Woodforde's journey to Yarmouth
Halvergate Marsh (looking East), the A47 Acle New Road to the right [photo Alan Ovenden 2023]James Woodforde's diary is often frustrating for geographers and others attempting to detail his journeys. He relates the beginning and end points, the inns where he took refreshment, his mode of conveyance, and the costs he incurred. In order to reconstruct the routes he took one must look to other evidence, primarily from contemporary and later maps.
Great Yarmouth, or simply 'Yarmouth' as Woodforde referred to it in the diary, isn't quite the most easterly town in Britain; that distinction belongs to Lowestoft at Ness Point some 6.4 miles (10.3 km) to south of the mouth of the River Yare. With rail links from London and the English Midlands via Ipswich and Norwich, and major roads leading to Norfolk and Norwich, Yarmouth today is easily accessible.
The problem of the marshes
In Woodforde's time, however, before railways, the final leg of the journey from Norwich involved circumnavigating the marshes which lie between Acle and Yarmouth and into which three rivers, the Bure, the Yare, and the Waveney drain. It wasn't until 1831, in pursuance of an Act of Parliament of 1830, that the Acle New Road, or Acle Straight as it is popularly known, was opened as a turnpike road across the marsh. It still remains the direct route from Norwich via Acle, as a section of the A47 trunk road.
The problem of access to Yarmouth from the land is well illustrated by the First Land Utilisation Survey map, published at a scale of 1:63,360 (one inch to a mile), published in 1934.
First Land Utilisation Survey Map, Norwich & Great Yarmouth, 1934 [Released under CC-BY-NC-SA (LUS) through the National Library of Scotland]
Land uses are shown by different colours. Norwich in the west and Great Yarmouth in the east are predominantly coloured red (land with high density housing or industrial works and agriculturally unproductive), or mauve (housing with gardens large enough to grow vegetables). Land coloured brown is under arable farming, and pale green indicates meadowland and permanent grass. The Acle New Road with its 'dog leg' at Stracey Arms is clearly visible traversing the green coloured permanent grassland and parallel to the railway line between Acle and Great Yarmouth.
Halvergate Marsh, Drainage, First Land Utilisation Survey, 1934 [Released under CC-BY-NC-SA (LUS) through the National Library of Scotland]Today, the permanent grassland is used primarily for grazing cattle, but this wasn't always the case. The clue lies in the pattern of drainage channels shown on the First LUS map. The curving blue lines are the natural drainage channels that developed when the land was pumped clear of water into constructed main drains.
William Marshall, while making a tour of the Yarmouth marshes in 1782, observed (The Rural Economy of Norfolk, 1788) that:
Until about twenty years ago this valuable tract lay under water; except in a dry summer. But during that space of time a number of windmills have been erected, which throw the water into the main drains, formed for this purpose. By this means the principal parts of the marsh are freed from surface water early in the spring: so that cattle may be turned into them about the beginning of May, and are kept free long enough to permit them, in general to remain there until Christmas.
Fen and Marsh between Norwich and Yarmouth, William Faden, 1797 [The Land of Britain, Part 70, Norfolk, John E. G. Mosby, 1938]Although draining the marshes was underway in Woodforde's time they frequently overflowed with water, and much of the land remained swamp left for the growth of reeds for thatching. Until the construction of the Acle New Road, it was this area which was largely inaccessible to travellers. A land use map constructed from William Faden's 1797 Topographical Map of the County of Norfolk clearly shows the marshland areas over which roads could not cross.
Two roads from Norwich to Yarmouth
In the 1760s there were two routes between Norwich and Yarmouth, one to the south of the marshes and one to the north of them. The diary does not give any detail of his routes to Yarmouth from Weston either in 1775 or 1776. On both occasions Woodforde and his companion travelled on horseback and the diary denies us any details of the journey. Inevitably, though, coming from Weston they would have been via Norwich.
The southern route was usual until a shorter northerly road from Acle was turnpiked in 1768-69. This road is clearly shown on Herman Moll's map of Norfolk of 1724: it is indeed the only road depicted in south-east Norfolk.
The road approximates to the present A146 trunk road from Norwich, south of the River Yare, as far as Hales. The locations shown by Moll along or adjacent the road (with present-day spellings) are: Bendon (Kirby Bedon); Rockl (Rockland); Hellington; Chedgrave, with nearby Langley Abbey; and Loddon. At Hales the A146 road today continues to Beccles, and the road to Yarmouth is now a minor one, but was the principal route according to Moll.
The road from Norwich to Yarmouth, Herman Moll (c.1654–1732), 1724 [PD image via Wikimedia Commons]From Hales the road continues to the Bridg (bridge) over the River Waveney at St Olaves close by: Heckin. (Heckingham); Thurl. (Thurlton); Hadskothorp (Thorpe); to Hadsko (Haddiscoe) and the Waveney flood plain and marshes; and thence across the marshes to St Olave (St Olaves). Having crossed the river into the northerly extension of Suffolk known as Lothingland, and then to the crossing of the River Yare at Yarmouth via Fritton, Belton, and Bradwell north of Gorleston.
'Travellers' companions'
So-called 'travellers' companions' comprising 'scroll maps', 'strip road maps' or 'ribbon road maps' had been available for over a hundred years before Thomas Kitchin (1718–1784) published his Post-Chaise Companion through England and Wales in London in 1767, and detailed The Road from King's Lynn to Norwich continued to Yarmouth via the route south of the marshes. Lenwade Bridge, or 'Leonards Bri.' as it is shown on the map, is the location from where Woodforde and his companions took a post-chaise to Norwich.
A contemporary cartographer of Kitchin, and sometime publishing collaborator, was Thomas Jefferys (c.1719–1771) whose early maps of North America included a Map of the Most Inhabited Part of Virginia. Jefferys, too, published an Itinerary; or Travellers Companion.
The Norwich to Yarmouth Turnpike
The Norwich to Yarmouth road, John Cary, 1787 [Private collection]The Parliament which met from 8 November 1768 until 9 May 1769 passed forty acts for road improvements. Among them was the Norwich to Yarmouth Road Act 1769 (9 Geo. 3. c. 68) dated 23 March 1769, which created a turnpike or toll road twenty miles in length:
An Act for amending the Road from Bishops-gate Bridge in the City of Norwich, to a Stone formerly called The Two Mile Stone, where the Norwich Road joins the Caister Causeway, Two Miles and a Half short of the Town of Great Yarmouth.
The Act established a board of trustees (a turnpike trust) whose purpose was to improve a section of road which had previously been maintained piecemeal by the parishes through which the roadway passed. Unlike the parishes, a turnpike trust could raise external funding through bonds and mortgages and finance the loans by charging tolls to users of the road. Turnpike trusts spent between ten and twenty times more than the parishes they replaced.
The impact of the improved on journeying between Norwich and Yarmouth is apparent from John Cary's Norfolk map in his New and Correct English Atlas of 1787: there is now a road leading east from Norwich north of the River Yare, and which passes north of the marshes between Acle and Yarmouth, crossing the Bure at Acle. This is the route which Woodforde and his companions took in 1778. William Faden's map of 1797 shows the turnpike road from Acle to Caister next Yarmouth and the villages through which they would have passed.
The Road from Acle to Yarmouth, William Faden, 1797, digitally redrawn [Courtesy of Andrew Macnair]
Nineteenth-century milepost on the Turnpike at Caister [photo Alan Ovenden 2025]The road is now designated A1064. Having left Acle, Woodforde would have crossed the River Bure and Billockby Marshes at Wey Bridge and thence via Billockby, Burgh St Margaret (Fleggburgh), Burgh St Mary (now decayed with only the church ruins remaining), Filby, and thence to Caister Causeway. The Turnpike Toll Gate at Filby which would have accounted for some of Woodforde's expenditure on tolls is clearly shown.
The Act of Parliament of 1769, which prescribed the tolls which could be levied, is unavailable for scrutiny. However the road was improved again by the Road from Norwich to the Caister Causeway Act of 1831, which can be examined for tolls.
Tolls . . . shall be demanded and taken at each and every Turnpike, Toll Gate, and Side Gate, Chain or Chains now set up: For every Horse, Mule, or Beast drawing any Coach . . . Chaise . . . or any other such like Carriage, the Sum of Sixpence: For every Horse or Mule, laden or unladen, and not drawing, the Sum of One Penny:
Caister Causeway and North Denes, William Faden, 1797 [Courtesy of Andrew Macnair]These tolls equate with those paid by Woodforde in 1778. On 2 and 3 June, travelling three apparent stages in a post chaise – Lenwade to Norwich, Norwich to Acle, then Acle to Yarmouth – he paid one shilling in turnpike tolls. However, having returned to Norwich from Yarmouth on 4 June, he then paid sixpence for the turnpike to Weston. Perhaps there was only one toll paid between Norwich and Yarmouth, or perhaps Mr Pounsett contributed to the cost. We cannot be sure.
With the opening of the Acle New Road in 1831 - the last turnpike road to be constructed in Norfolk - both the southern and the northern routes of the eighteenth century were redundant and became the country roads which they remain today. The Acle New Road in its turn was de-turnpiked in 1863 due to competition from the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway opened in 1844.
The Denes
On reaching Caister Causeway Woodforde and his party would have seen the North Sea or German Ocean to their left across the area of low dunes and sandy beach known as the North Denes. When Woodforde walked or took a Yarmouth 'coach' to the Harbour Fort he would have been on the South Denes.
William Faden's map of 1797 shows a turnpike gate 21 miles from Norwich. The Caister Causeway was itself a toll road, having been established by the Great Yarmouth to Caister Causeway Act of 1711 in the reign of Queen Anne (10 Anne c. 1).
The North Denes was used for rough cattle grazing, and it is where fishermen spread their nets for drying and repair. Faden depicts windmills, primarily for grinding corn, and a gibbet, where in 1813 John Hannah was hanged having been convicted of murdering his wife.
The gibbet has long since gone, together with the corn mills, but it is perhaps ironic that the view across the North Denes today includes new windmills, but of a different character and purpose. The offshore Scroby Sands, once a hazard to shipping, are now the location for an extensive offshore wind farm for generating electricity.
North Denes and Scroby Sands Offshore Wind Farm [photo Alan Ovenden 2025]