Lydia Eva

This is the Lydia Eva arriving under her own power.  She is the world’s last surviving steam-powered herring drifter and steamed back to Great Yarmouth on Saturday 15th May 2010.

Refer Lydia Eva for more details

Steam drifters once filled the harbours as they worked down from Scotland following the Herring.  Lydia Eva was, unusually, also capable of trawling outside the herring season.

She is now open for visitors each summer.  For more information,  see here

Vauxhall Bridge, Great Yarmouth

   2010

Mrs. Kiki, who has run the famous Seafood Restaurant on North Quay with her husband Chris for 30 years, has managed a brave campaign for the last nine years to save Vauxhall Bridge, a Grade II Listed Building of Architectural and Historic Interest.   Her property looks over the bridge and she is acutely aware of its heritage and potential aesthetic value.   She believes it should be preserved and smartened up as a proud testament to Great Yarmouth’s industrial past and a unique historical welcome to visitors on their arrival at the station.

Yarmouth Vauxhall Station, now Great Yarmouth Station, served the line to Norwich through Reedham opened up by the Norfolk Railway in 1844, one of the first railways in the county to open. The station was separated from the two other stations in the town by the River Bure. Vauxhall Bridge was opened in 1852, seven years after the fatal collapse of a former suspension bridge across the River Bure, when 79 people, mostly children, drowned.

The new iron bridge was a Fairbairn-type box girder construction. The box girder is the structure at body level as you walk across the footbridge. Fairbairn was involved with Robert Stephenson, son of the locomotive pioneer George Stephenson, and Eaton Hodgkinson in the design of the Britannia Railway Bridge over the Menai Straits. His innovative work on that bridge led to the introduction of the box girder for railway bridges, most from that period now demolished as loadings have increased or lines been closed. The Vauxhall Bridge in Great Yarmouth is a rare survivor. It was built in two sections, one side for the tramway run by Yarmouth Union Railway as a one mile long connecting line to the other stations and the fish wharfs on South Quay, and the other for foot passengers and horse drawn traffic.

   1985

A further claim to fame is that it is one of only two such bridges to be strengthened by alteration to its structural form in the 19th Century. Arched ribs were added in 1886 rising above the box girders for added strength, with vertical iron rods supporting the girders from the arches. These elegant bows strengthened the bridge for locomotives run by the Great Eastern Railway in the 1880s. The design and erection of the new structure around the old one would have been very innovative and challenging at the time. The other strengthened bridge was a suspension bridge in Erith in Cambridgeshire, which was converted to a lenticular truss but has since been demolished.

As Vauxhall Bridge is the only one of its kind now existing in this country, it is of real historical importance as an outstanding piece of industrial architecture. It is Grade II listed and registered at the Institute of Civil Engineers as historical engineering work 0391. Peter Cross-Rudkin, author and civil engineer, who is writing a book on Civil Engineering Heritage in East Anglia, has described it as a monument of the 1st rank.

In 1976 the railway line from the station to North and South Quays was closed but people could still drive over until 22nd February 1988, when it was closed to vehicle access. It has since been used as a footbridge only to Great Yarmouth station from North Quay.

The bridge is now owned by Railway Paths, a sister charity to Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity (www.sustrans.org.uk). Sustrans were asked to produce structural survey when the Civic Trust, Great Yarmouth Town Centre Strategy Report “Station Gateway” was being compiled in 2001. There is no mention of the bridge in its East of England Strategic Plan for 2009-13, however Sustrans says it is keen to support redevelopment of the area, though “there is still much to be done”.

The Station Gateway proposal warned against failure to attend to the structural instability of the current bridge. It was foreseen that there was a risk of the station becoming isolated from the town centre. By the time that the GYBC Runham Vauxhall Regeneration Project reported on the station gateway the bridge was seen to pose a low level hazard to sailing vessels as well as pedestrians (an eight berth boat became wedged under the Grade II listed structure close to Yarmouth yacht station at 11am after trying to negotiate it during high tides on the 13th May 2010). Another factor mitigating against preservation of the bridge is that Box girder structures are difficult to maintain, because of the need for access to a confined space inside the box. A workman in 1910 working inside the box was overcome by fumes and had to be cut out.

However, Philip Watkins, Chief Executive of 1st East, pledged his support for the restoration of the bridge, describing it as a “little gem that needs polishing”. The bridge now forms an important part of the plans to link the station with a regenerated North Quay and town centre. Regarding improvements to the area around the station in the Great Yarmouth URC Area Action Plan, Preferred Option, 2007, it states “Pedestrian and cycle linkages need to be upgraded, to provide new, enhanced links to the Conge and the Market Place, ideally through the restoration of the old railway bridge.”

See http://www.1steast.co.uk/downloads/GreatYarmouthAAPJan.pdf

Thanks to Mrs. Kiki, David Wardale, Norfolk County Council Project Engineer, was introduced to the plight of the bridge and he has secured £300,000 funding from the Lottery Fair Share Trust, ringfenced until this year. There is yet much work to do however to secure the bridge for the future and to improve the landscape around the site.

Living Streets, a charity which represents pedestrians, is now also backing the campaign:  see http://www.eastcoastlive.co.uk/news/info.php?refnum=2234

Anybody able or willing to offer support for this campaign to save the bridge, please email here. Comments very welcome (click on “comments” in title bar and comments box will open).

References

EDP Wed 2.12.09

EDP Thur 3.9.10

EDP Frid 30.10.09

EDP 25.01.10

Great Yarmouth Mercury 07.05.10

http://www.berneyarms.co.uk/html/yarmouth/rail/quay/quay.htm

Medieval Norfolk’s relationship with North Sea

‘Norfolk and its North Sea World in the Late Middle Ages’ will open at the Norfolk Record Office in Norwich on Tuesday (13 April). The exhibition tells the story of the county’s relationship with the North Sea and the countries bordering it, with items relating to international trade, exchange of ideas, naval affairs, defence and war on show.

Documents written in Latin, French, English, Dutch and Low German all feature in the exhibition and demonstrate that during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – the period covered by the exhibition – Norfolk was a vital and significant link between England and the continent.

The exhibition is being held to coincide with a major international conference at the University of East Anglia, ‘East Anglia and its North Sea world’, which runs from Tuesday, 13 to Thursday, 15 April. The conference will include contributions from scholars working in Iceland, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, together with those based in the UK.

Trade and commerce with the Low Countries, Scandinavia and particularly with the German Hanse trade association are explained through numerous documents from King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth. For example, there are sumptuously decorated letters patent of Henry VI, issued in 1428, confirming Henry IV’s grant, made in 1404, of powers of self-government to English merchants in Prussia, Scandinavia and the Hanseatic regions.

Another important document is the Great Yarmouth customs account for 1379-80, which shows a port heaving with vessels from the Baltic, Germany and the Low Countries. The Yarmouth accounts are significant as being one of only three series of English local customs accounts which survive locally, and they are by far the most extensive and complete.

‘Norfolk and its North Sea World in the Late Middle Ages’ will open on Tuesday and run until Tuesday, 13 July at the Norfolk Record Office, located in the Archive Centre on the County Hall site in Norwich. Admission to the exhibition and centre is free, for more information and centre opening hours, visit www.archives.norfolk.gov.uk.

A Feast of Tudor Food

Great Yarmouth Heritage Walks

Heritage Guides have organised three different walks to discover hidden Great Yarmouth:

• The Rows, Fishwives and Body Snatchers, starting at St.Nicholas Church
• Great Yarmouth’s Medieval Town Wall, starting at St. Nicholas Church
• Sea, Sand and Spending a Penny, starting at Great Yarmouth Tourist Information Centre, Marine Parade

These guided walks take place from May to October and cost £3.75 adults, £1.50 children (under 7 free).  Tickets are available on the day from the tour guide.  Dates and times and further details about walks are available on www.heritage-walks.co.uk or at Great Yarmouth Tourist Information Centre at 25 Marine Parade, 01493 846346.  Other special walks are also available at specific times over the summer period.  See guide for details.

Also on Thursdays during August – 1st September and starting at the Star Hotel, South Quay at 7.00 pm, Eerie Tales and Yarmouth Yarns, scary tales from the Rows handed on down the centuries (not suitable for children under 7 yrs. old) –  includes a visit to Great Yarmouth Potteries and costs £7.00 adults, £5 children  7-16 yrs old.  Booking essential on 01493 846346.

Great Yarmouth Spring Festival 2010, St. Nicholas Parish Church

The St. Nicholas Parish Church Preservation Trust has organised a Spring Festival to raise funds for the £750,000 repair to the organ and the tower pinnacles.  Donations are always welcome and can be  made on-line to www.sncpt.co.uk

Gardener’s Question Time and Demonstration of Flower Arranging: Wednesday 12th May, 6.00 p.m. for 6.30-9.30 p.m. Tickets £10 includes buffet (£5 for college and Priory students).  Venue: St. Nicholas Church. Bar available. Tickets available from the Priory Centre, Mon-Fri 9.00 -17.00 hrs or from Paul Davies 01493 843647.

Lecture by General Sir Richard Dannatt, GCB, CBE, MC: “A Look Back, A Look Forward.  Reflections on 40 Years a Soldier” Friday, 14th May, 7.30 p.m., tickets £10. Venue: Masonic Royal Assembly Rooms, Albert Square. Bar available. Tickets available from the Priory Centre, Mon-Fri 9.00-17.oo hrs or from Paul Davies, 01493 843647.

Saturday 15th May, 10.00-16.00 hrs, admission free. Venue: St. Nicholas Church: Tower open 10.00-14.00 hrs, exhibiton of prints and maps of Great Yarmouth, display of Church silverware, organ recital by John Stephens 12.30 -13.30 hrs. Guided tour of the church and its history, 14.00-15.00 hrs.

Full Choral Evensong using the 1662 Prayer Book: Sunday 16th May 6.30 p.m., no ticket required.  Venue: St. Nicholas Church

Take Three Cooks: Cooking demonstration sponsored by the Imperial Hotel.  Tickets £25 includes lunch.  Venue: The Imperial Hotel, 01493 842000 (limited to 80 people).