The subject of our talk was ‘Who put the Great in Great Yarmouth’, this is, as they say, the million dollar question.
There are three possible answers that our speaker Stuart Burgess presented to us, so, briefly we can have a look at them and I will leave it to you to decide.
Great Yarmouth grew from the sea, a sandspit which by the time of the Domesday survey was an emerging settlement with it’s seventy burgesses and a number of fishermen recorded. We were never governed by landowners it was the Monarchy who owned Yarmouth and in line with the feudal system we paid heavy taxes to the King.
In 1208 a petition by the burgesses of the town to King John resulted in our first Charter, the king traded his rights in the town for an annual fee-farm rent of £55, the privileges bestowed upon Yarmouth to become a free borough forever were of inestimable value, again in 1261 King Henry III gave permission to build a wall enclosing the town, as a defence a custom’s barrier and a status symbol showing the importance and growth of the town.
Over the centuries we received many charters which allowed the town to develop, so was it Monarchy who put the Great in Great Yarmouth?
What about our herring our ‘Silver Darlings’. The herring season from September to November has never changed, in early times there was a free herring fair on the beach, much later they were landed on the quay. It is unlikely that any settlement would have been established on the sandbank if it had not been for the herring.
From these early times the herring fair attracted merchants from France, Holland, Italy and Scandinavia. The success of the herring industry waxed and waned over the centuries, but with it’s associated industries it brought great wealth to the town, so was it the herring who put the Great in Great Yarmouth?
Or was it the merchants, following our charter of 1208 the merchants guilds flourished and it was to their advantage to create and keep a navigable haven for shipping, this was a complicated and expensive process each time a channel was cut with constantly shifting sands they silted up, it is unlikely that these early havens were supported with piers. The merchants wealth assisted in maintaining the havens. One last supreme effort in 1560 culminated in our seventh haven which remains today, largely thanks to Joas Johnson who was brought over from Holland with his knowledge it was completed. With the success of the haven wealth flowed into the town. So was it the merchants who put the Great in Great Yarmouth?
The name Great Yarmouth was named thus because Little Yarmouth, now known as Gorleston and Southtown situated across the river.
I can’t think of anywhere else where a sandspit is so rich in history.