For starters, why is it called Lowestoft?
No one's really sure but it's a good starting point on which to disagree. The following have been offered, and any more will be added as found or donated:
An important Viking lived here. His name was Lowe and Toft was Viking for homestead, hence 'Lowe's Toft'.
A Dane who held, (and presumably didn't loath) the 'island' of Lothingland called the place Lothbroch.
All the other usernames were already taken (contributed by Chris).
Over the centuries it's been called lots of things: Lothnwistoft, Lestoffe, Laystoft, Laistoe, Loystoft and Lowystofte. Shame it altered, really, Lowystofte has a nicer sound to it than the modern "LooStuff" it's sort of degenerated into!
The Domesday
Book, (1085-6)
Traditional starting point for British place histories. Compiled for the Norman King William I to
show what was in this land he'd conquered. Not that it helped him much, he couldn't read or write - and was dead before it was finished.
Lowestoft was described as a small agricultural village of 20 families. That makes a population of about 100 people. Rent, paid to landowner Hugh de Montford in herrings, show locals
were using fishing to supplement farming.
Mediaeval Lowestoft
Lowestoft grew as a fishing village in this time. At the same time the neighbouring town, Great
Yarmouth, (about 12 miles away), became England's largest fishing town and tried to push Lowestoft out of the herring trade. Yarmouth had a fine natural harbour at the time, while Lowestoft only had the beach. Rivalry between the two towns began.
The Tudors
In the Tudor times Henry VIIII closed all the monasteries and made England Protestant. The practical upshot of this was that the religious requirement not to eat meat on certain occasions was ended, and with it the demand for fish, which didn't count as meat and for which demand
was high at those times. The herring industry declined nationally.
There was also local competition from more efficient Dutch fishermen with bigger and better boats. The people of Lowestoft needed to build bigger boats for themselves but chose not
to, preferring apathy and just moaning about how bad things were.
Civil War
In the 1640-somethings Cromwell's bunch got rid of King Charlie and put Parliament in charge of England. That was the state of affairs nationally. Yarmouth supported Cromwell so it followed that Lowestoft, (which hated Yarmouth), should support the King.
There was a little skirmish in the High street. Word got to Cromwell of an uprising in 1643 so he came to investigate, but found just a small band of protesters armed with one cannon - that didn't even fire! On seeing Cromwell's men they ran away, were caught, laughed at, (probably), and arrested before Cromwell went on his way. A curfew bell that rings, (apparently, not sure if anyone's checked lately), from the town hall at 8pm (every night?) dates from this era of Lowestoft's history too. Anyone know why?
Lowestoft Witch Trials
Very important historically because they were presided over by Sir Matthew Hale, whose judgements set the precedent for the much more famous Salem Witch trials of America in 1692.
Basically, (and I need to check this out properly), two harmless elderly spinsters, Rose
Cullender and Amy Denny, annoyed somebody and were accused of being witches. They were found guilty at the Lent Assizes held at Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk on March 13th 1662, and hanged.
Lowestoft Porcelain
In 1757 the owner of Gunton Hall, (still there but now a holiday camp) discovered clay on his estate land. He set up a factory in Bell Lane (now Crown Street), and used it to produce Lowestoft
China - valuable stuff nowadays and much sought after by collectors. The factory operated until 1802.
The museum in Nicholas Everett Park, Oulton Broad, has a good local collection of Lowestoft China. The Castle Museum, Norwich, has a better one, but it's good that at least SOME of the stuff is still in the town that made it.
The Napoleonic Wars
In the Eighteenth century foreign wars, especially with France, made it too dangerous for boats to venture too far from the coast. There was still no proper harbour so fishing remained a small operation. Boats, which by now were larger two- or three-masted vessels, landed their catch by beaching themselves in the shallows, offloading their catch into small rowing boats, and then floating off on the next high tide.
During the 1790s Lowestoft's fishing community established their own 'Beach Village' on the land where the Birds Eye factory now is, ie virtually on the beach. No point wasting valuable fishing, (or drinking!) time walking to and from work.
The elegant Georgian houses built on the High Street suggest that this was a period of prosperity for some.
With peace in 1815, and the decline of the Dutch competition, Lowestoft fishing prospered and grew. Growth was further helped by the construction of a canal to Norwich, which saw a short success before going bankrupt ten years later.
Victorian Lowestoft
In the 1840s Samuel Morton Peto came to Lowestoft. (See him again on the 'Famous locals'
page). He was one of the great engineering and building contractors of the Nineteenth century with a particular interest in railways. He bought out the ruined canal operators and within ten years had developed a proper harbour, established a flourishing cattle trade with Holland and Denmark and turned the former marsh and scrubland south of the harbour into an elegant seaside resort.
Lowestoft had been a spa and watering place of sorts for some time but Peto made it a resort of real importance. In connection with his other enterprises Peto built a railway link between Lowestoft and Norwich, and links with other towns soon followed. This gave the fishing industry a huge boost as catches could now be transported quickly to other parts of the country.
Lowestoft became a boom town with streets of terraced houses, (including my own) being built to house the increased population of people involved in fishing and various associated industries.
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Morton Peto lived at Somerleyton Hall, a big Victorian mansion near Lowestoft, until his own bankruptcy in 1863 (not his fault, I think his bank collapsed). The hall was then bought by carpet manufacturer Sir Francis Crossley and is still lived in by his great grandson, the present Lord Somerleyton.
It's open to the public and has an impressive maze and gardens, but be warned, you don't get to see much of the house, even less the Peto connection, and I feel the few rooms you can see don't justify the high ticket price. |
In the 1840s Charles Dickens came to stay with Sir Samuel Morton Peto at Somerleyton Hall, and the novel "David Copperfield" is set partly at Blundeston, an outlying village. Descriptions of people living in upturned boats in that novel (right), were based on what Dickens saw during a visit to the Lowestoft Beach Village. |
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The latter half of the C19th saw three famous authors living in or around Lowestoft in the Nineteenth Century. There is no known record that they ever met:
Edward Fitzerald lived at the top of London Road North, Lowestoft, from about 1859 to 1874, possibly much later than that. His fame rests on his very poetic, if not terribly accurate translation of an obscure parchment, known as the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, discovered in a Persian tomb.
Joseph Conrad("Polish Joe"), the author, arrived in Lowestoft from the Ukraine in 1878. He spent 16 years in the Lowestoft merchant navy and served again on decoy smacks from Lowestoft in the 1914-18 war. Memories of his voyages were later used in his novels.
George Borrow lived and worked from his large estate in Oulton Broad. A bad tempered man, quick to anger, he was disliked by local people, not least for his encouragement of gypsies to camp around his land.
The Twentieth
Century
The best time for the fishing industry was just before World War One. Then it was a gradual decline, with so many boats sunk in the war, and trawl nets that dragged along the sea bed destroying spawning grounds.
Benjamin Britten was born to Lowestoft parents in 1913. His father was a dentist and young Benjamin must have entertained lucky waiting patients as he practised on his piano in the flat above the surgery.
After World War 1 there was little money to replace the fleet, much of which had been sunk by enemy action. But different fishing techniques kept the industry alive until World War Two, after which more major changes took place. In terms of bombs dropped per head of the population Lowestoft was the heaviest bombed place in Britain.
This is readily apparent in the streets near my house where modern houses intermingle with Victorian terraces on nearly every street.
The floods of 1953 finished off the Lowestoft Beach Village, which was demolished in the 1960s and a Birds Eye factory built on the site. Fishing did remain important for a few years after the war, but the trawlers were forced to go as far as the Danish and Norwegian coasts in search of enough fish to remain profitable. The increases in oil prices in the 1970s hit the fishing very hard and marked the beginning of the end for the industry.
Eastern Counties buses were made in Lowestoft, on the site now occupied by the North Quay retail park. The area is now home of BandQ, Lidls, Halfords, Comet, and other stores. All that remains of the bus works now are old photos.
In the late 1960s some of the fishing companies converted their boats to standby duties for the North sea gas rigs and platforms. A well paid but boring job, these boats just anchor near a rig and wait there for a month at a time in case of an emergency.
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In the second half of the 20th century a company called SLP (which
stands for Sea Land Pipeline, and no, there isn't one) was set up at the mouth of Lowestoft harbour. It makes modules for oil and gas rigs needed by the offshore industries.
This one, (© Ron Miller), was towed out to sea on July 24th 2000 while I watched
it go.
Sadly that's probably the last big module to be made here for the North Sea. All the big gas and oil fields have been found and sucked empty. All that may remain are little rigs and maybe foreign contracts for maybe another 40 years until rig making goes the same way as fishing and boat-building in the area, and dies. |
Richard Branson's boat the Virgin Atlantic Challenger II was built at Lowestoft's Brooke Yachts (Brooke Marine Ltd.) yard and won the Blue Riband award for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic from New York to Bishops Rock (St. Mary's) in 1986.
The 1980s onwards has seen a big decline in the number of large trawlers operating from Lowestoft. At the time of writing there are about seven beam trawlers and a few smaller boats. It
seems unlikely that large scale fishing operations will ever return to Lowestoft, although a new, £7million boat was purchased by the Lowestoft Colne Fishing Company in 1999.
UpdateColne stopped fishing at the end of 2002, and most of their 7 boats, while still
registered in Lowestoft, have been leased to Dutch fleets.
The economic recession of the 1990s has hit the town badly. This has, perhaps, led to the surge of interest in photo-histories recalling the recent history of the town from the days
when it still had a little dignity. Those were certainly interesting times compared to what's on offer today!
What next?
So what does the future hold for Lowestoft? With unemployment standing at just over 10% the area was awarded Assisted Area status in 2000. Big redevelopment plans are currently
underway to halt the decline in the town's economic prospects and parts may look better in years to come. But the outlook is not good while the town has poor road and rail communications and so few major industries would consider being based here.
A big electricity windmill may get built at Ness Point if the firms concerned can stop fighting over who's going to get the contract. This is proposed to have a viewing platform at the top.
You can buy an 1890s terraced house in Lowestoft for around £65 000 (Feb 2003). House prices in Lowestoft are lower than most areas, with the possible exception of great Yarmouth. It's a buyers market as people have to move away to better their prospects.
That about sums up the state of the town at the moment. I don't see it changing much in this decade.
 | Why have I spent so much time and energy rooting out stuff from
Lowestoft's past?
To answer this question!!
(See, they've even had badges made).
Well, partly curiosity
of the origins of the place I live, partly seeking out something interesting here to
identify with, and partly cos that's just
me and I'd do it wherever I lived.
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Most of this information comes from small guide books and discussions with interested locals.
Anything genuinely original is © Joe Capp.
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