Great Yarmouth

Geography and demography

Great Yarmouth is located on a 3.1-mile (5.0 km) spit of land between the North Sea and River Yare. It features historic rows of houses in narrow streets and a main tourist sector on the seafront. It is linked to Gorleston, Cobholm and Southtown by Haven Bridge and to the A47 and A149 by Breydon Bridge. The urban area covers 8.3 sq mi (21 km2) and according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 2002 had a population of 47,288. It is the main town in the Borough of Great Yarmouth.

The ONS identifies a Great Yarmouth urban area as having a population of 68,317, which includes the sub-areas of Caister-on-Sea (population 8,756) and Great Yarmouth (population 58,032). The wider Great Yarmouth borough had a population of around 92,500, which increased to 97,277 at the 2011 United Kingdom census. Ethnically, Great Yarmouth was 92.8 per cent White British, with the next biggest ethnic demographic being Other White at 3.5 per cent – Eastern Europeans in the main.

History

Great Yarmouth (Gernemwa, Yernemuth) lies near the site of the Roman fort camp of Gariannonum at the mouth of the River Yare. Its situation having attracted fishermen from the Cinque Ports, a permanent settlement was made, and the town numbered 70 burgesses before the Norman Conquest. Henry I placed it under the rule of a reeve.

In 1101, the Church of St Nicholas was founded by Herbert de Losinga, the first Bishop of Norwich, and consecrated in 1119. This was to be the first of several priories founded in what was a wealthy trading centre of considerable importance. In 1208, King John granted a charter to Great Yarmouth. The charter gave his burgesses of Yarmouth general liberties according to the customs of Oxford, a gild merchant and weekly hustings, amplified by several later charters asserting the rights of the borough against Little Yarmouth and Gorleston. The town is bound to send to the sheriffs of Norwich every year "one hundred herrings, baked in twenty-four pasties", which the sheriffs are to deliver to the lord of the manor of East Carlton, who is then to convey them to the King.

A hospital was founded in Great Yarmouth during the reign of Edward I by Thomas Fastolfe, father of Thomas Fastolf, Bishop of St David's. In 1551, a grammar school was founded, and the great hall of the old hospital was appropriated for its use. The school was closed from 1757 to 1860 but re-established by charity trustees and settled in new buildings in 1872.

In 1552, Edward VI granted a charter of admiralty jurisdiction, later confirmed and extended by James I. Elizabeth I came to Great Yarmouth in July 1578. In 1668 a charter from Charles II extended the borough boundaries to also include Little Yarmouth (also known as Southtown), which lay on the opposite bank of the Yare in the parish of Gorleston in Suffolk. In 1703 a new charter from Queen Anne replaced the two bailiffs by a mayor. In 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the Zealand Expedition was assembled in the town. In 1702, the Fishermen's Hospital was founded. In the early 18th century, Yarmouth, as a thriving herring port, was vividly and admiringly described several times in Daniel Defoe's travel journals, in part as follows:

Yarmouth is an ancient town, much older than Norwich; and at present, tho' not standing on so much ground, yet better built; much more compleat; for number of inhabitants, not much inferior; and for wealth, trade, and advantage of its situation, infinitely superior to Norwich.

Sightseeing and tourism

The Tollhouse with dungeons, dating from the late 13th century, is one of Britain's oldest former gaols and oldest civic buildings. It backs onto the central library. Major sections of the medieval town walls survive around the parish cemetery and in parts of the old town.

Great Yarmouth Minster (the Minster Church of St Nicholas, founded in the 12th century as an act of penance) stands in Church Plain, just off the market place. It is the third largest parish church in England, after Beverley Minster in the East Riding of Yorkshire and Christchurch Priory in Dorset. Neighbouring Church Plain has the 17th-century timber-framed house where Anna Sewell (1820–1878), author of Black Beauty, was born.

The market place, one of England's largest, has functioned since the 13th century. It is also home to the town's shopping sector and the famous Yarmouth chip stalls. The smaller area south of the market is used as a performance area for community events and for access to the town's shopping centre, Market Gates.

Great Yarmouth railway station is the terminus of the Wherry Lines from Norwich. Before the Beeching Axe, the town had several stations and a direct link to London down the east coast. The only remaining signs of these are a coach park, where Beach Station once was, and the A12 relief road, which follows the route of the railway down into the embankment from Breydon Bridge.

Yarmouth has two piers: Britannia Pier (Grade II listed)) and Wellington Pier. The theatre building on the latter was demolished in 2005 and reopened in 2008 as a family entertainment centre, including a ten-pin bowling alley overlooking the beach. Britannia Pier holds the Britannia Theatre, which during the summer has featured acts such as Jim Davidson, Jethro, Basil Brush, Cannon and Ball, Chubby Brown, the Chuckle Brothers, and The Searchers. It is one of the few end-of-the-pier theatres surviving in England.

The Scroby Sands Wind Farm of thirty generators is within sight of the seafront, with its giant wind generators. Also visible are grey seals during their breeding season. The country's only full-time circus, Hippodrome Circus, is just off the seafront.

Governance

There are two tiers of local government covering Great Yarmouth, at district and county level: Great Yarmouth Borough Council and Norfolk County Council, based in Norwich. The borough council meets at Great Yarmouth Town Hall in Hall Plain, which is a Grade II* listed building.

Great Yarmouth was an ancient borough. The original borough was entirely on the north side of the Yare, which formed the historic boundary between Norfolk and Suffolk. After the borough was enlarged to include Southtown in 1668, the borough straddled the two counties. The borough was reformed to become a municipal borough in 1836 under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, at which point the boundaries were enlarged to include all of the parish of Gorleston. When elected county councils were created in 1889, Great Yarmouth was considered large enough to provide its own county-level services and so it became a county borough, independent from Norfolk County Council. For ceremonial and judicial purposes, the borough continued to straddle Norfolk and Suffolk until 1 April 1891, when the county boundary was adjusted to place the whole borough in Norfolk.

The County Borough of Great Yarmouth was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. The area became part of the larger Borough of Great Yarmouth, a lower-tier non-metropolitan district, with Norfolk County Council providing county-level services to the town for the first time. No successor parish was created for the area of the former county borough, which therefore became an unparished area, directly administered by Great Yarmouth Borough Council.

Great Yarmouth is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Its current MP, starting 5 July 2024, is Rupert Lowe, elected for Reform UK before he left the party and established Restore Britain.

Wildlife

The Yarmouth area provides habitats for some rare and unusual species. The area between the piers is home to one of the largest roosts of Mediterranean gulls in the UK. Breydon Water, just behind the town, is a major wader and waterfowl site, with winter roosts of over 100,000 birds. Grey seal and common seal are frequently seen offshore, as are seabirds such as gannet, little auk, common scoter, razorbill, Gull and guillemot.

This and the surrounding Halvergate Marshes are environmentally protected. Most of the area is now managed by conservation organisations, principally the RSPB. The North Denes area of the beach is an SSSI due to its dune plants, and supports many skylarks and meadow pipits, along with one of the largest little tern colonies in the UK each summer, and a small colony of grayling butterflies. Other butterflies found include small copper and common blue.

The nearby cemetery is a renowned temporary roost for spring and autumn migrants. Common redstart and pied flycatcher are often seen during their migration. It has also recorded the first sightings of some rare insects blown in from the continent.

Sport and leisure

The main local football club is Great Yarmouth Town, known as the Bloaters, which plays in the Eastern Counties League. Its ground is at Wellesley Recreation Ground, named after Sir Arthur Wellesley, later to become the Duke of Wellington. There is a strong East Anglian rivalry with Gorleston. Local football clubs are served by the Great Yarmouth and District League.

Great Yarmouth has a horse racecourse that features a chute allowing races of one mile (1.6 km) on the straight.

Speedway racing was staged before and after the Second World War. The meetings were held at the greyhound stadium in Caister Road. The post-war team was known as the Yarmouth Bloaters, after the smoked fish. Banger and Stock car racing are also staged there.

The main Marina leisure centre, built in 1981, has a large swimming pool and conference facilities; it holds live entertainment, such as summer pantomime variety shows produced by local entertainers Hanton & Dean. The centre is run by the Great Yarmouth Sport and Leisure Trust. The Trust was set up in April 2006 to run the building as a charitable non-profit-making organisation.

At the beginning of the 2008 summer season, the world's first Segway Grand Prix was opened at the Pleasure Beach gardens.

The English Pool Association (EPA), the governing body for 8-Ball Pool in England, holds its National Finals Competitions (including Inter-County and Inter-League, singles and team competitions, and England trials) over several weekends through the year at the Vauxhall Holiday Park on the outskirts of Great Yarmouth.

Local media

Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC East and ITV Anglia. Television signals is received from the Tacolneston transmitter or from one of the two local relay transmitters (Great Yarmouth and Gorleston on Sea).

The town's local radio stations are BBC Radio Norfolk on 95.1 FM, Heart East on 102.4 FM, Greatest Hits Radio Norfolk & North Suffolk (formerly The Beach) on 103.4 FM, and Harbour Radio, a community radio station that broadcasts from the town on 107.4 FM.

The Great Yarmouth Mercury is the town's weekly local newspaper, alongside the county-wide newspaper Eastern Daily Press.

Transport

Railway

The Wherry Lines link Norwich and Great Yarmouth railway station, with an hourly service operated by Greater Anglia; most services travel via Acle, with the remainder via Reedham.

Before the Beeching cuts, three other railway lines entered the town:

From the north: The Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway down the coast from Melton Constable to a terminus at Beach station;

From the south-west: The Yarmouth-Beccles line from London Liverpool Street, via Beccles, terminating at South Town station;

From the south: The Yarmouth-Lowestoft line from Lowestoft Central, via Hopton and Gorleston, terminating at South Town station.

The remaining Vauxhall station was renamed Great Yarmouth in 1989. It is the sole surviving station from a former total of seventeen within the borough limits.

Buses

The bus station in Great Yarmouth is the hub for local routes, located beneath Market Gates Shopping Centre. Services are operated predominantly by First Eastern Counties. The Excel X1 route, which links Norwich and Lowestoft, stops in the town. Other local bus services link the suburban areas of Martham, Hemsby, Gorleston, Bradwell and Belton.

Port and river

The River Yare cuts off Great Yarmouth from other areas of the borough, such as Gorleston and Southtown; as a result, the town's bridges became major transport links. Originally, Haven Bridge was the only link over the river, but in the late 1980s, Breydon Bridge was built to take the A12 over Breydon Water, replacing the old railway bridge of Breydon Viaduct. In January 2020, construction began on a third river crossing, the Herring Bridge, which opened to traffic on 1 February 2024. All three are lifting bridges, which can be raised to allow river traffic to pass through; this can result in traffic tailbacks. The phrase "the bridge was up" has become synonymous in the town with being late for appointments.

A ferry running between the southern tip of Great Yarmouth and Gorleston provided a much shorter link between the factories on South Denes and the mostly residential areas of Gorleston. However, increased running costs and the decline of industrial activity led to its closure in the early 1990s.

Since 2006, the restored pleasure steamer the Southern Belle has offered regular river excursions from the town's Haven Bridge. Built in 1925 for the Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, she is now owned by the Great Yarmouth and Gorleston Steam Packet Company Limited.

Construction work on the Great Yarmouth Outer Harbour, a deep-water harbour on the North Sea, began in June 2007 and was completed by 2009. Originally, there was to be a roll-on/roll-off ferry link with IJmuiden, which failed to materialise. An initiative by Seamax Ferries to connect Great Yarmouth and Ijmuiden by ferry was due to start in 2008. Nor did installation of two large cranes in 2009, since removed, save plans for a container terminal, which have also been scrapped.

There has been a lifeboat at Great Yarmouth since at least 1802. Early boats were privately operated until the RNLI took over in 1857. It has a lifeboat station at Riverside Road, Gorleston from where the Trent-class lifeboat Samarbeta and B class (inshore) lifeboat Seahorse IV run.

The anchorage off Yarmouth, known as Yarmouth Roads, was seen as one of the East Coast's best in the early 1800s. Their fleets gathered and set sail during the Napoleonic wars. Nowadays, the roadstead is more likely to be referred to as an anchorage.

Roads

The town is served by the A47 and the terminating A143. Until 2017, the A12 from London terminated in Yarmouth; the route from Lowestoft was renumbered as the A47 by Highways England, as part of a wider road-improvement scheme. Thereafter, the A12 has terminated in Lowestoft instead of at Vauxhall roundabout. The relief road was built along the path of the old railway to carry the A12 onwards to Lowestoft and London. Roundabouts, junctions and bridges often become gridlocked at rush hour.

Plans were advanced for a third river crossing in Great Yarmouth to link northern Gorleston with the South Denes and the Outer Harbour, avoiding the congested town centre. A public consultation took place in mid-2009 over four possible proposals, but plans were stalled by a lack of funding and closure of the container terminal. In 2016, additional funding of just over £1 million was pledged and a potential crossing proposal outlined for the crossing to link the A12 at Harfrey's Roundabout to South Denes. The bridge project was approved in 2020 construction of the bascule bridge, to be named "Herring Bridge" began in January 2021, and was set to end in May 2023. During construction works, an unexploded German bomb from the Second World War was discovered and exploded during defusing attempts. The bridge opened to road traffic on 1 February 2024.

Air

The North Denes Heliport, sited in the north of the town, is operated by CHC Helicopter. In 2011, the heliport's closure was announced, with operations moving to Norwich International Airport, but this has never occurred.

First Responder group

An East of England Ambulance Service First Responder group has been set up for the Great Yarmouth area. Made up of a group of volunteers within the community in which they live or work, they are trained to attend emergency 999 calls by the NHS Ambulance Service.

Enterprise zone

Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft Enterprise Zone was launched in April 2012. Its sites include Beacon Park and South Denes in Great Yarmouth.

Notable people

Medieval

Joan Larke (c. 1490 – after 1529), mistress of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey and mother of his two illegitimate children

16th century

Sir John Clere (c. 1511–1557) politician and naval commander

William Harborne (c. 1542–1617) diplomat, merchant and Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire

Edward Owner (1576–1650) politician who sat in the House of Commons at times between 1621 and 1648

Sir John Potts, 1st Baronet (c. 1592–1673) politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 to 1648 and in 1660.

17th century

William Bridge (c. 1600–1670), prominent English independent minister

Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680) Puritan theologian and preacher, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell

Joseph Ames (1619–1695) naval commander under the Commonwealth of England

Rebecca Nurse (1621–1692), sister of Mary Eastey and a victim of the Salem witch trials, was born in Great Yarmouth.

Mary Eastey (1634–92), victim of the Salem witch trials, was born in Great Yarmouth.

John Clipperton (1676–1722) of Clipperton Island, privateer who fought against the Spanish

Sir William Gooch, 1st Baronet (1681–1751) Governor of Virginia from 1727 to 1749

Joseph Ames (1689–1759) bibliographer and antiquary

18th century

Henry Swinden (1716–1772), antiquary, schoolmaster and land surveyor

James Sayers (1748–1823), caricaturist

John Ives (1751–1776), antiquary and officer of arms at the College of Arms in London

Dr Thomas Girdlestone (1758–1822), English physician and writer

Captain George William Manby (1765–1854), barrack-master and inventor of marine life-saving equipment and the fire extinguisher

Mary Dawson Turner (1774–1850), artist and illustrator

Dawson Turner (1775–1858), banker, botanist and antiquary

Captain John Black (1778–1802), son of a clergyman, ship's officer and privateer

William Fisher (1780–1852) officer of the Royal Navy and a novelist

Robert Miles Sloman (1783–1867), British-German shipbuilder

Robert Gooch (1784–1830), physician

William Hovell (1786–1875), explorer of Australia

James Beeching (1788–1858), local shipbuilder, whose firm survived into the 20th century

Sarah Martin (1791–1843), prison visitor and philanthropist

Sir George James Turner (1798–1867), barrister, politician and judge, Lord Justice of Appeal in Chancery

19th century

Robert McCormick (1800–1890) Royal Navy ship's surgeon, explorer and naturalist.

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) author and journalist

Charles John Palmer (1805–1888) lawyer and historian of Great Yarmouth

John Cantiloe Joy and William Joy (1805–1859 and 1803–1865) marine artists and members of the Norwich School of painters

James Allen Ransome (1806–1875) agricultural engineer and writer on agriculture

Sir Edmund Lacon (1807–1888) Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1852 and 1885

Sir George Edward Paget (1809–1892) physician and academic

John Bell (1811–1895) sculptor

Sir James Paget (1814–1899), Victorian surgeon, after whom the James Paget University Hospital was named

Anna Sewell (1820–1878), author of Black Beauty, was born and spent the early part of her life in Great Yarmouth.

James Haylett (1825–1907) noted lifeboatman

Thomas Vaughan (active in 1827), bodysnatcher.

Emma Maria Pearson (1828–1893) writer, one of the first British women nurses in the Red Cross

Willoughby Smith (1828–1891) electrical engineer, discovered the photoconductivity of the element selenium

20th century

Naomi Lewis (1911–2009) poet, essayist, critic and children's storyteller

Jack Cardiff (1914–2009), Oscar-winning cinematographer

Peter Cadbury (1918–2006) founder of Westward Television

Peter Shore (1924–2001), Labour MP and cabinet minister

Bob Grigg (1924–2002) aerospace engineer, chief designer of British Aerospace 146

Gerald Hawkins (1928–2003) astronomer and author working on archaeoastronomy

Sir Kenneth MacMillan (1929–1992), choreographer with the Royal Ballet, Covent Garden

Richard Larn (born 1931) RN Chief Petty Officer, businessman and maritime historian

John McDonnell (born 1951, in Liverpool), Labour Party politician and MP, attended Great Yarmouth Grammar School, having moved to Great Yarmouth at a young age.

Tony Wright (born 1954) Labour Party politician and MP for Great Yarmouth 1997–2010

Keith Chapman (born 1959) children's television writer and producer, creator of Bob the Builder and PAW Patrol

Dale Vince (born 1961) sustainable energy industrialist and New Age traveller

Jason Statham (born 1967) actor, lived in Great Yarmouth in childhood and attended the local grammar school.

Matthew Macfadyen (born 1974) actor born in Great Yarmouth

21st century

Georgie Aldous (born 1998) British social activist, model and influencer

Twin towns

Great Yarmouth has been twinned with Rambouillet, France since 1956.