Postcard of Row 116, Great Yamouth
Great Yarmouth Museums
Kittiwitches Row
Great Yarmouth Museums
Photographs and information about Great Yarmouth Rows
By Richard Dade
Nobody knows for certain how or why the Rows originated as a distinctive town layout system, perhaps unique to Great Yarmouth. They appear to go back to the 11th century, when the sandbanks at the mouth on the River Yare were first settled as a recognisable community of fishermen.
The Rows were identified by traditional names, though they were not numbered until 1804, when there were 145. Row names were often taken from notable residents, such as Bayley's Row (no. 97) from Joseph Bayley, a surgeon, or Harnmer's Row (no. 80) from Robert Harnmer, bailiff, or Peacock's Row (no. 142) from a public house of that name. Inevitably, names tended to change, leading to some confusion.
Perhaps the best known was Kittiwitches Row (no. 95) which was also the narrowest, being just 30 ins. (0.9 m.) at its western end. This may originally have gained its name from Kit Witchingham, a 17th century baker who lived here, though there are many other theories about witches and strange happenings in this row. A line of jettied Tudor houses overhung the south side, which, combined with its extreme narrowness, made it always a gloomy place.
So what was a Row like, and what were the conditions in these homes? Almost by definition, the Rows were extremely narrow, mostly too narrow for a normal horse cart to pass down. (The solution to this was the 'Trollcart', which was specially constructed to be narrow enough to pass through most of the rows, and after which the 'Trollcart' Public House has been named.) Most Rows were paved with beach pebbles, which made them hard to walk on. A few were paved with flagstones and carts were banned from these to make them safer for pedestrians.
Moves to clear the worst of the Rows began in 1936, but had made little progress by the outbreak of war in 1939. In the end it was German bombing raids, notably in 1941, which did much of the work, destroying or damaging beyond repair large areas of the old town. In the 1950s, local planners continued where the Luftwaffe had left off, and most of the remaining buildings were cleared to make way for new housing and shopping developments. The destruction of the Rows - however desirable on health grounds - met with some resistance at the time from many residents.