Lowestoft Inns and Shops (16th-18th Century)  

Inns

The configuration of roads and the importance of land transport have always been major influences on the development of towns and their inns. Large yards were necessary for stabling horses, and for standing carts and carriages; buildings were required for storing hay and other forage; and provision had to be made for watering the animals. Adequate accommodation was also needed for those people making overnight stops or staying in a place for longer. Comment has been made on the notable expansion of innkeeping between the reigns of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) and George III (1760-1820), especially in towns situated on the principal English roads. Lowestoft was not in this category, but it was an important enough place with regard to local routes and its maritime activities helped to draw in outsiders.

The Manor Roll of 1618 – Suffolk Archives (Ipswich), 194/A10/73 – shows that the town had eleven inns, three of which were situated on the east side of the High Street, seven on the west and one in the side-street area in West (or Back) Lane – the High Street’s west side being better suited for the large yards needed because it was not terraced. By the time that John Tanner compiled his list of copyhold properties in the town, in 1720, the number of inns in the built-up area stood at nine: six on the town’s copyhold land itself – effectively 80-85% of the total area – with a further three on the freehold area north of Swan Lane (later, Mariners Street). Two of the hostelries were situated on the east side of the High Street, five on the west, one in Swan Lane and one in West Lane (later White Horse Street). In addition to the premises which appear in both documents, there were others which appeared and disappeared between 1618 and 1725, as well as one or two which stood in outlying parts of the parish. None of these establishments was the kind of small, semi-domestic alehouse found in town, whose proprietors were regularly fined at the annual leet court, during the 17th century, for serving short measure. According to a survey of inns carried out in 1686 – held in the National Archives (Kew), WO 30/31 – Lowestoft’s hostelries had stabling for 138 horses and enough beds to sleep 184 people. For some reason, the town is included in figures relating to Norfolk.    

It is evident from surviving references that a number of Lowestoft’s inns were transient in terms of their function. Only six establishments remained in business throughout the century or more between 1618 and 1725, and they were the largest and most successful in the town. This raises the question of whether they survived because they were large and successful, or whether they became large and successful because they had survived. There is no easy answer, but one significant factor may have been access. Four of the five High Street hostelries had curtilages with side-lanes or scores running alongside (New White Horse/Queen’s Head, Crown, Bell and Swan); the remaining one stood on a large freehold plot to the north of Swan Lane and had no other buildings abutting it (Dolphin); and the last one of all stood on a corner-site in the side-street area (Old White Horse). Thus, all of them offered easy access for horses and carriages, whereas most of the others had street frontage only. 

In any case, in a town the size of Lowestoft, there must have been a limit to the number of inns which could be financially viable. And it looks rather as if some of the establishments which came and went couldn’t make enough money to continue for long in the trade. Market places have been identified as one of the commonest sites for inns, though they became less suitable during the 17th and 18th centuries owing to the congestion caused by the growth of the coaching and carting trades. None of Lowestoft’s major inns, during the period under review (1560-1730), stood adjacent to the original market-place, and the proximity of seven or eight establishments to the later, overspill area (created in 1703, on the corner of Tyler’s Lane – Compass Street – and the High Street) was purely fortuitous: they were already there before the new trading venue was created. In fact, it was an inn (the New White Horse) which was demolished to create the market-space and which was then rebuilt further along Tyler’s Lane next to the Queen’s Head.

One specific case of an inn which was present for the mid-part of the 17th century, but which did not survive until its end was The Lyon (al. The Lion) which once occupied the site of today’s No. 51 & 51A High Street. The Manor Roll of 1618 describes this as a house belonging to Thomas Ferney (cobbler), but also reveals that it had once belonged to a man called George Rugge, who (according to manorial court  records) had a dwelling and shop of some kind there during the late 16th and early 17th century. The building stood immediately south of what eventually became known as Crown Score, at its junction with the High Street – but, prior to this, it features in the manorial records as both George Rugge’s Score and Ferney’s Score, after the two tenants referred to. By the time that the Revd. John Tanner drew up his list of copyhold properties in the town (some 80-85% of the total) – Suffolk Archives, Ipswich, 454/1 – it belonged to a grocer, John Hayle, and is described as a house divided into separate dwellings. Which shows that the Lion/Lyon Inn was of comparatively short duration – serving as such between 1646 (when the Ferney family disposed of it to a husbandman, Michael Bentley) and 1675 (when John Hayle acquired it). He may even have run it as an inn, before converting it to separate dwellings. Interestingly enough, on the northern side of the score in 1720 stood a house belonging to Mary Stroud, a mariner’s widow, and John Tanner describes this as standing to the north of Lyons Score!  

At least one eminent observer has left his impression of one, particular, well-known Lowestoft inn recorded for posterity. Thomas Baskerville (topographer and writer) visited the town in 1677 and this is what he had to say: “Lostaft is seated on a pleasant hill, overlooking the sea, pretty well built, having in it many large houses to dry [cure] herrings. Here is no castle for defence, but we saw a fair church, tower, and steeple, at the entrance of the town, and one church more in the town [Town Chapel]. Here we dined, and had fish incomparably well dressed, with excellent good claret and beer, but the sign of the house and the name of our landlord and land-lady who dressed the fish I have forgotten” – Historical Manuscripts Commission, vol. 13, pp. 266-7. It is likely that the inn referred to was The Swan, with the people mentioned being John Wythe and his wife, Katherine, who kept the premises for many years and were notable hosts. A portrait of Katherine Wythe was still hanging in The Swan in April 1711, when a new proprietor, Humphrey Overton, advertised his take-up tenancy in The Norwich Gazette.

With the town serving as the centre for its own locality, it is possible that some of the larger, more important inns functioned as meeting-places for polite society – especially from the late 17th and early 18th centuries onwards. The social activity that took place in towns has been noted as being of benefit to the victualling trade nationally, while other observers have identified the increasing use of inns for all kinds of commercial dealings – a trend that had begun during the 16th and 17th centuries and developed increasingly during the18th. No positive documentary evidence has come to light so far (for the time-span covered in this article) of the more substantial Lowestoft inns performing such economic and social functions, but it is likely that they did. In 1760, The Queen’s Head  (in Tyler’s Lane) opened an assembly room and the impression derived from this is that it was the culmination of many years of sociable activity associated with the premises.  

The premier inns were certainly the venues for various kinds of public business. The annual leet court was held in an inn and the court baron sessions (monthly to six-weekly) may also have been, though there is no way of ascertaining whether such activity remained in one establishment only or was rotated. During the immediate post-Restoration period (1660-63), the town was heavily involved in litigation with Great Yarmouth concerning herring fishing rights. James Wilde, Lowestoft’s leading advocate in the cause, kept a full account of all expenses incurred and there are a number of entries which concern expenditure of various kinds incurred at The Swan (reproduced in full in Gillingwater, pp. 221-239). Some of the Lowestoft innkeepers, whether owner-occupiers or tenants, were men of some standing in the local community, if one can rely upon the title of “Mr.” which is often accorded them during the late 17th and early 18th centuries, while the hostelries themselves sound suitably impressive in the various sale and lease advertisements which appear in copies of the Norwich Gazette of the time. One has to allow perhaps for a little “sales-talk” in the wording, even in an age less commercially intense than that of today, but even so there is no reason to believe that a number of Lowestoft inns were other than sound undertakings.

Shops

A perusal of Richard Powles’s 1784 view of the High Street (used here and in other articles) reveals what appear to be nine or ten retail premises, with pentices or fenestrated bays (for the display of goods) added to the main building. Sixty years earlier, when John Tanner drew up his listing, only two shops are mentioned anywhere on the main roadway and a handful of others in the side-streets. The two shops in question belonged to Thomas Mighells (merchant) and stood either side of his house. All three buildings can be seen Powles’s view: the fourth, fifth and sixth ones to the left of Crown Score – the plots now occupied by Nos. 54, 55 and 56-57 High Street. Retail shops with glazed windows were present in Ipswich from the beginning of the 17th century and it is possible that Lowestoft had them from quite early on, too.    

There must have been other retail premises in town at the time (including some, possibly, on either of the two freehold areas), so perhaps there was something in the approach of the compiler or in the terminology he used which escapes us today. Certainly, the increased presence of merchants and retailers/tradesmen as property-owners on the east side of the High Street between 1618 and 1725, which is apparent in documentation of the time, would seem to suggest some kind of increase in retail function, and a number of the surviving probate inventories make reference to shops of various kinds – some of which sold goods directly to the public and others which were the workplaces of craftsmen.

No less than nine documents out of the fifteen available for the late 16th century (including an incomplete one) mention shops in one way or another, among which it is possible to recognise a draper’s enterprise combined with grocery sales and books, two shoemakers and some kind of general trader. For the period 1600-1650, five documents out of the fifteen which record rooms make reference to shops (six inventories have no references to rooms at all) and three of these were retail outlets: a shoemaker, a baker and a draper. Only a single woollen draper is revealed in the eighteen inventories extant for the second half of the 17th century, but this is largely due to the occupations of the people in question (three members of the gentry, five mariners and fishermen and one retired admiral among them) rather than to a decline in the number of shops. The number increases again between 1700 and 1730, with nine references out of a total of thirty-six appropriate documents, and the premises included an apothecary’s, a butcher’s, a grocer’s and one which sold a variety of goods. 

All references to shops in the documents used suggest a room that was an integral part of a house. So does the illustration of the High Street cited earlier. Five inventories refer to a “shop chamber” (on the first floor of the dwelling), but the shop itself is not included in the appraisal of goods and may therefore have been let to another occupant. There are also other references to shop chambers, as well as to shops themselves, in a number of wills and all of this information, together with the data present in John Tanner’s listing, is sufficient to suggest general growth in the number of shops ascertainable during the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as to the consumption of luxury goods. However, there is no evidence available, with which to assess contemporary attitudes to retailing and purchase (especially the alleged capacity for moral laxity on the part of women as they shopped). The term “shop” itself was, in any case, a dual-purpose one, describing both a retail premises and one where a craftsman plied his trade – with examples also where the two functions were carried on simultaneously under the same roof.

Comment has been made on the scarcity of material nationally, before the 1780s, regarding the number of shops. This is certainly true of Lowestoft, though the facts gathered from available probate material and from John Tanner’s listing serve to give a limited picture of the commerce taking place between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. Further retail establishments in the town are implied by the presence of occupations such as glover, hatter and tailor, to say nothing of other bakers, butchers, cordwainers, drapers and grocers whose wills and inventories have not survived – but, the absence of documentation means there is no conclusive proof of shops being run by these people. However, comments made concerning the varied stock carried by most shops in the Pre-industrial Era (especially in small towns) is certainly borne out in the two most lengthy and detailed Lowestoft inventories of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. 

The list of stock in the shops belonging to Margaret Couldham (12 January 1585) and William Harrison (14 September 1603) shows an interesting mixture of fabrics, haberdashery, groceries and books in the first case  (these including English and Latin primers – as well as works by Ovid and Cato) and of fabrics, haberdashery and groceries in the second. This is conjecture only, but the Couldham enterprise would seem to suggest some kind of educational link with Annot’s Free Grammar School (founded in 1570), where both English and the Latin tongue were taught. Well over one hundred years later, the shop belonging to Richard Ward (2 March 1729) had haberdashery, novelty goods and books for sale – the last named being hornbooks, used to teach children to read and write at an elementary level. This man is identified in his will of 25 May 1724 (made in a state of good health) as being a woolcomber – but, he is named as a labourer in his burial record of 9 July 1728. He seems to have been someone who was involved in different activities, as required by need or opportunity. And the eight-month interval between his death and the appraisal of his worldly goods for probate purposes was a lengthy one.

CREDIT: David Butcher