Great Yarmouth High Street Heritage Action Zone
The Great Yarmouth High Street Heritage Action Zone will create an enhanced environment and the preservation of heritage assets on the Market Place and King Street.
It will enable a deeper understanding of the area’s heritage amongst the local community and will foster training and skills development. Supporting the creative use of vacant spaces it will stimulate residential living and create a lively mix of leisure, culture, heritage and retail opportunities.
The historic centre of Great Yarmouth blends a unique and largely-intact medieval street plan laid out in the 12th century (the ‘Rows’, a series of narrow passageways providing pedestrian routes towards the Quay) with the ancient Market Place and 18th, 19th and early 20th century structures bounded by medieval town walls.
Underpinning all local regeneration activity is a legacy of severe deprivation, economic need and extraordinary heritage merit. Despite its rich architectural and historical context, Great Yarmouth shares a number of challenges with other relatively remote seaside towns including connectivity and isolation, the quality of housing stock, population seasonality, transience and demographics and the availability and accessibility of funding.
Reclaiming, repairing and enhancing and reusing the existing high-quality built environment is the foundation of the High Street Heritage Action Zone. The reuse of vacant buildings and upper floors will be a priority, meeting the need for residential capacity to enliven and animate the area, drive footfall and rebalance the mix of residential and commercial use. The introduction of residential units will underpin the establishment of a community living and working within the street. The repair and restoration of heritage assets such as No.6 Market Place, No.145 King Street and landmarks such as the railings at St Nicholas Priory School will enhance the historic environment setting.
The High Street Heritage Action Zone outlined on a street plan of Great Yarmouth
Stay up to date
Below you can find just some of the progress being made in the Great Yarmouth High Street Heritage Action Zone. For more, follow us on Twitter @HistoricEngland and on Great Yarmouth Borough Council’s website
- Scaffolding is in place ahead of work to consolidate the Market Place’s section of town wall between St Mary’s Tower and St Nicholas Road. Great Yarmouth’s mile-long medieval town wall still has 11 out of 16 towers surviving.
- Work has begun on repairing the wrought iron posts, gates and railings surrounding St Nicholas School. While most can be repaired, some of the wrought ironwork will need to be re-made completely.
- Building owners and occupiers in Great Yarmouth’s historic heart are invited to apply for grant schemes for historic shopfront improvements and historic building repairs as part of a £1.9 million heritage programme to help revitalise the town centre.
- Ghost signs: Time and Tide Museum and Great Yarmouth Borough Council have paired up to create a walking trail to introduce residents and visitors to some of the tremendous ’ghost signs’ in the town centre. The project will highlight the historical advertising/and signs on buildings in the town, resulting in a PDF residents and visitors can use to explore them.
- Archaeology dig: Great Yarmouth Borough Council is partnering with Cotswold Archaeology to create the ‘Uncovering Yarmouth’ project, which will see them investigating the history of the Great Yarmouth Minster churchyard and around the Market Place.
