Villages by the Sea – 1.4 Walberswick (BBC)

BBC documentary series. Archaeologist Ben Robinson discovers the surprising story of this former medieval port on the Suffolk coast.

Coastal villages are often seen as remote places for retreat and relaxation. However, they have often been on the front line of history – from the arrival of Christianity to battles with neighbours and nature, from slave trading to the birth of modern tourism.

Today, Walberswick is a favourite coastal retreat for writers, artists and day trippers. But for centuries, the village lurched from prosperity to poverty. In medieval times, it fought a bitter battle for supremacy against the neighbouring port of Dunwich and finally fell victim to politics, fire and the might of the sea

a village by the sea fishing boats cottages and a gorgeous view a perfect place to escape from a busy world but look closer and there’s another story I’m Ben Robinson and as an archaeologist I want to explore the places where we live to see how they’ve changed and hopefully dig up the odd surprise about their past wow what a view our Coastal Villages are often seen as remote outposts places of retreat and relaxation but they’ve been on the front line of history from the arrival of Christianity to desperate battles with neighbors and nature from slave trading to the birth of modern tourism during the Middle Ages the suffk village of walberswick fought a bloody battle with its neighbor dunich to become one of the most important ports on the East Coast Trading as far a field as Iceland but in the end the villagers were no match for Fire political turmoil and the might of the [Music] sea walberswick lies on the estery of the river blly in suffk about 400 people live here and with its Village Green and pretty Cottages it’s popular with holiday [Music] makers you can’t fail to notice the church with its much larger ruin and the village is full of desirable properties many of them homes to actors writers and celebrities but walberswick hasn’t always been an affluent bolt hole in fact it hasn’t always been on this site and at first glance there are few Clues to a past that Lurch from prosperity to Poverty over several centuries it’s a place where nothing stays the same for long the shingle Banks along the coast are constantly reshaped by rising sea levels tides and storms [Music] I love the haphazard make do and mend character of the buildings down here on the key they’ve used material Salvage From Here There and Everywhere and they’ve adapted from Fisherman’s huts and net Lofts into holiday accommodation they’re on pedestals hedging their bets against the rising Tides it’s a reminder that what the sea gives the sea can take away and here in walberswick it certainly has taken a lot away the original Village and its Port have disappeared but there is a clue to tell us where they were half a mile away from today’s Village there’s a wooded track leading to the marshes just wandering down this wonderful old Green Lane and I say old because there are traces that it’s actually quite an ancient thoroughfare it’s sunken below the level of the fields cut into the slope worn Away by centuries of hooves and feet tramping down here now these Lanes could be quite major thoroughfares in medieval times and they always led to somewhere [Music] significant Philip K was born and brought up in walberswick his research the importance of this medieval track called stocks Lane well this Lane used to be one of the main highways down to the key and and the stocks not not stocks as in put felons in there and throw fruit and vegetables no no no no ship building stocks these are Timbers to help support the frame of a ship while it’s being built yeah that’s right and slopes so they would drift down into the river on their own if the Lost Village was here it’s likely there would have been a church as well with maps and a bit of local knowledge Philip thinks he’s worked out where it was so where’s the old church on here there yeah okay so we’re standing almost almost right yeah right against it what over here oh right okay what between us and where those bushes are yeah about 100 yards out yeah it may look like an empty field but Philip has done some archaeological detective work have you found any idence well yes we we we’ve found bits of Crockery and and and these stones found on the field local Stone off the beach has been used for building they’ve still got the mortar attached to yeah yeah that’s the Clincher isn’t it yeah I think as an archaeologist you know you’re looking for something that doesn’t belong so someone’s had to bring them up here why have they brought them up well it’s a building material isn’t it y so you’re convincing me that this was effectively the center of the village in those times yeah down on the side of the river was the keys and the warehouses and the shipyard now that employed carpenters and men that the key had warehouses the trading ships that traded with Iceland and the Pharaohs and these are called the Oldtown marshes so that implies that they’re de we’re a long way from the present Village they must be talking about a village down here if you had stood on this spot back in the 13th century the scene would have been quite different it was a hive of activity with fishing trading and ship building but walberswick Merchants had a problem at that time the river didn’t go into the sea here as it does today instead it flowed 2 miles further south following the route of this now much narrower water course it went out to the Sea at dunich which was then the main port on the East anglian [Music] Coast any ships belonging to walberswick had to enter the harbor here at dunnage and pay tolls for the privilege walberswick Traders deeply resented this it was the beginning of a trade war that would last for centuries walberswick Merchants had no choice but to pay the tolls most of their money was from fish which they took up the river for their main customer the prior at nearby [Music] BLB Danny Church operates the local Ferry she’s taking me along the Route the fisherman would have followed to the prior Danny the the is really tranquil today and there’s not much traffic about but I assume it was very different in medieval times the channel would have been much more navigable than it is now um the river banks would have been much uh it was much narrower um and there would have been locks as well to help the flow of the water go up and down because at low tide you can’t really get up here now if it if it’s your Lifeline if it’s what you rely on for trade for wealth to survive yeah of course you’ve got to keep it open you can’t just let nature take its course and hope for the best yeah I they’d be hand digging it then as well wouldn’t they not they would like now with diggers and things they’d all be the men would be here hand digging the cuts there would have been a lot of barks and sailing boats bringing cargo all the way from the continent but the problem was people from dun didn’t want the W was rians coming in through that River they must have really really wanted to get Goods up here it was important to get that Coastal trade coming in land oh absolutely tons of Herring would have been unloaded at the key today that’s silted up and overgrown and the ruined PRI stands in what’s now Kiara saunders’s Garden I mean if you just look at the size of the column there gives you a sense of the size of it so a large Church an important prior and obviously one that needs resources absolutely and you know you’re living here and the closest resource is your River and your water really that’s the thing about monastic communities they may have been few in number themselves but they had a sort of support network around them so it’s an ideal location really because they’re right on the river they can get all the fish they need and they eat a lot of fish attached to the house we’ve got a medieval chapel and its history was related to walberswick fishing and fishermen the community was so dependent on the walberswick fisherman ensuring their spiritual well-being must have been a priority so this is the um Chapel here good grief this is your part of your house yes yes it is very much sastic the stories that we’ve heard it was a place where the sailors were blessed before they went out to see presumably looking after the sort of Souls of the Mariners was an important thing if your livelihood wealth success depends on them yeah you’re going to be very interested in their spiritual well-being yeah praying for their safety at Sea the health of this place depended on fishing it depended on all their commercial activities I can quite imagine that they prayed for the success of the fishing fleet and the health of the Mariners the ambitious traders of walberswick were constantly frustrated by the tolls they had to pay to dunich for using the river so they began imposing charges on dunich Merchants using the road that passed through their land Land This Is All That Remains of that road all traffic that came through here was taxed for example a carriage carrying corn or fish whose Wheels were shod with iron was charged tuppens and every horse a hay this enraged the men of Dage it weakened their Monopoly on trade in the area According to some accounts things got really really nasty a heavily man ship made its way out to sea there it attacked and sank a walberswick boat 16 crew members were killed it was an act of want and brutality the men of walberswick were shocked into submission however in the 14th century it was the sea that decided the outcome of this war storms silted up dun’s Harbor and the Sea breached the shingle Bank this time next to walberswick the traders of walberswick must have been over the moon what a gift they now had their own entrance to the Sea for most of the 15th century walberswick had the upper hand trade increased dramatically as her ships bypassed dunich and we have a fantastic account based on contemporary sources and compiled by Thomas Gardner in the 18th century he was a local historian and what these sources convey that walberswick was enjoying a considerable trade by sea for butter cheese bacon corn Timber coal salt and fish especially the latter 13 Boats were trading as far a field as Iceland the Pharaohs and across the North Sea things got worse for dunich the coast was eroding and the town was being washed away fearful that they would be next walberswick moved their entire Village to Higher Ground one of the early buildings from the new Village still stands this is the oldest house in the village apart from the church the oldest building in the village it was reclad in this wonderful soft red suffk brick in the 18th century but around the corner there’s an indic a of something even older the bricks on this Gable are a lot narrower they’re likely to have been made in Europe now bricks are said to have come in as ballast on trading ships from the low countries walberswick was trading far and [Music] wide the villagers wanted to show off their wealth and what better way than to Splash out on a lavish new church [Music] and this is it s Andrews and we’ve got a bit of a puzzle here because we’ve got a small Church in the ruins of what was obviously a much much larger Church the state of a church is a barometer of the fortunes of a village very often where they’re situated what sort of condition they’re in the lavishness of the architecture here this place has obviously had some kind of catastrophe not an earthquake not a fire but something else This Magnificent Tower is out of all proportion with the church as it remains and there are Clues here about what’s [Music] happened Church Warden John Simpson can help me decipher those [Music] Clues what’s going on here John well there is real evidence of three churches on this uh site um the tower was built from the early 1400s and uh at that time it was AB butted to a very small church we think a wooden church we think it was uh uh probably thatched at that time then the wooden church was demolished and then this Grand church was built and Grand Church it is oh and magnificent ruins now but they still give a sense of the of the magnificence of this place its presence as well yes we’re very fortunate to have records from that time Church warden’s records uh to explain that a contract was placed called uh a covenant and um uh I’d like to read it to you in the fourth year of the reign of King Henry V 6 a covenant was made between Richard Russell of dunnage and Adam Powell of blbr Masons on the other part the said Richard and Adam shall make or do make a steeple joined to the Church of walberswick fores said with four butresses and one room 12T wide and 6t thick the walls and this is making a real statement oh yes it was an amazing statement and uh they worked U tirelessly uh to build this uh to build this Tower 40 years it took them a life’s work which I still think is quite extraordinary but something happened John the grand church is no more and you’ve got a smaller Church yes indeed well for getting on for a 100 years or so the um the community was struggling to maintain this Grand Church there wasn’t the wealth anymore in the village and they were in Desperate Times things didn’t get better as the years went on and um eventually um they had to make a decision to uh I suppose you would say downsize the church and um and it must have been a um a difficult decision to make at that time but they managed to scrape up enough money to construct the smaller church that we have here today so what caused this drastic decline it began in the 16th century with a right Royal stitch up when King Henry VII cut ties with the Catholic church he shut down the monasteries including blra walberswick lost the market for its fish and local taxes from the prior The Village soon fell into debilitating poverty just to make things worse fires destroyed many properties fortunately thanks to the dedication of villagers we have an excellent record of wber Wick’s troubles local resident Pat Lancaster has been tracking down all sorts of [Music] documents we might think that when the village starts to fall on hard times that there’s a SL there’s a an embarrassment it had been a wealthy place it had been going well and now it was going badly are their troubles documented they didn’t actually hide anything here is an example from um uh the fery null Warwick notes by Carol Christie of 1911 uh wherein she says in 1585 the parish was so poor that they sold the great Bell for 26 pounds 8 Shillings and 9 also in 1633 there were 71 families in the place next next year but 54 um part of the time being burnt it’s just problem after problem I mean Nature’s conspiring against them then then there’s accidents and and fires and tragedies and then there’s the economic situation and there aren’t Rich families that can assist the poor anymore and to not be able to I mean that was a responsibility of the parish to look after the poor people it would have been a responsibility of the parish but if they didn’t have any money how could they do it how could they cope at the end of the 16th century further storms lashed the coast and the entrance to their Harbor through the shingle Bank silted up again it could have signaled the end for walberswick in 1590 in a desperate attempt to reignite walbers Wick’s Maritime Prosperity the villagers dug out this channel by hand to give direct access to the sea but the problem was that ships were getting bigger and they needed deeper safer Waters than walberswick had to offer so during the 17th century The Village was in crisis again there was no money to be made from the sea and it was also a time of change in the countryside common land was being enclosed this boosted the wealth of walbers Wick’s landowner while depriving the villagers of a place to graze their livestock this is Westwood Lodge which belonged to wers Wick’s Lord of The Manor in the 17th century It’s a grand pile with Splendid architecture in stark contrast to the poverty his villagers were living in historian Peter Warner has written a book about the crisis facing walberswick at this time wow what a view Peter it’s fantastic isn’t it spectacular Peter has Unearthed a Grizzly tale of murder involving locals from walberswick and his lordship who bar their cattle from his land he put men with dogs down there to guard the the fen he impounded the beasts this was the only land they had they weren’t land owners in their own right they had this common land and he was robbing them of it effectively yes the towns folk uh were were desperate here because uh they’d lost the of the fishing uh the port wasn’t working uh ship building was in Decline uh and they were very dependent on this grazing that desperation uh came to a head in 1644 when uh one of the uh Gods went into the village and caused a disturbance a and he was killed uh and as a result of that uh four men of walwick were taken to iwi sizes and were hung good grief so this is people losing their lives over this dispute it’s not just about becoming a bit more wealthy for them it’s about surviving yes yes pure and simple after this episode there’s there’s no way back for the town’s folk is there economically and socially WWI was crippled by the end of the 17th century The Village population was reduced to just 20 people [Music] it took another 200 years for the village to get back on its feet again this time it was made Popular by Victorian photographers and artists who came here to escape the clamor of industrial progress the impressionist painter Philip Wilson steer produced some of his finest work here and Architects came too this street is one of walber Wick’s Biggest Secrets all these Grand Villas are the work of one architect Frank Jennings he was so enamored with the place that he began buying plots of land and developing these individual bespoke houses and he did it in a very well-respected arts and craft style taking cues from the local architecture the render the plane tiles the pantiles the red brick Jetties Timber but all with a comfortable modern twist Jennings adorned the Interiors with bits and pieces he’ salvaged from medieval buildings it’s incredible it’s like a mini Great Hall I’m getting a peep inside one he built for himself with local architect Bill angas a devoted admirer of Jennings he would have wanted to create the Medieval World in here the fabric of this very room is that of a a barn and he’s made no attempt to deceive that it was a bar he’s left the king post roof trusses and we can enjoy it as such but he was first and foremost an architect but what made him special with the sort of cocktail of components he used that’s what makes him stand out his obsessive collecting and the incorporation of that collection into the building things this of course is what helps to make Warwick unique Jennings could have built modern houses as an architect all these new materials are coming out and yet he’s deliberately choosing to use all this old stuff well you you’ve got to see Jennings in the context of the Industrial Revolution and how he hated that uniform character he wanted to bring to the four the old skills of the Craftsman he had a belief that the best ornamentation came from the original Craftsman but they weren’t the original Craftsman around in those days this fireplace comes from the Duke of norfolk’s house and of course they were Catholic Family which put them at Lads with much of what was going on then and we can open this secret doorway oh yes yes so any incriminating documents could be stuffed in there and then closed back in yes indeed yeah it is like a collection this this sort of juxtaposition of all these different elements a real talking point I can imagine when he had guests here you know oh well you know this this came this was the Duke of norol and look at this you know isn’t this marvelous and you know all this sort of stuff but he couldn’t actually do it I thought you’d be embarrassed it’s it’s a secret you see yeah yeah there you go ah how’d you do that the house is wonderful but I didn’t expect anything quite as extraordinary as that inside Jennings has taken a huge pride in what he’s done here and in other houses that he’s built these were fashionable homes for fashionable [Music] people and it seems he was prepared to go to extreme length to provide the ultimate Seaside Dez res and this is it Mercer’s Hall but this building Is Not What It Seems it’s totally out of character with the other buildings in walberswick it didn’t even originate here Jennings was visiting laven the ancient wool town in suffk when he came across this building being dismantled he couldn’t believe such a beautiful building would be lost so he paid £80 for it there and then he had it dismantled and reconstructed here in walberswick but there was a problem laum is built on a hill it streets slope here he had flat land to work with so he’s compensated and you can see how the brick work allows the building to be leveled up it’s all on the slot even today walberswick is a place where you can forget the modern world but it remains a working Village writers and artists still live here painter Joe Lowry gets her inspiration from the history of the village and its relationship with the Ever Changing sea and sky I just came and I just felt so right I just felt for the first time in my life I was in the right place I’ve done a lot of sea painting but I think my love is really just the sky and because it’s very affected by the water below That’s What attracted me to war was it do you get a sense of the history of the place you go down to the harbor and you’re aware of all the excitement and energy that had gone well for me anyway and I’m sure I’m speaking for others uh that that existed before uh when it was a working Village there’s a real Paradox here because you’re painting Solitude and and and this this wild landscape and yet people F here in their thousands to enjoy do they do and they how do those two things square up I think they work because the people that come in I’m not I’m not sure about the day Trippers but but um but the people that come year after year with their families you talk to them they’ve all been here as children they’ve been brought here on holiday and they’re now bringing their families back and they all love the place in genders such happiness the villagers of walberswick know that the sea might yet have the last laugh but they don’t let that affect their everyday lives they’ve faced adversity before and I’m sure whatever the future holds they’ll adapt to what comes their way [Music]