But Queen Elizabeth’s reign was long long ago. We know from books the principal events of her reign, as we do of some period in Roman or Grecian History. But we know little of the people, although we are of the same flesh and blood, and indebted to them for much that we now enjoy. Elizabeth’s reign covered the first 42 years of our Parish Registers; and the materials for this lecture will belong almost entirely to this period.
As a stepping stone however and introduction to our subject, I propose to read to you a few lines from an account of a tour in these parts taken by a young lady about 200 years ago; a hundred years later than Elizabeth’s time. This lady was Miss Celia Fiennes, a daughter of Lord Saye and Sele. She appears to have been quite a “new woman” of the 17th century, and, I think I may safely say, the first lady who ever travelled through England as a tourist. She rode on horseback. She did not ride a bicycle for two reasons—first, because they were not made then; and secondly, because if they had been, there was no road on which they could have run a yard. This absence of roads is an important point to bear in mind, for it had much to do with the difference in the habits and character of these old people and of ourselves. Miss Fiennes rode along the roads and lanes, such as they were, accompanied by two male servants, and stayed at inns and country houses. In her tour through Suffolk and Norfolk she came from Ipswich, through Saxmundham, to Beccles, and this is a little of what she tells us about her journey:—
“Thence to Saxmunday, eight miles more. This is a pretty big market town. The wayes are pretty deep, mostly lanes, very little commons. I passed by several gentlemen’s seats. So to Bathford (she meant Blythburgh), eight miles, where is the remains of the walls of an abbey, and there is still a very fine church, &c. Thence I paused by some woods and little villages of a few scattered houses, and generally the people here are able to give so bad a direction that passengers are at a loss what way to take. They know scarce three miles from their home, and meete them where you will, and enquire how far to such a place, they tell you so farre, which is the distance from their own homes to that place. To Beckle is eight miles more, which, in all, was 36 miles from Ipswich, but exceeding long miles. They do own they are 41 measured miles. This is a little market town, but it is the third biggest town in Suffolk—Ipswich, Berrye, and this. There are no good buildings in the town, being old timber and plaster work, except Sir R. Rich’s, and one or two more. There is a bigg market Kross and a market kept. At the town’s end one posses over the river Waveney, on a wooden bridge railed with timber, and so you enter into Norfolk. Its a low, flat ground all here about, so that at the least rains they are overflowed by the river, and lie under water, as they did when I was there; so that the road lay under water, which is very unsafe for strangers to pass, by reason of the holes and quick-sands and loose bottom.”
If the houses in Beccles, and the roads across the marshes were as she describes them in the reign of William and Mary, we may be quite sure that they were no better in the time of her great grandmother. We will imagine a traveller of this still more ancient time arriving at Beccles on his way to Norwich, and who finding the road across the marshes to Gillingham quite impassable from the floods, determined to make a detour and pay a visit to Lowestoft.
In travelling from Beccles to Lowestoft, our ancient visitor would have no dangerous marsh roads to travel on. He would ride along on the high ground which skirted the fenlands on the north, on a road or trackway which had been used for hundreds of years before, probably by Britons, Romans, and Saxons, and which was the connecting link between Lothingland and Suffolk; the road that still leads over the narrow ridge or neck between Lake Lothing and Oulton Broad through Oulton to Burgh Castle and Gorleston.
When our ancient visitor arrived at this spot, he would find a narrow raised “causey,” as he would call it, (or as we still more erroneously call it “causeway”) and a bridge, [57] the first bridge built over the little gap which used to be known as the “mud ford,” and from which the bridge took its name. Taking a survey from this point, he would see on his left Oulton Fen, as it was then called, a watery wilderness of reeds and bogs, much valued by the sportsman and poachers of the period for fish and wildfowl, and undisturbed by wherries or any craft beyond the fisherman’s punt. On the right would be Lake Lothing—the “fresh water,” as the Lowestoft people then called it, a long, river-like piece of water, with deep margins of reeds and rushes, and as full of fish as Oulton Fen, with which it was connected. Turning off the main road, into the road leading to Lowestoft, he would soon come to Normanston—very much then, I expect, what it is now. The gentleman living in it then was apparently Mr. Mason, Churchwarden in 1575. Several persons appear in the register as servants of Mr. Mason buried during our period. Further on he would see the farm by the church, much the same as now, except in the character of the buildings, and then the church—very much, indeed, the same, except that it was then in very bad repair. It probably had not been restored since it was built some 100 years or more before. In 1592, in the latter part of our period, the inhabitants undertook the task of repairing it, at the expense of some £200. The churchyard would be much the same—quite full of graves—but with few headstones. Close to the churchyard our ancient visitor would see the old vicarage, which was burned down in 1606. It was occupied during the first part of our period by Mr. Nayshe, the minister of the parish, and afterwards by Mr. Bentley, the Vicar of whom I shall tell you more soon. Close to the Vicarage our visitor would see Annott’s School house, in which Mr. Philip—“Mr. Annott, his schoolmaster,” as he was always to be called according to the deed of endowment, was then living, of whom also more soon. This house has also long since disappeared. He would then reach the town, passing from Church Road into what was then Swan Lane (now Mariners’ Street). Arriving at the High Street he would dismount at the Swan Inn, on the opposite side, next Swan Score (now Mariners’ Score), and now represented by two houses, Mr. Abel’s and Mr. Shipley’s.
The Swan Inn was a very interesting old house. It had been built on the foundations of a much older house, which had one of those cellars with groined roofs already noticed, which still remains. When this old house was converted into an inn, an opening was made from the cellar into the street for beer barrels to be let down, with brick steps, still remaining.
The Trades of the Town.
Having given his horse into the care of the ostler, our visitor would enter the Swan and order dinner, unless he had dined at Beccles before starting. People dined at 10 and 11 o’clock in the morning in those days. After dining he would probably question his host about the town, its size, character and principal residents—its trade, population, &c. He would have liked much to be furnished with a guide to Lowestoft, but there was no Mr. Arthur Stebbings or Mr. Huke in those days to supply him with anything of the sort. We, however, with the register before us, are able to gather a great deal of the information which our ancient visitor wanted. If we cannot make out a complete Directory, we can make out a fairly complete list of the trades and occupations of the inhabitants during our period, and of the names of many of the persons belonging to each.
We find some 45 different trades or occupations mentioned as being carried on in the town. The number of different persons and families mentioned as belonging to them would, generally speaking, vary in proportion to the number actually engaged in each trade during the period. I would observe, however, that it was not the duty of Mr. Allen and his successors to add the trade or occupation of persons whose names he entered, but they seem to have made a common practice of doing so, though in an imperfect and unsystematic manner. In by far the larger proportion of entries no description appears, and although many of these entries refer to the families of persons previously described, a great many names appear throughout our period without any occupation being assigned to them.