Lowestoft

Template:Infobox England place with map Lowestoft is a town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England, lying between the eastern edge of The Broads National Park at Oulton Broad and the North Sea. Nearby Lowestoft Ness is the most easterly point in the United Kingdom and is twinned with the French town of Plaisir.

Sunrise at Ness Point, Lowestoft.

Geography

The town is divided in two by Lake Lothing, with the northern half being the commercial centre and the southern half being the holiday resort.

The town has two piers: to the south is the Claremont Pier and about one kilometre (0.6 miles) to the north of that is the South(sic) Pier (so called because it is placed on the south side of the harbour and river mouth). In the early part of the 20th century, the Claremont Pier had a T-shaped pier head and was used as an embarkation point for the passenger steamships that operated between London to the south and Great Yarmouth to the north.

The seaward boundary of the harbour is a strip of land known as the Old Extension, or the North Extension. Over the last couple of decades the Extension has been the site of activity supporting the North Sea oil and gas industry; particularly the construction of rigs. For many years before that, for example in the 1960s, the Extension was unused by any industry, being derelict but showing signs of an earlier period of industrial activity in its old railway tracks and buildings.

Lowestoft railway station, which serves the town gives regular connections to Norwich and Ipswich. There are also a few services direct to London Liverpool Street. All services are operated by 'One' Railway. There was also a direct link to Great Yarmouth's Southtown station, until it was closed in 1970 as a result of the Beeching Axe. That link included Lowestoft North station, the site of which is now occupied by Beeching Drive, located just to the east of the A12 opposite the Denes High School. Some of the original route to the west of the A12 has now been made into a non vehicular public right-of-way, after having been left unused and overgrown for many years.

History

The name is said to come from toft (a Viking word for "homestead"') and Loth or Lowe (a Viking male name). The town's name has been spelled variously: Lothnwistoft, Lestoffe, Laistoe, Loystoft, Laystoft. An alternative derivation of the name which is taught in local schools is that it is not an Anglo-Saxon name at all, but a derivation from consonantal shift, from a settlement prior to the agricultural village, founded by John Edward Hloover. Over a period of three centuries, the original name of "Hloover's Toft" was contracted to "Lowestoft".

In the Domesday Book, Lowestoft is described as a small agricultural village of 20 families, or about 100 people. Rent for the land was paid to the landowner Hugh de Montfort in herrings.

In the Middle Ages, Lowestoft developed into a fishing port. Great Yarmouth saw Lowestoft as a rival and tried to push it out of the herring trade.

The rivalry has never completely gone away - in the English Civil War (1642 - 1651) Yarmouth took the side of Parliament and Lowestoft took the Royalist side, possibly so that co-operation would not be required. However this was not taken very seriously, as Lowestoft's defences consisted of a rope across the High Street and a single, unmanned, unloaded cannon.

In the 1665, the first battle of the Second Dutch War was the Battle of Lowestoft near the town.

During the 1790s, Lowestoft's fishing community established their own "Beach Village", living in upturned boats.

In the 19th century, the arrival of Sir Samuel Morton Peto brought about a huge change in Lowestoft's fortunes. Peto started by building a rail link between Lowestoft and Norwich, and links with other town soon followed. He developed the harbour and provided mooring for 1,000 boats. This gave a boost to trade with the Continent. He also established Lowestoft as a flourishing seaside holiday resort.

During the Second World War the town was used as a navigation point by German bombers. As a result it was the most heavily bombed town per head of population in the UK. Old mines and bombs are still dredged up and have been hazardous to shipping.

Until the mid 1960's fishing was Lowestoft's main industry. Fleets comprised drifters and trawlers, with the drifters primarily targeting herring while the trawlers caught cod, plaice, skate and haddock, etc. By the mid 1960's the catches were greatly diminishing, particularly the herring. Consequently the drifter fleet disappeared and many of the trawlers were adapted to work as service ships for the newly created North Sea oil rigs. By the end of the twentieth century the fishing industry was, to all intents and purposes, dead. However, a large fisheries research centre which is a part of Defra is still located in south Lowestoft.

The Eastern Coach Works was another big employer and in the 1960's it was a regular occurrence to see a bare bus chassis being driven through the town to the coach works by a goggled driver. Installing the bus's super structure, body work and seats was the job of Eastern Coach Works. Both double deck and single deck buses were built there and sent all over the country. Sadly, this business has also disappeared.

Brooke Marine and Richards shipbuilding companies who together employed over a thousand men also went out of business at about the same time.

Details of Lowestoft's recent history, in words and photographs, can be found in the many books written by Jack Rose.

Lowestoft porcelain

During the second half of the 18th century, a factory in Crown Street produced soft-paste porcelain ware. Items still exist, and there are collections at the museum in Nicholas Everett Park, Oulton Broad, and at the Castle Museum, Norwich.

Floods

Lowestoft has been subject to periodic flooding, the most memorable was in January 1953 when a North Sea swell driven by low pressure and a high tide swept away many of the older sea defences and deluged most of the southern town.

Wind turbine

A large wind turbine, built in December 2004, is located by the sea on the edge of town.

The construction of the wind turbine began on Tuesday 7 December 2004 with a 108 m high crane lifting the 71 tonne Tower Lower Section. The 65 tonne Tower Middle Section, 46 tonne Tower Top Section, 83 tonne nacelle and 54 tonne, 92 m diameter Rotor Blade Assembly were erected on Friday 10 December 2004. The new turbine began generating electricity in January 2005 and has a generating capacity of up to 2.75 MW, although the original proposal was for an even bigger 3.2 MW turbine.

The hub height is 80 m (262 ft). The blade tip height is 126 m (413 ft). The nacelle assembly weighs 83 tonnes and is 11.2 m (37 ft) long, 3.3 m (11 ft) wide, 3.8 m (12.5 ft) high, making it the biggest wind turbine on mainland UK as of April 2005.

Each of the 3 blades weighs 10 tonnes and is 44.8 m (147 ft) long. The overall diameter of the rotor assembly is 92 m (301 ft). The blade tips slice through the air at about 150 miles per hour. The turbulence this generates accounts for the pulsating "whooshing" noise audible when you stand underneath. This sound, combined with the height, weight and dimensions, prompted the owners to conduct tests for "subsonic" sounds and vibrations after there was several people complaining of feeling "nauseous" and suffering from "Ground level vertigo" when standing nearby.

Literary and artistic connections

Lowestoft has a number of literary and artistic connections.

In the 1840s, Charles Dickens came to stay with Sir Samuel Morton Peto. Lowestoft's Beach Village became, along with Blundeston village, the inspiration for David Copperfield.

The nineteenth century writer and traveller George Borrow lived in Oulton Broad for many years. Joseph Conrad came to live in Lowestoft in 1878 from his native Poland. Edward Fitzgerald, the translator of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, lived in Lowestoft. W.G. Sebald, who taught at the University of East Anglia and was tragically killed in 2001, wrote about Lowestoft in The Rings of Saturn.

The composer Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft in 1913. He lived on the seafront at 21 Kirkley Cliff Road until 1933.

Glam rock band, The Darkness was formed in Lowestoft but spent their formative years in London. Three of the four founder members were raised in Lowestoft. Justin Hawkins, Dan Hawkins and Ed Graham all attended Kirkley High School. Several of their songs are either about or make reference to the town: Black Shuck is a retelling of the famous local legend of the same name; Stuck In A Rut tells of the band's desire to 'escape' from the town, making reference to 'the Barnby Bends' and 'the Acle Straight', popular nicknames for local roads; and Hazel Eyes starts with the lyrics "I hail from the flatlands of East Anglia/In a town that once could boast prosperity."

Also, scenes from Coronation Street were filmed at a local hotel.

In 2006, Lowestoft's Kirkley High School was subjected to the Gene Simmons experience when the Kiss bassist brought Rock School to the town. Several (un-proven) accusations, (supposedly formed on first hand experience from pupils attending Kirkley High School) suggest that students were in some cases paid sums of money to "misbehave" on camera, and were "bribed", so to speak, to smoke cigarettes, curse and litter in front of camera. The school itself (as well as the town in which it was filmed) was thoroughly misrepresented, showing only the oldest or less well maintained parts of the building, as well as focusing on the bad aspects of the school and virtually none of the positive parts. A clear sign of this misrepresentation is that despite the fact that the programme was based entirely around Rock music, little or no mention at all was made of "The Darkness" whom primarily (3 of the 4 founding members) attended Kirkley High School. Despite this obvious misrepresentation of Lowestoft and Kirkley High School, the Channel 4 program was a relative success.

Places of interest

• The East Anglia Transport Museum is located in Carlton Colville a suburb of the town.
• Suffolk Wildlife Park is located to the south of the town. It concentrates on African animals and has amongst others, Cheetahs, Lions, Hippos, Rhinos and Giraffes. It is also home to the United Kingdom's only Aardvark.
• Pleasurewood hills is located in the north of the town. However it suffers from a lack of investment
• Ness Point the most easterly location in the British Isles is located in the town. Close to the wind turbine.
• Oulton Broad is located in the town. It is the most visited by tourist of the Broads and motor boats can be hired. It is also the venue every thursday for Powerboats. It hosts local boats on thursdays and occationally hosts a roung of a national or international champoinchip in various clases of powerboat.
• The Broads National Park is located near to the town and some of it's walks are in Carlton Marshes located in Carlton Colville, a suburb of the town.
• Corton Nudist Beach is located in Corton in the Northern Suburbs of the town.
• The town is also well renowed for its beaches. Three of which are the holders of blue flags.
• The town also contains a bascule bridge. It is notorious with locals for always bringing the local road system to standstill at a time when the locals are trying to get somewhere important. There have been plans for a third road bridge for 30+ years but there is no likelihood of a third road bridge anytime soon. In the meantime the South Lowestoft Relief Road is being built. It is nicknamed "The Road to nowhere" by locals.

Suburbs and surrounding villages

To the north of Lake Lothing:

• Gunton
• Normanston
• oulton
• Camps Heath
• Roman Hill

To the south of the lake:

• Kirkley
• Pakefield
• Bloodmoor Hill
• Rosedale Park
• Carlton Colville

Nearby villages to the north are:

• Corton
• Blundeston

Nearby villages to the south:

• Kessingland
• Gisleham

Famous people from Lowestoft

• The Darkness
• Terry Butcher
• Benjamin Britten
• Tim Westwood

External links

• Lowestoft portal
• Tourism in Lowestoft and the surrounding area