James Woodforde and Yarmouth
Woodforde's first visit, 1775
Woodforde and his friend Washbourne Cooke set off from Oxford on 10 April 1775 to view Woodforde's new parish of Weston Longville, nine miles northwest of Norwich. The journey via London took three days, and when they arrived at 10 o'clock in the evening they found the city gates of Norwich locked.
Approaching the North Gate, Yarmouth, from the Norwich road, showing the tower of St Nicholas's church after losing its original spire and its four tower pinnacles, engraving by J. Grag after a drawing by W. Brand, 1807 [Private collection]During the following fortnight Woodforde walked around his Weston living and the nearby villages meeting the local clergymen and his farmers. He found the condition of the parsonage to be 'very bad', that his clerk was a 'shocking hand', and at All Saints' church listened to 'the worst Singing I ever heard in a Church'.
He attended the theatre and began to get to know Norwich. Earlier, on 12 April, he had called on the Bishop of Norwich, Philip Yonge – whom he described as “a short fat man” – at the bishop's London home in Upper Grosvenor Street, where he received the certificate instituting him to the rectory of Weston Longeville. And then, on St George's Day:
Sunday, 23 April 1775 . . . I read Prayers, the 39. Articles, & the Bishops Certificate this morning at Weston Church - I read Prayers & Preached in the Afternoon, & then declared my Assent & consent to the Liturgy and had 3. People to sign a Paper that I did so - Weston Church was much crowded both in the morning and afternoon to day . . . The Bells rung for me to Day
Four days later, Woodforde, with Cooke, made his first excursion to Yarmouth, having attended the theatre in Norwich the previous evening and lodged at the King's Head.
27 April 1775 . . . We got up pretty early this morning and at 7 o'clock we got into the Yarmouth Coach to go to Yarmouth about 22 Miles from Norwich - We breakfasted on the road - and got to Yarmouth about 11 o'clock - where we dined & spent the afternoon at the sign of the Wrestlers kept by one Orton, near to the Market Place.
Frustratingly, although Woodforde had chronicled the towns through which he passed between London and Norwich, he records nothing of his journey from Norwich to Yarmouth. What is fairly certain is that they entered Yarmouth through the North Gate.
The wall and gates
The North Gate no longer survives, having been demolished in 1807. Between 1776 and 1812 all ten gates of Yarmouth's town wall were taken down, although parts of the wall remain.
Part of the town wall of Great Yarmouth [photo Alan Ovenden 2024]It was in the year 1260 that King Henry II granted a licence to the burgesses of Yarmouth . . .
to enclose the town with a wall and foss [moat] as long as the said burgesses towards us and our heirs shall well and faithfully behave themselves.
North West Tower, Great Yarmouth [photo Alan Ovenden 2024]In the absence of stone, the walls were built largely of local flint and mortar. The towers were constructed circular or 'D'-shaped to avoid the need for stone reinforcement at square corners.
More than 23 feet (7 metres) high and 2,280 yards (2.1 kilometres) long, with ten gates and sixteen towers, the wall was not completed until around the year 1400. It does not form a full circuit: it encloses the town on three sides, with the River Yare providing defence on the west.
On approaching the North Gate, Woodforde and Cooke could not have been unaware of the North West Tower, rather detached from its section of wall on the North Quay, which remains a landmark for visitors arriving in Great Yarmouth from Norwich.
After taking a coach ride along the shore and visiting the fort, Woodforde and Cooke returned to the town.
The Church of St Nicholas
During the night of 24–25 June 1942, more than 1,500 German bombs were dropped on Great Yarmouth, almost completely destroying the historic church of St Nicholas. The church was begun by Herbert de Losinga, Bishop of Norwich, and consecrated in 1119. Bishop Losinga was also responsible for founding Norwich Cathedral. The stone from Caen, in Normandy, used for the cathedral was landed at Yarmouth, and some of it was used in the early construction of St Nicholas's Church.
Woodforde's diary offers no observations of the church. It was in a semi-ruinous state at the time of his visit. Had he looked north-west from his vantage point outside the Wrestlers, however, he would have seen that the 186-foot (57-metre) high wooden spire of the church was twisted – the result of a lightning strike in 1683. It was taken down in 1803, but the spire had long been an important landmark for mariners sailing along Norfolk's treacherous coast, and a new but shorter spire was erected in 1807.
Navigation landmarks on the Norfolk coast, showing Gorleston Church and the spire of St Nicholas' Church, Yarmouth, The English Pilot, 1752 [David Rumsey Map Collection through the Internet Archive]Restorations were carried out in Victorian times and, beginning in 1957, the bombed-out church was rebuilt within the surviving walls by Stephen Dykes Bower in what Nikolaus Pevsner disparagingly described as 'imitation-Gothic'. It remains the largest parish church in England, though now without its former spire.
Woodforde does, however, mention admiringly the organ and the organist at St Nicholas's:
27 April 1775 . . . we went to the Church & saw that, and heard I think the finest Organ I ever did hear. The Organist, Mr. Chicheley stone blind played on it.
Henry Richard Chicheley who was blind from birth, was appointed organist of St Nicholas's Church, Yarmouth, on 6 March 1762. He married Elizabeth Gallant of Aylsham in 1766 and had a large family.
In addition to the £40 per annum he was paid as organist, he also ran a small business as a bookseller, stationer, and music seller, and also sold patent medicines, in the Market Place near the Angel Inn. He would have been aged thirty-five when Woodforde listened to his playing. He remained at Yarmouth until 1788.
William Faden's Plan of Great Yarmouth, 1797 [Larks Press Edition, 1989, courtesy of David Yaxley]1 North Gate, 2 North West Tower, 3 Wrestlers Inn, 4 Church of St Nicholas
The Church of St Nicholas, Yarmouth, 1824 (viewed from the south-west), engraving by H. Le Ceuc after a drawing by J.P. Neale [Private collection]The Church of St Nicholas had possessed an organ since 1485, but the instrument destroyed in 1650 during the fervour of Puritanism was not replaced until 1733. Great Yarmouth is fortunate in having preserved its Assembly Books, which are essentially the minutes of the meetings of the Corporation, or Assembly. In 1732 the Assembly established an Organ Committee to consider providing two organs for the borough – one at St Nicholas's Parish Church, the other at St George's Chapel. The committee reported that:
Mr Ferrier (foreman of the said committee) who is now at London hath recommended to the committee Mr Abraham Jordan one of the most eminent organ builders in the kingdom to make the organs for both church and chapel
The cost of the St Nicholas organ was £500, the bulk of the funds being raised by public subscription. The Norwich Gazette of 8 December 1733 announced:
The interior of St Nicholas's Church, ILN, 2 September 1848 [Private collection)]
On Thursday the 20th instant, the fine Organ at the Great Church in Yarmouth, made by Messrs Jordan and Harris and approved of by most Judges of Musick in London as a Masterpiece, will be opened with great solemnity, there being a sermon on the occasion, likewise Mr Purcell's grand Te Deum and Jubilate, will be performed by several voices and instruments.
The organ was reconstructed periodically, and there is no known image of its appearance in Woodforde's day, though it can be glimpsed – albeit with additional external ornamentation – in a drawing for the Illustrated London News in 1848 marking the restoration of the church.
One of the finest surviving organs made by Jacob Abraham is now in St George's Church, Southall, Middlesex, having originally been installed at the church of St George, Botolph Lane in the City of London.
Following its destruction in 1942, the rebuilt St Nicholas Minster acquired a Compton organ in 1960, seen here.
The Wrestlers Inn
Notice of a celebration at the Wrestlers, 25 January 1758, Norwich Mercury 28 January 1758 [Private collection]
The Wrestlers was the pre-eminent hostelry in Yarmouth in 1775, and its distinction grew through its association with Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson, who stayed there in 1802. It was a venue for celebration and lively conviviality, as a report in the Norwich Mercuryof a gathering there in 1758 in honour of King Frederick II (the Great) of Prussia, Britain's ally in the Seven Years' War, amply demonstrates.
The name of the inn appears in different publications with a singlular possessive apostrophe, or a plural possessive apostrophe, and as a simple plural. However, Charles Palmer in his monumental The Perlustration of Great Yarmouth, 1874, when writing about the inn, records that:
Wrestling was a favorite game with the English from an early period, and down to the reign of George III. was considered a manly accomplishment among gentlemen. Hence this sign is to be found in many places. In the last century this Inn displayed a very-large sign of three wrestlers, nearly as large as life, two in action and one looking on; and hence it was frequently called The Three Wrestlers.
Job Smith's trade card for the Three Wrestlers [© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence]
Part of the the Wrestlers Inn remaining on Church Plain, Great Yarmouth [photo Alan Ovenden 2024]A trade card for the Three Wrestlers, issued in the name of Job Smith, depicts two wrestlers in action and one looking on, as described by Palmer.
Job Smith purchased the premises in 1743, with John Orton remaining as tenant until 1783. Whether this card was printed in the 1760s or the 1780s, we cannot be sure, but it confirms the name as The Wrestlers.
Woodforde stayed there again in 1776 and 1778, but for his visit in 1779 he chose the Angel Inn in the Market Place. Perhaps the Wrestlers' accommodation had deteriorated. Woodforde described it in 1776 as 'a very good house,' kept by one Orton. However, the registers record that John Orton lost his tenancy in 1783, having been declared bankrupt.
Part of the building still stands on Church Plain, though it is now occupied by offices. The view to the church of St Nicholas may still be enjoyed much as Woodforde would have seen it, though now across a busy road and, of course, lacking the dramatic presence that the church spire – twisted or not – would once have contributed to the scene.
St Nicholas's church across Bank Plain from the Wrestlers [photo Alan Ovenden 2024]Yarmouth 'Coaches'
A Yarmouth 'coach', seen with two other carts, unhorsed, and adapted for transporting goods, watercolour (detail) by C.J.W. Winter [reproduced by A.W. Yallop 1905]
Yarmouth troll carts were a distinctive feature of the town. Though primarily used for transporting goods, in the summer months some were ingeniously adapted to carry passengers. These lively, wheeled vehicles came to be known as 'coaches,' as Woodforde describes:
27 April 1775 . . . We each took a Yarmouth Coach Just big enough for one Person & drove down to the Fort, and so on upon the Sea Coast & close to the Sea the German Ocean, out of which I drank - We were close to the Sea & sometimes the Water came up to us. It is a sweet Beach - upon the Fort we saw the Porpoises playing in the German Ocean - The Tide was going out . . .
The Yarmouth Coaches are very droll things indeed the wheels very low & directly under the seat - The Shafts very clumsy & very long, & up in the Air - A very small matter will overturn them, being so very narrow, and not more than a foot from the Ground
The 1777, third, edition of The Norfolk Tour by Richard Beatniffe of Norwich connects a description of the Yarmouth 'coaches' with Woodforde's 'very droll things'.
A cart of singular construction, adapted to the narrowness of the rows of this place, and used in no other town in England, merits a short description . . . The length from the tip of the shafts, or strings, to the extreme of the seat is twelve feet, the breadth three feet and a half, the wheels being two feet nine inches high, are sometimes made of one sold piece of poplar or ash, five inches thick, without tire; but these are not so much used as formerly:they are now generally made with spokes and sellies, shod with tire . . . Over the wheels the seat is placed, upon which the company ride for pleasure, the driver, with a short whip, standing upon the cross staves of the cart, guides the horse with a rein . . . In Summer . . . a number of these carts, which the people of Yarmouth dignify by the name of coaches, painted red, green, or blue, are let out to company who visit the town, and chuse an excursion to the Fort, upon the Deanes, or into the country.
The Harbour Fort
The Mouth of the Yare (detail), George Vincent, 1821 [Towneley Hall Art Gallery & Museum]
Norfolk Heritage Explorer records all that is currently known of the Harbour Fort from documentary evidence. In summary, the Harbour Fort was built in either 1648 or 1663. It is shown on old maps as being a polygonal brick fort with ravelins, two half moon batteries, no ditch, and brick crenellations. Inside the fort were barracks, a magazine and a storeroom. The building was generally kept in good repair and well armed. However, reports from 1741 indicate that it was being enlarged. By 1746, it was leaking, and local people were throwing stones down the air holes. It was dismantled in 1834 after a bastion was washed away.
Whatever its state of repair, Richard Beatniffe nevertheless encouraged visitors to Yarmouth not to miss the Fort:
In excursions to the Fort, which is about two miles from the market-place, you are drove over the Deanes nearly all the way, from whence there is a most charming prospect of the Sea. For a company to have been at Yarmouth, and not to have rode in one of these carts, to the haven's mouth, the baths, and the whole length of the quay, is to lose perhaps the one of the greatest pleasure this town is able to offer.
Woodforde visited Yarmouth again in 1776, 1778, 1779, 1786, and 1790, and the Fort was a favourite destination which he enjoyed showing to family and friends.
The German Ocean
It is perhaps worth noting that Woodforde refers to the North Sea as the German Ocean. A survey of the maps shown in Raymond Frostick's, The Printed Maps of Norfolk 1574-1840 confirms that 'German Ocean' was normal cartographic nomenclature until the 1780s. The map maker John Cary (c. 1754–1835) seems to have led the change: in 1784 he labeled it 'German Ocean or North Sea,' but in his New and Correct English Atlas of 1787 it appears simply as 'North Sea.' However, 'German Ocean' remained in general parlance and in literature until 1914.
Yarmouth is a sweet place
Woodforde and Cooke returned to Norwich that afternoon, arriving back at about 7 pm. Although it was a one-day excursion, Yarmouth clearly made an impression on the diarist: he records that 'We had a very fine day' and that 'Yarmouth is a sweet place indeed'.
Yarmouth's literary associations
Woodforde's first visit in 1775 – Washbourne Cooke
Woodforde's second visit in 1776
Woodforde's third visit in 1778
Woodforde's third visit in 1778 – the journey to Yarmouth
Woodforde's fourth visit in 1779