ROW 134 ‑
WAKE'S ROW
Bailiff Eachard's Row, 1537
New White Lion Row
Knight the Baker's Row
Wake's Row (Johnson)
From Middlegate to King Street:
“At the north‑east corner stood the
"New White Lion", long since lost it's licence, just under the east
covered way. On the north side, a house catered especially for Smack's Boys,
this was when trawling a Yarmouth was more prosperous than at present. There
are fish houses in this row.” [1]
“Row 134, from Middlegate Street to King
Street, formerly was called Wake's Row, and now is represented by the south
side of Nottingham Way. At the North‑East corner fronting King Street,
but also with an entrance into the row was an old house the front of which was
brought out in the early 19th.century, and was a public house called The New
White Lion”[2]. (not to be
confused with the Old White Lion)
There is a 2nd.W.War photo., looking east, June
1943, and showing a medieval house opposite to nos.23 and 24. Another photo,
Dec 1946, was taken from the attic bedroom of no 8, looking out at nos. 11 and
12. These houses were clearly derelict, but still standing solid, and of course
were bulldozed instead of repairing them. There is also a photo of the south
end of King Street in 1930 which shows where the row came out into King
Street. On the north side of the row
the family of Eachard had considerable property. Thomas Eachard or Echard was
Bailiff in 1537, 1544, and 1576, and died during his last year of office. He
obtained for the town a remission from the King for 18 years of the fee‑farm
rent. He also applied for a writ to decide the dispute between the town and Sir
William Paston. John Eachard was sent up with two other principle Burgesses to
the King to inform of the outrageous conduct of the insurgents under Kett. John
Eachard Jun. had a controversy with the corporation, and was sentenced to
prison for abuses against the town, but he appealed to the King and eventually
the matter was settled by arbitration. A John Eachard filled the office of
Bailiff in 1615 and 1628. In 1622 he was named in the commission to the Bishop
of Norwich to enquire into the state of the haven and piers, and was employed
on municipal affairs.
Albert Baden Daniel Gowen was born in Tyrolean
Square at no. 37, in 1900. His mother
went to his Grandmother's house for the birth. His parents lived at Preston
Place, opposite an ice house that was in Southtown. The house was in a short
run of four in this square, and was situated near to Sutton's fish house. There
were wooden gates outside each of these small houses. As an infant, he went to
Cobholm School, (Headmaster Edward Brand), and then to St Peter's school, which
was built into the inside of the wall, in common with a number of little
cottages that had relatively long gardens. He used to be able to walk through
"Adam and Eves" garden, and then through the opening in the wall into
Blackfriars Road. He started at St
Peter's school aged four, and later went to Cobholm school after his mother
died young. She had been taken away following
the birth of her last child, and may well have been suffering a severe
postnatal depression. He was one of five brothers and also had two sisters, who
at the time of writing were still alive. One older, now aged 93, had been away
in service, and returned later in life to Yarmouth.
The house in Preston Square had a wash‑house
outside, also an outside toilet. It had one room downstairs, and two bedrooms,
one above the other. There was a copper in the wash house to heat the water to
wash the clothes, also used to heat the water for the tin bath.
At the age of 12, Baden Gowen was sent to the
Hospital School. During his time at that school he earned a little money by
selling newspapers in the rows and round the town and the market place. He had
a badge on his arm as a permit, which was obtained at the police station on a
deposit. The papers were a halfpenny each, and he had to sell 27 of them, which
was a quire. For this amount he earned threepence‑halfpenny. All Sunday
papers were a penny. The paper boys had to be 12 years old. The number on his
badge was 49, and the deposit on it was ninepence, which was returned each time
that the badge was returned. "The corporation" was inscribed around
the edge, the badge being made of aluminium.
He left school at the usual age, which was 14, joined up in the Navy in
1917, was drafted into the minesweeping section and sent to Swansea. At the end
of war he was at first signing on as unemployed, and then had a job in a fish‑house,
belonging to Mr.Scarles, near to where the labour exchange is now. They steeped
the herring in brine. He had the job of washing the herring before it was
"speet" (put on a spit). This was done in a big vat, filled by a hand
pump with fresh water. They used a "marnd"‑ a wicker basket to
wash the fish in. The women then lined the fish up on the speets ready for
smoking. He worked there until 1925, and was at that time living in row 134,
near to King's the paper shop,‑No.64 Middlegate, and Caxton's the
fishmongers, where there were sold whelks and other shellfish. He could hear
the fishmonger scraping out the cockles from the bucket that they were in. He
lived in No. 10 in Row 134.
Not far down Middlegate Street was Delf's
warehouse and shop. They had an underground store where they kept barrels of
vinegar. There were doors opening into the road, and steps leading downwards.
They had other large storage premises further down Middlegate Street. Also down
the street was Farman the baker. They used to bake the bread and then put a
little extra on to ensure the weight. George Farman had his bakery at
No.95.Middlegate. Delf had several
shops in Middlegate, one of which sold sweets.
There were some pubs in the street, including
the Druid's Arms. (150 Middlegate, west side, next to Row 117) The house at no.10 was rented. Scarles'
father in law came to collect the rents.
Edgar Aldous kept the Druid's Arms at that time. There was a murder near
here, when the rabbiter and rag man, Mr.Butcher, who had his place next to the
Druid's Arms was knocked about, and subsequently died. Matters were hushed up
according to folks at that time, and they are reluctant to talk about it. It
was thought that the murderer was well-known, and the matter hushed up. He died
in his house, which was full of rabbit skins. This was Horace Butcher; and a
shrimp catcher by the name of Robert Colby lived the other side of Row 117, at
149 Middlegate. Mrs.Ferrow later had
her bookshop in Butcher's house ‑ perhaps she benefitted from the
notoriety.
Mr.Gowen later moved with his family to Burnt
Lane. He had two children born in the row, and then the last was born in his
wife's mother's house in Burnt Lane. The children were Doris, Roy and Norman,
now all over 60. The grocery when they lived in the row all came from Leavolds.
Fred Leavold had a General Shop at 48 Middlegate, on the east side, next to Row
125. Gowen was at one time a bricklayer's labourer, building the new
houses on the North Denes. This was Fred Osborne's builders and they had about
35 men, but there were a number of builders working on different blocks of the
houses there. He worked at this trade for a while, but his father had long been
on the docks, and at the age of twenty five, he was introduced to work as a
docker. Father had also worked in a malthouse, and on the trawlers (Eastick's).
The dock-work was seasonal, there was timber, grain and granite or coal to be
unloaded at different times of the year. The fishing was by night, returning
home in the morning. Father was on "The Boy Ernest." The ships were
named after members of the Eastick family, such as the "Violet
Rose".
The malthouse at Gorleston.
This picture from A.Wilson, shows the Gorleston Malt House
under construction.
Work in a Malt-house:
During the war Baden Gowen worked a little while in Watney's Malthouse near the ferry. In the war they were evacuated to Langold,
near Nottingham, and had a house that had been vacated, but the owners returned
and they were then moved into another in the same area. During the war they
returned to Burnt Lane, having already moved from Row 134. He was then working
in the malthouse down by the ferry. He had a"one man's house", which
meant his own section in the malthouse, which he worked by himself. The malt
first had to be steeped in water, then had to be emptied out every day. The
malt tended to grow and had little shoots forming on it. The malt had to be
worked, and the shoots broke off and were put into sacks. The malt itself was
roasted in the kilns, again a daily process, with the malt turned over with
wooden shovels. The fire was allowed to die down and the malt shovelled out and
down a shute through a hatch, falling down into another place to be sacked up
and sent to the brewers. All this was
entirely manual labour with no automation or machinery whatever.
Bomb damage at the Gorleston Maltings.
The Gowens went away to Nottingham again for
the rest of the war. This was something they did voluntarily. People had been
alarmed after bombs fell in Southtown road causing a large crater, and many
decided to evacuate. People used to shelter in the tunnels under the malthouse
during the air ‑raids. During
the war he had also had a job in the stone yard on the South Quay, where they
mixed granite with hot tar and then took it away to be used to build the
runways at the airfields. Later he was working on the quayside loading coal
onto the trawlers that went out as patrol boats. Altogether, including time
after the last war, he worked for 40 years on the docks. There were no cranes
on the dockside then, and the boats had their own winches. The coal was
shovelled into baskets by the men, to be winched on board.
On 8th.June 1994, a small group of members of
the Great Yarmouth Society were shown around the malt-houses of R.J. Beavans in Cobholm by Mr.Auger, the manager, who
had moved to Yarmouth within the trade some years previously. In October the
malt-houses, although still very profitable, making an 18% profit per annum, were
to be closed after some 140 years of making malt in the same premises. The
malt-houses in Cobholm were built during the 1850's on a virgin site, by Robert
Watling, who over a number of years built up a very substantial business, with
some 12 malt-houses in the town. No.1 malting was on the south-west corner of
the Conge, and the then surviving houses on Mill Road, Cobholm, are numbers 5,
6, and 7, with the numbering from the west. There were previously also
malt-houses on Steam Mill Lane and High Mill Road, and two in Caister on the
site of the present police station. Watling built several more malt-houses in
East Anglia. The buildings on the Yarmouth site were three of only five that
survive from the 19th.century. All the others now used elsewhere are modern
automated plants of very recent construction.
The malt-house known as no.5, at the west end
of Mill Road, was the most original, virtually unchanged from when it was built
in about 1855. There were four floors including the one in the roof. On the ground
floor there were sliding shutters with small mesh in the centre to let air
circulate even when the shutters were closed. The original Pamment tile floor
was still to be seen. The temperature for malting had to be maintained at
around a constant 55 degrees. Any higher temperature causes the barley to rot,
and a colder temperature will arrest germination. During the post-war recession
of the 1920's and 30's the other malt-houses were gradually sold off by Ralph
Watling, and the business finally bought by Watneys, and then Guinness, and the
site assigned to the Beavan group, the name of Watling of Yarmouth being lost.
When the grain was first received, it was fed
into the two large grain silos, first being dried with heat and huge electric
fans, reducing the moisture content of the fresh harvested barley from 48% to
12%. This meant that the grain could then, as long as it was kept aerated and
free of beetles, be kept virtually indefinitely, although in fact they
basically used it all during a year along with some extra deliveries. When used
for making malt, the grain was soaked some three times on three days, in water
to gradually restore its moisture content, indeed to raise it to about 60%, and
cause it to germinate. The malt was kept turned by a man dragging a three
pronged plough every three hours, and an ammonia refrigeration plant dating
from 1947 was used to keep the temperature down to 55 degrees farenheight as
described above. Alternatively an electric machine looking rather like a
lawn-mower could be used to turn the malt as the root grows. As soon as the
malt had fully germinated over the three days, it was taken off with a screw
conveyor, and put through the drying kiln in no.7 malt-house, which dried it in
one of two chambers, one above the other, and reduced the moisture content to a
level of 4%. Then, instead of it having to be worked manually, it was passed
through a mechanical screen that took off the root, which was bagged up and
sold for animal feed. The malt itself was sent to the brewery in bulk, carried
in huge lorries. Malt was currently shipped into Britain from Germany at below
cost price, and the Guinness organisation had declared the entire Yarmouth
workforce redundant at a stroke. Malt was to be made by Guiness in a
purpose-built modern plant in Scotland, even though a profit exceeding £1
million had been made annually by the Yarmouth Company.
The Occupants, Row 134, 1886
(from King
Street to Middlegate Street)
Folkes, W.
Hewett, P., shoemaker
Patrick, G.
Wiseman, E.A., mast and block maker
Lammas, E., bricklayer
Hubbard, Miss, dressmaker
Cobb, G., outfitter's assistant
George, J., fisherman
Lee, Mrs.
Ward, Mrs. E.
Howes, J.
King, C.
Ford, J., labourer
Aylett, R., smacksman
Paston, B.
The Occupants, Row 134, 1913
(from 106 King Street to 64 Middlegate Street)
-This time
numbered from the lower King Street number.
North side
1. Nicholls, John William Thomas
1. Hickling, William Watson
3. Martin, John
4. Woods, Mrs
5. Hall, Alfred
6. Rea, James
7. George, John
8. Bircham, Herbert
9. Blake, Percy
10. Salter, William
South side
11. Barnes, Mrs.*photo
12. Smith, Mrs.*photo
13. Barnes, Isaac
14. Brookes, Charles
15. Lown, William Alfred
16. Turner, Robert
The Occupants, Row 134, 1927
( from 106 King Street to 64 Middlegate Street)
North side
1. Woodhouse, Robert George
2. Woodhouse, Arthur Frederick
3. Clements, Arthur Edward
4. Sutton, Richard
5. Hall, Alfred
6. Symonds, Noah
7. George, Miss, E.
8. Bircham, Herbert
9. Linaker, Alfred
10. Gowen, Baden
South side
12. Wiseman, Thomas William
13. Barnes, Isaac
14. Brooks, Mrs.
15. Watson, James Arthur
16. Turner, Mrs.
The Occupants, Row 134, 1936
( from 106 King Street to 64 Middlegate Street)
North side
1. Duffield, Arthur
2. Shreeve, William
3. Clements, Arthur Edward
4. Sutton, Richard
5. Swann, Cyril Arthur
6. Cattermole, Charles Cyril
7. George, Miss, E.
8. Mills, Robert Arthur
9. Johnson, John
10.Woolnough, George W.
South side
12. Watson, Charles
13. Barnes, Isaac
14. Brooks, Mrs.
15. Watson, James Arthur
16. Hanton, Alfred