AdnamsGirl

Hi I thought I'd start a thread where links to websites which feature information about Broadland's history, or have collections of old photo's of the area, could be gathered together. I wasn't sure whether this should be here or in the Historic Broads section? Anyway, I will start with a few and add some more later ... I have quite a few which I have gathered in my favourites whilst researching things! Please feel free to add any others that you know about. "George Plunketts photographs of old Norwich" has some fabulous images of the city, including the river, taken by george between the years of 1931 and 2006. http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/ "The Berney Arms web" has history and old photos of the Berney Arms Mill and area and also a detailed section on the old rail lines which ran in and out of Great Yarmouth: http://www.berneyarms.co.uk/ "Picture Norfolk" enables you to search online through the County Councils photographic archive. Just type in the names of Broadland towns and villages and away you go! There are some stunning images within this collection, some of which date back to the 19th century. http://norlink.norfolk.gov.uk/02_Catalogue/02_001_Search.aspx?searchType=97 In a smilar vein is the "Francis Frith Collection" which has many images of Norfolk and Suffolk dating back to the turn of the last century. The Frith collection contains old photographs from all over Britain, so you could serach for your hometown too. You can also purchase copies of any of the photos they have online or even get calendars made up. This link takes you straight to the Norfolk section: http://www.francisfrith.com/archive/england/norfolk/ "Norfolk Mills" has lots of photos, history and information about the mills and windpumps in Norfolk: http://www.norfolkmills.co.uk/index.html "Our Great Yarmouth" has been put together as part of the GY Museums Our Town project, and is a collection of photographs, history and memories of the town. Again, there is lots about the riverside, fishing industry etc.... http://www.ourgreatyarmouth.org.uk/index.aspx "Great Yarmouth On Film" is a growing database of past and present photographs of the town: http://www.yarmouth.things.cc/home.aspx the "Beautiful Britain" website has a nice section on the Broads with pictures and info about cruisers from the 50s and 60s and a section on Broad Ambition: http://www.beautifulbritain.co.uk/htm/norfolk_broads/norfolk_broads.htm And of course there is Dan's "F.B. Wilds" website which is devoted to Frank Wilds revolutionary Carribean cruiser and the subsequent sister classes: http://fbwilds.horning.org.uk/ I'll leave it at that for now and and some more later. Carol

Bit late I know but .... if you are bringing your dad back to the Broads, the current owners of Heronby now operate it as a B&B. So your dad could actually stay in George Formby's old house, although I am sure that it has changed a lot since his time. http://www.heronbybedandbreakfast.co.uk/index.htm Carol

Hi Whilst searching for something else today, I came across some more details about the Ferry Inn at Horning. Apparently, it was 13 years before they rebuilt the pub after the bomb damage!! Carol

P.S. .... yes, I know it's actually looking across the bridge to Hoveton! Carol

Hi This is a "The & Now" that I would love to get .... only I don't think I am likely to be able to unless I arrive at Wroxham at 6am on a sunny Sunday morning!! It was a commercial image which was used for postcards etc and I think dates from the 1930s. It illustrates one of the other difficuklties in re-creating old phtographs .... what were once much quieter streets, roads and lanes, are now extremely busy and dangerous! We had the same problem at Oulton trying to recreate a shot of Bridge street looking down towards OB North station. The road there in my 40s/50s photo was a quiet suburban street with no cars to be seen .... these days it's like the M25!! And the original picture had been taken from the middle of the road .... I did try to persuade Kev to get out there but he seemed reluctant for some reason! I think the Wroxham picture below will cause similar problems but if you think you can have a go Simon (I am NEVER likely to be up early enough to do so), then please do .... although I will be after using the results on BM too! Carol

Hi I have to say that most of the info on MTB 653 actually came from members of the NBF which I then passed on. Forums are such a great way to share infromation and try and piece together bits of history! Carol

Hi Barry You really do have some fabulous photos! It is interesting that you spotted what appeared to be the bomb damage at Horning Ferry Inn in the photo from 1946. I'm not sure when it was actually re-built after the war, but suspect it may have been a few years ... sadly for it to burn down again in 1965! Interestingly, I read that the possible reason that Horning was bombed was due to the decoy lights which had been set up at various points around Norfolk to act as decoys to protect the airfileds and military runways ... i.e. they would effectively make a "dummy" runway usung lights to make the enemy think that they had got the right target. The history of Broadland during WW2 is fascinating and, now that so many records have been released, it is something that I would like to investigate further for an article.... it's finding the time to do it! With regard to the hire fleets after the war. I have had a look back through my notes - apparently Broadland was opened up to the public again in 1943 after the threat of a German invasion faded and Wally Hoseason actually began his hire agency in 1944. I don't have any notes on the 1946 brochures but Blakes 1947 were offering a choice of 400 yachts and motor cruisers for hire from 33 boatyards ... the pre war number had been 600. Of course petrol was still rationed at this time and cruising was limited to 120 miles per week. I reply to Jonny's question about the changes at the Swan Inn at Horning. It would seem to have undergone several sets of changes during it's lifetime. It was built in 1897 during the Victorian holiday boom and I have pictures of it from 1903/04 on the website which shows that it originally had a brick facade .... the mock tudor black and white facade had appeared by the 1930s, although I haven't been able to pinpoint the exact date that happened. The major facelift that you can see in barry's photo from the early 1980s took place in 1979/80 when it recieved a £70k refurbishment. This also coincided with the arrival of Souther Comfort which had previously been operating from Wroxham. Link to a 1979 newspaper article about the changes at the Swan and Southern Comfort below: http://www.broadlandmemories.co.uk/documents/news/news_70s/79_paddleboat_horning.JPG Carol

Hi Bit late I know but .... I took a picture of the wreck at salhouse in July (hope that I've managed to upload it OK!) There have been some interesting coments on this on the BMPT forum which I have just noticed today, having not checked over there for a while. Some may remember that I was searching for information on a mystery MTB at Horning which was amongst a colection of photos from the 1950s which were sunbmitted for my website. That mystery MTB was identified as being MTB 653, and I have since learned that it was indeed at Horning and it had part of the superstructure removed to allow it to get under the bridges at Yarmouth and Acle. So that you know what I'm talking about, you can find a photo of that boat at the top of this page: http://www.broadlandmemories.co.uk/page62.html Back to the British Military Powerboat Forum ... it seems that the wreck at Salhouse is thought to possibly be the remains of MTB 653. However, as I have seen pictures of 653 dating from the 1970s it doesn't tie in with Barry's memories of the wreck being there during his childhood. So this wreck would still seem to be a mystery , but perhaps Clive (C.Ricko) can help with this? Carol

Errr ..... pass! We had a good look round in May whilst watching the 3RR as I was still puzzling about the fact that the pub main building is now much further back from the river's edge. Set quite a way back from the curent quay heading in the lawn, we discovered the remains of what appears to be the old one .... complete with a couple of mooring rings still in place. Carol

The three arched bridge in your picture was believed to have been built c1830 - it was replaced by the single span concrete bridge you can see in the postcard on the link below (third one down) in 1931. The current bridge replaced that one in 1997 after it was found to be subsiding due to the increase in heavy traffic. Whether the ghost that used to dangle from the old stone bridge got transferred with the subsequent rebuilds is unclear!! http://www.broadlandmemories.co.uk/page95.html Carol

Hey Simon .... I don't think that it was an original idea when I came up with it either so don't be too disappointed! I also thought that it would be a straightforward task of pointing and shooting when I started .... I was wrong!! As Barry has mentioned, trying to recapture those taken from a boat on the water is extremely difficult indeed, but it is a good challenge...... even if you do get strange looks as you cruise past the same building for the 20th time with your camera, just trying to get that perspective just right! P.S. You don't need to wade through the whole site ... the link above will take you straight to the Then & Now section of the archive. I've only managed to capture about 20 comparison shots so far and have been working on the project all year! Carol

Hi Many thanks for the link to Broadland Memories! For those who don't know the website, it's an archive of photographs, personal memories and history of boating and the holiday industry on the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads, from the Victorian era and the birth of the boating boom right through the decades of the 20th century. It was something which started out as a hobby as I felt that all of this fascinating, and historically important, material should be gathered in one place for people to enjoy and hopefully discover a little bit of Broadlands past from. From humble beginnings in 2006, it now seems to have taken over my life and become a full time job and is still very much an ongoing project with new additions being added on a regular basis. I hope that it will one day provide a complete social history to life and leisure on the Norfolk Broads! Along with the photo galleries, personal memories and historical overviews you can also find various other sections including Then & Now, old postcards and newspaper cuttings, advertisements and boating documents from way back, and old town and village maps showing long lost boatyards ...... just to name a few items!! For those that do know it and maybe haven't checked it out in a while, the site had a major revamp earlier in the year and, since then, has had some fascinating material added including a stunning collection of over 100 photographs of Broadland and the fishing industry at Great Yarmouth from 1903 and 1904. Now that winter is here I will be catching up with adding more items to the website, along with a few more changes I need to make to the layout, over the next few weeks and months! As ever, if anyone has anything which they would like to submit to the archive, be it old photographs, memories of holidays or life in Broadland during the 20th century, etc. etc. then I would be very happy to recieve them through the contact page on the website. Whilst I cannot guarantee to display everything I recieve, I do my best to add as much as I can to the website, but EVERYTHING that is submitted is kept and stored digitally in several formats so that it will be preserved! Thanks again! Carol

Hi Simon It's a fun project to undertake .... I've done the same thing myself for Broadland Memories as it is fascinating to see just how much Broadland has changed over the years ... or hasn't in some cases! I do the same thing, print off lots of old pictures to take out with me and try to recapture the same scene as it is now. It's not quite as straightforward as it seems at first though as it can sometimes be very difficult to get the right angles .... especially when old buildings have gone or, in the case of the Bridge Inn at Acle, appear to have moved!! That one still has me puzzled as it now seems to be much further back from the river - I can only assume that part of the river was re-claimed when they built the current road bridge. The other awkward aspect is trying to work out exactly what lens (focal length) was used on the original too as, obviously, that too can make a big difference to how the scene appears. I tend to take lots of photos of the scene, from slightly different angles and with different focal lengths, usually allowing for being able to crop in on my photo to get as near as match as possible to the original. I still then get home and find that I haven't got it quite right!! It is also surprising that I already had modern day versions of some of the old photos by accident .... or maybe not, as I guess a photogenic scene will always be that, and there are probably hundreds of identical shots in everyones photo albums! The most fascinating comparisons on my site are of a "Then, then, then & Now" where I found I had four photos of the view looking downstream from Wroxham Bridge which span 100 years. The first c1900 is at the very birth of the hire industry, it then moves on 30 years when the boom had just begun and the boatyards were springing up along the banks, thirdly on to the heyday of the 1960s and then the scene today. I think it's probably one of the areas of Broadland which has seen the most changes over the years. You can find my efforts on the link below ..... hope that it's OK to post this on here? http://www.broadlandmemories.co.uk/page8.html As I said, it's a really interesting thing to do and I look forward to seeing them! Carol