunton Drive with Corton Road.

This building, which stands in Arnold Street, is in need of some restorative tlc and is an important remnant of Lowestoft’s military past. Built and opened in 1872 for the Lowestoft Artillery Volunteer Company which (along with accompanying Rifle Volunteers) was formed in 1860. Designed by local architect W.O. Chambers.

Kirkley Cemetery is a burial ground in the Kirkley area of Lowestoft in Suffolk. Located on London Road South, the cemetery is maintained by Waveney District Council and is open for traditional and Green Burials.  Thr two Memorial Chapels were designed by local architect J.L. Clemence in Early English gothic style.

Faith and Duty opposing Earthly Ambition - A Local Story

Introduction

(LT 649)

If upon your port is seen 
A little German submarine, 
Do not fire shot nor shell. 
Just turn around and run like hell! 
(Fishermen’s parody of a navigation rhyme)

Tape-recordings made 1976-83

The recordings were made with local people, with the intention of producing a sound archive to record an important part of the Lowestoft area’s industrial and maritime history. They form the basis of six published works: The Driftermen (Reading, 1978), The Trawlermen (Reading. 1979), Living From the Sea (Reading, 1982), Following the Fishing (Newton Abbot, 1987), Fishing Talk (Cromer, 2014) and The Last Haul (Lowestoft, 2020).

“I know not whether laws be right,    
Or whether laws be wrong.    
All that we know who lie in gaol  
Is that the wall is strong;  
And that each day is like a year,  
A year whose days are long.”  
(Oscar Wilde: “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”)

The pages reproduced below, in as near as possible their original format, are to be found in volume 3, section 4, of Robert Reeve’s four volume manuscript ‘A History of Lowestoft and Lothingland’ (c. 1810) – Suffolk Archives (Ipswich), 193/3/4. Nothing is recorded for the years 1719, 1722, 1728 and 1733. Reeve (a local solicitor), who lived at No. 49 High Street, was steward of the manor and he must have transcribed this material from an original source of some kind.

[First published as the last chapter in the writer’s book The Last Haul (2020).]

Were you ever down the Congo river?  
Blow, boys, blow. 
Where the fever makes the white man shiver. 
Blow, my bully-boys, blow.

(Traditional American capstan song: Blow, Boys, Blow)

This fascinating document records settlement of the estate of a leading Lowestoft merchant, whose burial was recorded in the parish registers on 18 September 1636. It is located within the pages of the Lowestoft Tithe Accounts book (Norfolk Record Office, 589/80) – placed there by the Revd. John Tanner (Vicar of the parish, 1708-59), who had married into a branch of the Mighells family on 20 January 1713 (1712, by Julian Calendar dating) and who probably found the document among existing family papers. He obviously noticed, in the second set of accounts, that burial within the walls of St.