Woodforde's journey to Yarmouth

Halvergate Marsh (looking East), the A47 Acle New Road to the right [photo Alan Ovenden 2023] James Woodforde's diary is often frustrating for geographers and others seeking to trace his journeys. He records the starting and ending points, the inns where he took refreshment, his mode of conveyance, and the expenses he incurred. To reconstruct his routes, one must turn to other evidence, chiefly contemporary and later maps.

Great Yarmouth – or simply 'Yarmouth', as Woodforde referred to it in his diary – is not quite the most easterly town in Britain; that distinction belongs to Lowestoft, at Ness Point, some 6.4 miles (10.3 km) to the south of the mouth of the River Yare. With rail links from London and the English Midlands via Ipswich and Norwich, and major roads connecting it to Norfolk's interior, Yarmouth today is easily accessible.

The problem of the marshes

In Woodforde's time, however, before the advent of railways, the final leg of the journey from Norwich involved skirting the marshes that lie between Acle and Yarmouth, into which three rivers – the Bure, the Yare, and the Waveney – drain. It was not until 1831, in pursuance of an Act of Parliament of 1830, that the Acle New Road, or Acle Straight as it is popularly known, was opened as a turnpike road across the marshes. It still remains the direct route from Norwich via Acle, as a section of the A47 trunk road.

The problem of access to Yarmouth from the land is well illustrated by the First Land Utilisation Survey (LUS) map, published at a scale of 1:63,360 (one inch to a mile) in 1934.

First Land Utilisation Survey Map, Norwich & Great Yarmouth, 1934 [Released under CC-BY-NC-SA (LUS) through the National Library of Scotland]

Land uses are shown in different colours. Norwich in the west and Great Yarmouth in the east are predominantly shown in red, indicating land with high-density housing or industrial development and little agricultural productivity, or in mauve, representing housing with gardens large enough to grow vegetables. Land shown in brown denotes arable farming, while pale green indicates meadowland and permanent grass. The Acle New Road, with its distinctive 'dog-leg' at Stracey Arms, is clearly visible crossing the green-coloured permanent grassland and running parallel with the railway line between Acle and Great Yarmouth.

Halvergate Marsh, Drainage, First Land Utilisation Survey, 1934 [Released under CC-BY-NC-SA (LUS) through the National Library of Scotland] Today, the permanent grassland is used primarily for grazing cattle, but this was not always the case. The evidence lies in the pattern of drainage channels shown on the first LUS map. The curving blue lines represent the natural drainage channels that developed after the land was pumped dry and the water directed into constructed main drains.

William Marshall, while making a tour of the Yarmouth marshes in 1782, observed (The Rural Economy of Norfolk, 1788) that:

Fen and Marsh between Norwich and Yarmouth, William Faden, 1797 [The Land of Britain, Part 70, Norfolk, John E. G. Mosby, 1938] Although draining the marshes was underway in Woodforde's time, they frequently overflowed with water, and much of the land remained swampy, left for the growth of reeds used for thatching. Until the construction of the Acle New Road, this area was largely inaccessible to travellers. A land-use map constructed from William Faden's 1797 Topographical Map of the County of Norfolk clearly shows the marshland areas over which roads could not cross.

Two roads from Norwich to Yarmouth

In the 1760s, there were two routes between Norwich and Yarmouth – one to the south of the marshes and one to the north. The diary provides no details of Woodforde's routes to Yarmouth from Weston in either 1775 or 1776. On both occasions, Woodforde and his companion travelled on horseback, but the diary offers no description of the journey. Inevitably, however, their route from Weston would have been via Norwich.

The southern route was usual until a shorter northerly road from Acle was turnpiked between 1768 and 1769. This road is clearly shown on Herman Moll's map of Norfolk of 1724: in fact, it is the only road depicted in south-east Norfolk.

The road approximates to the present A146 trunk road from Norwich, south of the River Yare, as far as Hales. The locations shown by Moll along or adjacent to the road (with present-day spellings) are: Bendon (Kirby Bedon); Rockl (Rockland); Hellington; Chedgrave, with nearby Langley Abbey; and Loddon. At Hales, the A146 today continues to Beccles, while the road to Yarmouth is now a minor one, though it was the principal route according to Moll.

The road from Norwich to Yarmouth, Herman Moll (c.1654–1732), 1724 [PD image via Wikimedia Commons]From Hales the road continues to the Bridg (bridge) over the River Waveney at St Olaves close by: Heckin. (Heckingham); Thurl. (Thurlton); Hadskothorp (Thorpe); to Hadsko (Haddiscoe) and the Waveney flood plain and marshes; and thence across the marshes to St Olave (St Olaves). After crossing the river into the northerly extension of Suffolk known as Lothingland, the route continued towards the crossing of the River Yare at Yarmouth via Fritton, Belton, and Bradwell, north of Gorleston.

'Travellers' companions'

So-called travellers' companions comprising 'scroll maps', 'strip road maps' or 'ribbon road maps' had been available for over a hundred years before Thomas Kitchin (1718–1784) published his Post-Chaise Companion through England and Wales in London in 1767. This work detailed The Road from King's Lynn to Norwich continued to Yarmouth via the route south of the marshes. Lenwade Bridge, or 'Leonards Bri.' as it is shown on the map, is the place from where Woodforde and his companions took a post-chaise to Norwich.

A contemporary cartographer of Kitchin, and sometime publishing collaborator, was Thomas Jefferys (c.1719–1771) whose early maps of North America included a Map of the Most Inhabited Part of Virginia. Jefferys, too, published an Itinerary; or Travellers Companion.

The Norwich to Yarmouth Turnpike

The Norwich to Yarmouth road, John Cary, 1787 [Private collection]The Parliament that met from 8 November 1768 to 9 May 1769 passed forty Acts for road improvements. Among them was the Norwich to Yarmouth Road Act 1769 (9 Geo. 3. c. 68) dated 23 March 1769, which established a turnpike or toll road twenty miles in length:

The Act established a board of trustees (a turnpike trust) whose purpose was to improve a section of road that had previously been maintained piecemeal by the parishes through which it passed. Unlike the parishes, a turnpike trust could raise external funding through bonds and mortgages and service these loans by charging tolls to road users. Turnpike trusts spent between ten and twenty times more than the parishes they replaced.

The impact of the improved road on journeying between Norwich and Yarmouth is apparent from John Cary's Norfolk map in his New and Correct English Atlas of 1787: it shows a road leading east from Norwich, north of the River Yare, which passes north of the marshes between Acle and Yarmouth and crosses the Bure at Acle. This is the route that Woodforde and his companions took in 1778. William Faden's map of 1797 shows the turnpike road from Acle to Caister next Yarmouth, and the villages through which they would have passed.

Nineteenth-century milepost on the Turnpike at Caister [photo Alan Ovenden 2025] The road is now designated the A1064. Having left Acle, Woodforde would have crossed the River Bure and Billockby Marshes at Wey Bridge, and then continued via Billockby, Burgh St Margaret (Fleggburgh), Burgh St Mary (now decayed, with only the church ruins remaining), and Filby, before reaching Caister Causeway. The Turnpike Toll Gate at Filby which would have accounted for some of Woodforde's expenditure on tolls, is clearly shown.

The Act of Parliament of 1769, which prescribed the tolls which could be levied, is unavailable for scrutiny. However the road was improved again by the Road from Norwich to the Caister Causeway Act of 1831, which can be examined for details of the tolls.

Caister Causeway and North Denes, William Faden, 1797 [Courtesy of Andrew Macnair] These tolls correspond to those paid by Woodforde in 1778. On 2 and 3 June, travelling three apparent stages in a post-chaise – Lenwade to Norwich, Norwich to Acle, and Acle to Yarmouth – he paid one shilling in turnpike tolls. However, having returned to Norwich from Yarmouth on 4 June, he then paid sixpence for the turnpike to Weston. Perhaps there was only one toll between Norwich and Yarmouth, or perhaps Mr Pounsett contributed to the cost; we cannot be sure.
With the opening of the Acle New Road in 1831 – the last turnpike road to be constructed in Norfolk – both the southern and northern routes of the eighteenth-century became redundant and reverted to the country roads they remain today. The Acle New Road itself was de-turnpiked in 1863, following competition from the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway, opened in 1844..

The Denes

On reaching Caister Causeway, Woodforde and his party would have seen the North Sea – or German Ocean, as it was then known – to their left, across the area of low dunes and sandy beach called the North Denes. When Woodforde walked, or took a Yarmouth 'coach', to the Harbour Fort, he would have been on the South Denes.

William Faden's map of 1797 shows a turnpike gate 21 miles from Norwich. The Caister Causeway was itself a toll road, established by the Great Yarmouth to Caister Causeway Act of 1711, in the reign of Queen Anne (10 Anne c. 1).

The North Denes was used for rough cattle grazing, and it was where fishermen spread their nets to dry and repair them. Faden depicts windmills, primarily for grinding corn, and a gibbet, where in 1813 John Hannah was hanged after being convicted of murdering his wife.

The gibbet has long since gone, together with the corn mills, but it is perhaps ironic that the view across the North Denes today includes new windmills – though of a very different character and purpose. The offshore Scroby Sands, once a hazard to shipping, are now the site of an extensive offshore wind farm generating electricity.

North Denes and Scroby Sands Offshore Wind Farm [photo Alan Ovenden 2025]

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James Woodforde and Yarmouth