In the medieval mind, Yarmouth was associated with herring, a high-protein
food important to the diet of the lower classes, which featured less meat
than is eaten today. The thirteenth century seal of the borough bore depictions
of a ship sailing herring-inhabited waters and, on the other side, St. Nicholas,
a patron saint of fishermen. The fishery provided the reason for Yarmouth's
foundation and the principal source of its medieval economy.
Great Yarmouth -- the qualifier distinguishing it from its southern neighbour,
Little Yarmouth -- is situated near where several rivers, among them the Yare,
flow into what was once a very broad estuary opening out into the sea. In Roman
times there was a port and market town a little further north, at Caistor, and a
small fort at Burgh Castle; these were later abandoned. Subsequent settlement focused
on the site of Great Yarmouth itself. Tradition has the first settlement there
established by the Saxon leader, Cerdic, ca. 495, but this is unsubstantiated
and doubtful. More certain is that silting in the mouth of the "Great Estuary"
over time formed a huge sandbank that came to be several miles long, leaving
the Yare access into the sea through two channels at either end of the sandbank;
one channel separated Yarmouth and Caister, the other ran southwards for some
miles and separated Great and Little Yarmouth/Gorleston before entering the sea.
This sandbank eventually became firm enough to support dwellings, perhaps preceded
by more temporary facilities for the drying, salting and smoking of herring, as
well as the sale of herring. Fishermen from the Cinque Ports claimed a long-standing
right to beach their boats and to dry their nets there. A fair may have been in
operation there by the time of Edward the Confessor, during the forty days from
Michaelmas to Martinmas when the fishery was at its peak; in later times this
important fair attracted not only the Cinque Ports men, but also fishermen from
the continent. The Cinque Ports had authority over the fair, through officers
they appointed, which was subsequently resisted and then contested by Yarmouth.
Another indication that Cinque Ports fishermen were likely among the founders
of the town is that rents from some Yarmouth properties were due to the Ports.
Yarmouth was a borough in the royal domain before and at the time of the Domesday
survey, but an earlier shared jurisdiction is reflected in that Yarmouth had to
pay every "third penny" of all public revenues to the earl. The number of burgesses
living there suggests that its fishery was already important by this date, although
Yarmouth was certainly a small town compared to Norwich or Ipswich, with a few
hundred residents in all.