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 | Great Yarmouth Downtown car rental - Travel Guide |  |
First and foremost, GREAT YARMOUTH is a seaside resort, its promenade a parade of amusement arcades and rainy-day attractions, deserted in winter, heaving in summer. But it's also a port with a long history and, despite extensive wartime bomb damage, it retains a handful of sights that give some idea of the place Daniel Defoe thought "far superior to Norwich".
Yarmouth was a major trading port by the fourteenth century, its economy underpinned by its control of the waterways leading inland to Norwich. It also benefited from fishing, especially during the nineteenth century when there was a spectacular boom in the herring industry. The fishing finally fizzled out in the 1960s, but the timely discovery of gas and oil deposits off the Norfolk coast helped mitigate the effects and have since made the town a major base for the offshore gas industry, second only to Aberdeen for North Sea oil
The Town
Arriving by train or car from Norwich, initial impressions are favourable thanks to the appealing silhouette of the church of St Nicholas, which boasts one of the widest naves in the country and, consequently, an impressive west front. The church stands at the northern end of the broad Market Place, which served as the centre of medieval Yarmouth, but is now mostly undistinguished. The one exception, at the square's northeast corner, is the Hospital for Decayed Fishermen, almshouses built in 1702 and opening out into a lovely little courtyard flanked by Dutch gables, the central cupola topped by a chilly looking statue of the fishermen's friend himself, St Peter. Just beyond, in Prior Plain and now a teashop, is Sewell House, the childhood home of Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty .
Despite considerable wartime damage, sections of the medieval walls remain, with one of the best-preserved portions located along Ferrier Road, just north of St Nicholas. Another interesting feature of the old town is the narrow parallel alleys, known locally as rows, which were built to connect South Quay, running beside the River Yare just to the southwest of the Market Place, with the town. Sixty-nine rows have survived, and English Heritage maintain two seventeenth-century row houses - the Old Merchant's House in Row 117 and a Row 111 House , each with furnishings and fittings illustrating the life of local folk between the 1870s and the 1940s (April-Oct daily 10am-1pm & 2-5pm; £2.40 combined entry; EH). For more on Yarmouth's past, head for the Elizabethan House Museum, at 4 South Quay (April-Oct Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun 1-5pm; £2; NT), whose period rooms concentrate on domestic life and include a Tudor bedroom and dining room. Here also is the Conspiracy Room where legend has it that Cromwell and his Puritan colleagues plotted the trial and execution of Charles I.
The vast majority of tourists simply head for the Victorian-built seafront, Marine Parade, whose wide sandy beach was the unlikely setting for many of the most dramatic events in Dickens' David Copperfield. There are the usual promenade gardens and seafront attractions here, bolstered by the presence of the town's Maritime Museum (June-Sept Mon-Fri 10am-5pm, Sat & Sun 1.15pm-5pm; £1.10), which traces the history of the herring industry and the inland waterways.
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