King's Lynn : The Town

Minster, Museum, Docks and Fishermen

The Dukes Head and the Tuesday Market Square

Norfolk

Kings Lynn & W Norfolk

On our only full day in the town, we set off after a leisurely breakfast on a walking tour, starting from our hotel, the Dukes Head, in the vast Tuesday Market Square.

The Dukes Head is a handsome building designed by local architect Henry Bell and built in 1683. I have been unable to ascertain who the Duke with the head was, but it is now a Grade II listed building. It was covered in scaffolding during our visit and the best view was just after dusk when the lighting shone through the scaffolding.

The Dukes Head Hotel after dark, Kings Lynn Tuesday Market Square

We walked south, the streets of King’s Lynn looking tidy and relatively prosperous. There are many fine older buildings, and most newer ones manage to blend in well enough.

South from the Tuesday Market Square

King’s Lynn Minster

We soon reached the much smaller Saturday Market Square where we found King’s Lynn Minster.

King's Lynn Minster, the western towers.
The dial on the southwest tower shows the tides

Herbert de Losinga, the first Bishop of Norwich started building a church here in 1101. A small priory was attached and the town formerly called Lynn was renamed Bishop’s Lynn.

Little remains of that church, but the base of the south west tower is original…

Lynne at the base of southwest tower. The heights of recent major floods are marked on the wall

….as are the internal arches of the western tower. My photo shows Norman-style arches at the base of the south western tower, though they would appear to have undergone some restoration over the centuries.

Norman style arches at the base of the southwest tower, Kings Lynn Minster

The stained-glass windows beyond the arches dates from 1928 and tell the history of the town.

The church was largely rebuilt in the 13th century, the chancel arcades being the only survivors of this rebuild. The carvings on the chancel stalls were completed in the 1370s. The many heads include Edward the Black Prince, Henry Despenser (Bishop of Norwich) and members of notable Norfolk families.

Carvings on the chancel stalls

By the 15th century the town had become wealthy and the members of the Trinity Guild enlarged the church, building a grander clerestory and the unusual round east window.

The interior as it is now, King's Lynn Minster

The wealth came from the town’s association with the Hanseatic League, and the church retains a sizeable moneybox as a reminder of these times,

Hanseatic Chest, King's Lynn Minster

The northwest tower was rebuilt in 1453 after subsidence left it far from vertical. The brass lectern dates from about this time. The gaping beak was for the insertion of Peters Pence, which were gifts to the church. The reformation brought this practice to an end.

The Lectern, King's Lynn Minster

Henry VIII’s Reformation in the 16th century brought an end to the priory and changed Bishop’s Lynn into King’s Lynn. Locals have always called the town Lynn regardless of who imagines he is in charge.

A gale in 1741 blew down the spire on the southwest tower. This necessitated more rebuilding. The carved pulpit dates from this makeover.

Pulpit, King's Lynn Minster

The inevitable Victorian restoration started in 1874, equally inevitably under the direction Sir George Gilbert Scott. His extensive reworking explains why the interior feels largely 19th century. The huge reredos, designed by G F Bodley and erected in 1899 is the most striking Victorian addition.

G F Bodley's reredos, King's Lynn Minster

After being the Parish Church of St Margaret for many centuries, the church was given the title of Minster by the Bishop of Norwich in 2011 in recognition of its importance in the work of the church throughout West Norfolk.

The Town Hall and Museum of Lynn

The ornate buildings of the Guild who rebuilt the Minster in the 15th century are just across the Saturday Market Square. The now house the Town Hall and Museum of Lynn.

Town Hall and Museum of Lynn across the Saturday Market Square

The museum contains all you would expect in a local museum, from 19th century fairground equipment upwards. It also contains the old town gaol, though the pillory would have been out on the market square in the days when it was in use.

The Pillory in the Old Gaol, Museum of Lynne

Eugene Aram

One cell is occupied by a waxwork of Eugene Aram, who has popped up on our travels several times. He was born in 1704, the son of a gardener in the Yorkshire village of Ramsgill (we visited in 2013). He was a bright lad and his father and his father’s employer ensured he had an education.

He moved to London as a book-keeper but returned to Yorkshire after surviving smallpox. He married ‘unfortunately’ (i.e. he got a local girl pregnant) and became a schoolmaster first in the village of Netherfield, then in Knaresborough (we visited in 2018). In 1744 he became involved in a swindle with a local man called Daniel Clark. The money and Clark (who may or may not have been having an affair with Aram’s wife) disappeared.

Aram went to London, found a job in a school, then wandered a little until settling in King’s Lynn where we worked at the grammar school. In 1758 Clark’s body was discovered, Aram was arrested and taken to York where he was tried, convicted and hanged for murder.

Having been taught Latin and Greek as a child Aram continued studying languages, ancient and modern, throughout his life and was considered a serious philologist. He was the first to suggest that the Celtic languages had Indo-European origins like most other European tongues, and challenged the then orthodox view that Latin was descended from Greek.

A man of many parts, had he been born several hundred years later he would have featured in a campus novel by Malcolm Bradbury or David Lodge. As it is, his story is told in a poem, The Dream of Eugene Aram by Thomas Hood and was fictionalised in an 1832 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton which remains in print.

King John’s Cup

By far the best exhibit is King John’s Cup.

In 1216, a few days before his death, King John famously lost the Crown Jewels while attempting to cross the Wash. This cup survived and was brought back to Lynn.

'King John's Cup', Museum of Lynn

That flight of fancy originated in 1640 as an attempt to explain the mysterious cup. Probably made around 1350, the cup first enters written record in 1548 when Henry VIII confiscated a large amount of land, gold and silver from the Merchant Guilds and gave it to the Borough. How the Guilds acquired it is a mystery. It is very unusual in that most ornate cups of the period were religious chalices used for Holy Communion, while this was a wine goblet made for a wealthy and important person, now unknown (sic transit gloria mundi).

The Docks

Medieval Times and the Hanseatic Leaguee

A short walk from the Saturday Market Square took us to the River Great Ouse.

Starting in the 11th century a group of mainly German and Baltic cities banded together to form the Hanseatic League with the intention of creating safe and stable trading conditions for its members. At its peak from the 13th to 15th centuries the league consisted of some 40 cities from Tallinn in the north to Cologne on the Rhine and controlled much of the commerce in north western Europe.

A further dozen ports were ranked as Kontore, foreign trading posts of the league. In the 14th century Lynn’s status as a Kontore helped make it England’s foremost port. The picture below is not just a pleasing arrangement of medieval streets, the white building on the right fronts the last surviving group of Hanseatic warehouses in the United Kingdom.

Hanseatic buildings (and others) near the Minster

The Port of King's Lynn Today

The view along the river suggests that King’s Lynn is no longer a major port, indeed the car parking to the right is much busier than the boat parking to the left. Further downstream a lock gives access to the Alexandra Dock, which is connected to the Bentinck dock. Google’s aerial photograph (2022) shows both empty.

A lonely fishing boat docked on the Great Ouse

A look at a map explains all.

Norfolk - and (inset) the county's position within England
The many pins are the work of Tour Norfolk from whom I have borrowed the map

Kings Lynn’s deep-water channels through The Wash allowed shipping access to a safe and well protected harbour near the mouth of the Great Ouse

Those channels were fine for medieval ships and a harbour well-protected from pirates and other marauders was valued. Today pilots can bring in ships of up to 4,000 tonnes with a maximum draft of 5.5m – small beer by modern standards.

Nonetheless Associated British Ports says King’s Lynn is the preferred Norfolk port for forest products, agribulk, manufacturing and recyclables sectors and handles 400,000 tonnes a year, which sounds a lot, but isn’t

The Custom's House and the George Vancouver Statue

A little further along the river, is the now redundant Purfleet Quay and beside it the elegant customs house. Opened in 1685 it was, like the Dukes Head Hotel, designed by Henry Bell. The customs house is his most highly regarded work and Nikolaus Pevsner called it one of the most perfect buildings ever built.

Since 2000 a statute of George Vancouver, the work of Penelope Reeve, has stood in front of the customs house.

Born in King’s Lynn in 1757, Vancouver joined the Royal Navy aged 13 as a "young gentleman" - a future midshipman.

Captain Vancouver and the Customs House, King's Lynn

Two years later he was aboard HMS Resolution on James Cook’s second great voyage of discovery (1772-75) and then sailed on HMS Discovery in Cook's third voyage (1776–1780).

On his return he was commissioned as a lieutenant, and in 1782 saw action against the French in the Caribbean.

After further promotion, he was sent in 1791 with two ships to survey the Pacific coast of America from what is now Oregon northwards. It took him 4 years to produce comprehensive charts of the American coast and along the way he collaborated with the American Captain Robert Gray off the coast of Oregon and with the Spanish commander Juan Francisco Quadra further north.

Vancouver’s junior officers, friends and associates had mountains, sounds, islands and harbours named after them and he agreed with Captain Quadra that the large land mass they had proved to be an island should be called Quadra and Vancouver Island. In time, usage would rob Quadra of his prize.

He returned to England in 1795 and died in 1798, aged only 40. The quality of his charts, his ability to make allies out of potential enemies and the respect he showed to indigenous peoples make him something of a hero.

Two cities were subsequently named after him, the Canadian city of Vancouver – confusingly not on Vancouver Island, but across the strait on the mainland, and an American Vancouver, actually in Washington State but now considered a suburb of Portland, Oregon.

Lunch in the Tuesday Market Square

Back in the enormous Tuesday Market Square we picked the wrong pub for lunch. Management seemed uninterested in their (very few) customers - we had a long wait for an indifferent sandwich - or their cask ale, which tasted tired.

Just a part of King's Lynn's enormous Tuesday Market Square

True’s Yard Fisherfolk Museum

The fisherman’s quarter just beyond the square was known as Lynn’s ‘North End’. Tiny houses, often dirty and dilapidated, clustered round small cobbled yards with a pub on every corner. In contrast to the South End, where wealthy merchants lived in grand houses, this was an area of deprivation and poverty. In the 1870-80s there were some 400 fishermen in Lynn but by the 1920 there were only 80, and few young men among them. Fishing was a hard and dangerous life, the pay was meagre and when the younger generation had a choice, few chose to fish.

By the middle of last century most of the yards had been pulled down, or fallen down. True’s Yard, built in the 1790s and bought by William True in 1818 had six or more cottages, a smokehouse and a shop, probably a community baker - cottagers paid the baker a coin or two to cook their food in his oven. Four cottages were pulled down in 1937 but the rest were saved from destruction in the 1980s by a local trust. It is now the only remaining yard and is a museum and heritage resource centre.

The two remaining cottages look pleasant enough. They are freshly painted, the yard is clean and the air fresh. They are small, one-up, one-down, but today could be ‘studio holiday lets’ for a couple. The stairs are vertiginous so a youngish couple, though they are certainly not safe for small children. But….

Two cottages in True's yard, King's Lynn

...the cottage on the left is as it was in 1850. At that time, it housed a family of 11, the six younger children sharing a single bed. Downstairs has a brick floor on which the family would dump the day’s catch. The fish were sorted and gutted and the guts washed into the yard. The museum replicates the building, but not the fifth or the smell.

The house on the right has been updated to the 1920s. They have heating and cooking facilities and the rug on the floor indicates that the catch was no longer being brought into the house. There was still no electricity or running water…

Downstairs in the 1920s in True's Yard, King's Lynn

…nor even a toilet. When your chamber pot was full, you dumped the contents in the river. Even without the smell of rotting fish guts, this was not a fragrant place.

The baker would hopefully have added some pleasanter odours, while the smokehouse, with the smell of smoking herrings was perhaps a mixed blessing.

Smokehouse and bakery, True's Yard, King's Lynn

The attached museum, in what was once the local smithy, gives names to some of the people who lived here and tells their stories. Fishing communities are often famous for their knitwear, Aran and Fair Isle sweaters being particular well known. King’s Lynn had its own, known as a gansey. Each family had a distinctive design so when a boat was lost, any corpses washed up could be more easily identified. That says much about life and death in Lynn’s North End.

St Nicholas’ Chapel

St Nicholas’ Chapel is a decommissioned, though not deconsecrated, church, between True’s Yard and the Tuesday Market Square. Illogically it is in St Anne’s Street.

St Nicholas' Chapel, King's Lynn

Despite its size, St Nicholas’ was never a parish church but was constructed in the 12th century as a chapel to St Margaret’s Parish Church, now King’s Lynn Minster. It is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, assisted by the Friends of St Nicholas who provide enthusiastic and well-informed volunteers to assist visitors.

St Nicholas' Chapel, King's Lynn

The lectern has similarities with the Minster’s, including an open beak to collect ‘Peter’s Pence.’ Such lecterns are unusual, but King’s Lynn has two.

Lectern, St Nicholas' Chapel, King's Lynn

The carved 17th century memorials on the wall are delightful. I particularly liked Thomas Snelling’s; he lived a busy life as a merchant, alderman and mayor before dying in 1623 aged only 39.

Thomas Snelling's memorial, St Nicholas' Chapel, King's Lynn

The roof is also famous for its carved angels. Mirrors are provided so visitors can take a look – and photos, though some apparently fail to do that. Sorry.

Dinner at Prezzo

After Dining at the Dukes Head yesterday, our researches threw up few other attractive dining options. We settled for a short walk across the square to Prezzo, not perhaps the most conscientiously Italian of the several chains of Italian restaurants currently available, but always reliable.

I should not, though, be too condescending, Lynne enjoyed her goat’s cheese penne and my spicy crab and lobster ravioli were excellent.

29-Apr-2022

The South Gate

We left King’s Lynn on Friday morning. The day before, in the Fisherfolk museum, we had seen a model of Lynn as it was in Tudor times. The town was then defended on three sides by a wall and on the other by the River Great Ouse. The wall has long gone, but the South Gate remains and we drove past it as we left in the direction of Wisbech and the next post.

South Gate, King's Lynn

So, farewell to King’s Lynn. It is an interesting town, perhaps one day we should return.

Other Norfolk/Cambridgeshire Posts

King's Lynn and Around: The Wash & Castle Rising (April 2022)
King's Lynn: The Town (April 2022)
Wisbech and Peckover House (April 2022)

Hemingford Grey and Green Knowe (July 2016)