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The Defences of Norfolk by Paul HooperNorfolk has always been out on a limb and nearer to the continent than
London. This has made it particularly vulnerable to attack and the fear
of invasion. Indeed may areas of Norfolk have been invaded in the past.
All the -by names as in Scratby, Rollesby Ormesby etc are Viking names
and if you look at a map of Norfolk you will see that fourteen of the
sixteen -by names are within 10 miles of Yarmouth. Yet our first defences
predate the Viking period and were set up by the Romans as a defence against
invasion and were called the 'Saxon Shore Forts'. Good examples are at
Burgh Castle and there may have been a smaller fort at Caister. Other
examples were to be found at Branchaster Staithe. When William landed at Hastings and proceeded to subdue the country he
built a series of castles that covered the country and subdued the Saxon
peasants, Norwich Castle being the obvious example in the county. Bungay
had a castle and some of the Roman forts were garrisoned again. The obvious
omission from this list is Yarmouth, well the spit of land on which it
was built did not emerge from the waves until around 900 AD and then it
was covered at high tide. By about 1000 AD the sand bank was established
and building had started. The constant fear of invasion during 12th and 13th C led Henry III to
grant Yarmouth a licence to build a wall and work started at King Henry's
Tower in 1260. It took over 120 years to build the complete wall around
the town as the money and the labour to complete the project were always
in short supply. Indeed when the plague hit Yarmouth in 1348/9 the population
of the town shrunk from 10,000 to 3,000! With the walls complete by about 1400 then the town entered a period of prosperity, but the construction had not exactly been first class and sections of the wall fell down and were rebuilt, good examples of this may still be seen down near Blackfriars Tower were the remains of the Friary were used to rebuild the wall. The advent of artillery made the flint construction of the walls very vulnerable. By the time of the Armada in 1588, the walls were in a very poor state,
and to reinforce the defences the walls were rampired. (Rampire - Earth
was packed against the inside of the walls to provide an extra bank inside
the wall). Also a ravelin was constructed for Artillery and parts of this
can still be seen in the ground plan of the town. The ravelin was diamond
shaped and stuck out from the wall to allow the cannon to fire along the
face of the wall. Along the coast in the spring of 1588, troops were stationed at Waxham,
Cley, Winterton and at Weybourne a small fort was constructed, although
nothing now remains. At Kings Lynn preparations were made to breech the
sea defences and surround the town with a moat from the North Sea! With
the destruction of the Spanish fleet the fear of invasion faded and the
defences again fell into disrepair again. |