Aug 28 2008
Sand, rock and herrings
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“The strangest place in the wide world”, according to Dickens, was Yarmouth – a town built, against the advice of the parable, on sand. When the Romans came to Norfolk, the area was open water, a vast estuary, where the waters of the Yare, Bure and Waveney came together and emptied into the North Sea.
As the estuary silted up – becoming the Halvergate marshes, now sliced through by the A47 – a sandbank slowly formed at its mouth. Fishermen used it to lay up their boats and dry their nets, merchants came to buy their fish and the settlement of Yarmouth grew up.
Rows and alleys
Stretching along the sandbank, the town’s elongated, fish-like shape gave rise to a unique street plan. With just three main streets, all running north-south, the buildings of the town were packed into over 150 east-west alleyways – the “rows” – some less than 3 feet wide.
To move provisions around these numbered rows, the curious “troll cart” was devised, something like a wheeled sledge and suitably narrow. The rows have mostly vanished, destroyed by bombs and developers, but some of their utilitarian numbers can still be found in the gaps between the houses along the South Quay.
Standing at the mouth of three rivers that drained one of the wealthiest and most populous parts of medieval England, Yarmouth was in an enviable position as a port, exporting wool, cloth and corn. But by far the most important commodity to Yarmouth, right up to the collapse of North Sea stocks in the 1960s, was the herring.
An oily fish
The herring, Clupea harengus, is an oily fish, between 20 and 40 cm long, that swims in vast shoals between the ocean depths and its summer spawning grounds. It can be caught in huge quantities and must be cured within 24 hours lest the oils go rancid. When cured, however, it has excellent keeping properties and has long been exported across Europe and beyond, a plentiful and nutritious food that could be eaten during Lent. The need for quick curing restricted fishing to ports close by the shoals, limiting competition.
The herring shoals came past Yarmouth every autumn, and, by the 13th century, were followed by itinerant fishermen and merchants. The fishing was open to all – a cause for complaint to local fishermen then as now – and attracted those engaged in the “takinge, seliinge, buyenge of herrings” from all northern Europe.
The great Free Herring Fair became one of the most important trading fairs of medieval Europe and lasted from Michaelmas, the 29th September, until Martinmas, the 11th November. In the 14th century, up to 12 vessels a day were loading cured herring for export as far afield as Italy.
Herring shoals and Scots girls
By the early 20th century, the industry was dominated by the Scots, who followed the herring shoals down the east coast. In 1913, at the peak of the industry, 1163 Scots and local vessels caught 124,407 tonnes of herring. (In 2001, just 33 tonnes of herring were landed at Yarmouth and neighbouring ports.)
In the months of the fishery, the town was filled with thousands of “Scots girls” who came to gut and pack the fish, working at a rate of one fish a second. Many of the fish were simply salted and packed in barrels, others were smoked in the many brick smokehouses that filled the town.
Ways to cure a herring
There are numerous ways to cure a herring, with varying combinations of salt, vinegar and smoke. A buckling is a whole fish, cooked by hot-smoking; rollmops are filleted and pickled in vinegar; the fearsome surströmming of Sweden are lightly salted and allowed to ferment, developing a potent smell in the summer heat. The kipper – split, gutted, salted and smoked in a way originally devised for salmon – is best known, but Yarmouth was renowned for its red herring and bloater.
Red herrings
Red herrings were left ungutted and subjected to a very strong cure of brining, drying and long smoking of up to 6 weeks, giving them an exceptionally long life. The skin became red, hence the name, and it was also known in Norfolk as a “militiaman”. Militiamen, contrariwise, were known as “red herrings”. Though originally eaten by the English at Lent, the red herring could be exported great distances and became popular in Catholic southern Europe and the Middle East. The red herring fell out of favour with the English, on account of its strong, salty flavour, but it entered Afro-Caribbean cuisine after being fed slaves.
Bloaters
Bloaters are also ungutted, but only lightly brined before being washed, dried and hung by a wooden speat through the gills for a cold-smoking of just a few hours. Only lightly smoked, the bloater must be kept refrigerated and eaten within a week. It has a faint aroma of smoke and a pleasantly gamy flavour imparted by the guts, which can be eaten by the hardy connoisseur.
Time and Tide
There were once hundreds of smokehouses in Yarmouth, but few remain and just one is still in operation. The Time and Tide museum occupies an old smokehouse. The idiosyncratic but fascinating museum of herring smoking includes the old multi-storey brick smoking chambers.
Further south, beyond the old city walls, a few more smokehouses remain, their tin vents spinning and creaking in the wind. Reassuring wisps of smoke still gust from the roof of one in Sutton Rd, near the old fish wharf.
Still smoking
HS Fishing is the only smoking operation left in Yarmouth and is run by Mike Kelly as a traditional but thriving business. Although the herring are now mostly imported from Norway, they are still slowly smoked over oak in the 19th century brick smokehouse and treated with none of the artificial colourings and flavourings that blight mass-produced smoked fish. The fish are hung on wooden or steel speats and placed, staggered, in the racks of the smoking chamber for up to 6 days, before being packed in wooden boxes.
Mike and his staff can smoke up to 25 tonnes of herring a week and produce mostly red herring for export and sale to ethnic communities, who appreciate the powerful flavour. They also smoke kippers, as well as cod, mackerel, haddock and salmon, all on sale to the public from the smokehouse in Sutton Rd.
Kippers and bloaters can also be bought at Mastertons, at the top of Regent Road, and at the couple of fishmongers in Yarmouth’s daily covered market.
Reed and jot
A peculiar delicacy of the covered market is available at H Blake, the butchers, who proudly specialise in cooked brawn, reed and jot. Brawn is well known and widely sold, but reed – the fourth stomach of cattle – and jot – pig’s stomach – are rarely to be seen beyond the market at Yarmouth, where Blake’s is the last of three butchers that once sold them. Similar to tripe, they have a wonderfully sticky texture and sweet flavour when refried.
Spring buttons
Beside the covered market is Yarmouth’s vasty open market place, one of the largest in England. The market takes place every Wednesday and Saturday, as well as Fridays in summer, offering an array of goods of every quality. Amongst the few fruit and vegetable stalls, the anonymous one right in the thick of things stands out for its good selection of local produce. The “real garden cress” is especially delicious, sold loose and much more peppery and fragrant than the tub-bound variety.
Across the market, in Northgate St, is a good, old-fashioned bakery, JD Bales, where besides excellent bread, Yarmouth “buttons” – a lemony biscuit – are made for the visiting fair each spring.
Turning to the sea
Yarmouth originally faced inland, huddled against the harbour of the Yare, the sand-dunes – “denes” – and sea at its back, beyond the walls. In the mid 18th century, sea bathing was the latest fashion and the Bath House was built on the denes to cater for these new visitors. Over the next hundred years, Yarmouth spilled out of its old walls and the seafront was developed. Even today, there is a marked contrast between old and new Yarmouth, with Regent Rd and the seafront given over to, as Pevsner has it, “seaside pleasures more popular than fashionable.”
Regent Road is full of shops and restaurants that cater for the particular needs of tourists. On the corner at the top, Mastertons offers visitors the opportunity to send friends a box of kippers or bloaters by post. But the most popular souvenir of Yarmouth is rock, the well-known confection of sugar (pulled to incorporate air), glucose and a cocktail of flavourings and colourings.
Pulled sugar
In the long established Docwras Rock Shop – 80 years old and “the world’s largest” – the process of making rock, words and all, is on public display. Spectators eagerly watch as the skilled staff arrange the blocks of coloured sugar into fat, elongated letters, which are then packed together, wrapped around the white, aerated core, and encircled in the outer, coloured layer. A giant rolling machine then extrudes this giant piece of rock into yards of the familiar sticks.
Do you love sprats?
Classic seaside rock features the name of the resort but one of the first examples of lettered rock, sold by a London vendor in the 1860s, is said to have borne the motto, “Do you love sprats?” Sadly, none of today’s Yarmouth rock mentions the herrings that once made this town great.
