Gillingwater's History of Lowestoft / a reprint: with a chapter of more recent events

by Edmund Gillingwater

[12c] Of Somerly town, in this island, and in whom the family became extinct. Isabel, the sister of Sir Roger Fitz-Osbert, of Somerley, was wife of Sir Walter Jernegan, of Horham, by virtue of which marriage [her brother, Sir Roger, dying without issue] he became possessor of the Somerley estate. This family, in the reign of King John, was settled first at Horham, in Suffolk, afterwards another branch was settled at Stonham Jerningham, in the same county, about the year 1234. The Horham branch, by marriage with the Fitz-Osberts, removed to Somerly which then became the principal seat of the family.

[13a] The Yarmouth men were opposed by the adjoining towns six years before they obtained this charter.

[13b] The granting of this charter, for uniting Kirkley road with Yarmouth haven, was one of the principal sources of the great contention which arose between Yarmouth and Lowestoft, about the year 1660, respecting the herring fishery; and gave rise to a law-suit which subsisted several years: the Yarmouth men insisting, that the place called Kirkley Road was not contiguous to the haven, but a part of the main sea, opposite to the town of Kirkley; which town lies to the south of Lowestoft, thereby including the Roads of Lowestoft within the boundary of their liberties. Whereas, it is very evident, from the charter itself, that Kirkley Road was an adjoining place to the haven, and that the mouth of the haven, at that time, discharged itself into the sea, opposite the town of Corton; and, therefore, must be situated a little to the south of that town. This assertion receives still further confirmation from an ancient view of the town of Lowestoft, late in the possession of Thomas Martin, F.S.A., and an old map of this part of the coast, inserted in Ives’s Garianonum, where Kirkley Road is placed between Lowestoft and Corton.

It is probable that the passage cut through the cliffs at Lowestoft, a little to the north of the town, called the Cart’s Score, and also the foot-path between that Score and the northern light-house, were designed, originally, for the convenience of a communication between Lowestoft and the adjacent country, and the haven’s mouth when situated near Corton: and there are several other passages, similar to the above, between Lowestoft and Yarmouth, which were also formed for preserving a communication between the country and the haven’s mouth, according to the several situations which the haven afterwards had.

[14a] The old map from whence this was taken, remained in a chest called the Hutch, belonging to the Corporation of Yarmouth; and was copied from one still more ancient, which appeared to be in a perishing condition about the time of Elizabeth.

[14b] Camden speaks of Kirkley as a haven town, and in his time very likely it was so; for the Waveney had then not only a communication with the sea near Lowestoft, but had also such a depth of water at its entrance as was sufficient to admit vessels of a small draught into it. At a little distance from the mouth of this river, on the south side, is a small inlet running towards Kirkley, and now called Kirkley Ham, and probably is the place which in those days was called Kirkley Haven.

[14c] Blomfield in his history of Norfolk, says it was navigable as far as Brockdish, and its opposite village Syleham. That the former place, from the great breadth and depth of the river there, was originally called Broad-ditch; and the latter now called Syleham, is derived from Sail-home, intimating probably that there the navigation terminated. [Swinden says, that in the time of Kett’s Rebellion in 1549, a small pinnace was to go up to Weybread with twenty-four men] and, as a corroborating circumstance, anchors have been found, in turning up the ground in the last-mentioned village, which is generally acknowledged as sufficient evidence that some centuries ago large boats and barges had a free and easy access to those places. But when the Yare was reduced to a stream, and all communications between the Waveney and the sea was cut off at Lowestoft, the rivers decreased, and the navigation consequently was more contracted.

[14d] From hence it appears that the defence or fortification, ordered to be erected at the sea-breach near Lowestoft, was, in reality, only the reparation of a former one. When it was first erected is now unknown. In a violent storm and high tide in 1786, the sea was very near breaking into the river, and so much soil was washed away that the old foundations of the above defence were discovered.

[16] The first levy, at two shillings, and sixteen pence in the pound was made under the former commission in 1652.

[17a] Possibly Mutford Bridge before this event was only a dam of earth, formed across the river. The bridge that was built afterwards consisted chiefly of earth, arranged in the same manner, with a small passage through it for the current of water to pass through, consisting of planks, about three feet wide and two in height, and called the sluice. In the year 1760 a new bridge was built of brick materials consisting of one spacious arch, large enough to admit small craft through the same; and thereby rendered the river navigable to its utmost eastern limits.