Friday 15 October 2010

TIME AND TIDE MUSEUM - GREAT YARMOUTH, NORFOLK - EXCELLENT

It is well worth a visit.
This is the second time we went along.
The cafe is good but unfortunately no local beers served.
And we couldn't get the picked herrings this time.
On our first visit we enjoyed delicious local beer, now its just one multinational bottled beer on offer.
Here is a link to website but it doesn't do the museum justice.

TIME AND TIDE MUSEUM GREAT YARMOUTH

It is in several very old buildings in Blackfriar's road.
The old smoke houses are the originals and still smell of smoked herrings.
Inside them it is quite dark, and you can peer up to the roof, immagining the men straddling the spaces between the rows of wooden poles rising to the roof, one leg on each side of the wide gap.

There is a gallery where some paintings of the local circus are on display at present.
Great Yarmouth Hippodrome Circus is the only surviving total circus building in Britain,
It was built in 1903 by George Gilbert.

Hippodrome Circus, Great Yarmouth

Upstairs at Time and Tide are excellent displays of life as a seaside resort, with photos of bathing machines
Later the Mods used to come to Great Yarmouth in the 50s on the scooters.
The start of what is now the Royal National Lifeboat Instution is explained with vivid pictures of wrecks and rescues.

RLNI

There are photos of the dreadful bomb damage in Great Yarmouth and Gorleston, as this area had a huge amount of bomb hits during the Second World War.  Large parts of the old towns are rebuilt as a result.
A few of the famous 'rows' in Great Yarmouth still exist in the town. The 'rows' are from mediaeval Great Yarmouth, built within the town walls which still exist in part, and where the poor people lived.
In this museum is a good reconstruction of a 'row' of little houses and shops, separated by an narrow alley

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