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ABOUT NRHG TROWSE TRIANGLE NATURAL HERITAGE HISTORY GEOGRAPHY INDUSTRY FOR SCHOOLS NEWS 
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Livelihood and leisure on the river People have worked and played, on and alongside the Norwich rivers for centuries. The characters associated with this river life have been hard-working, energetic, sometimes eccentric, always worth knowing. The Norwich Rivers Heritage Group is collecting reminiscences and images from people whose lives have been bound up with the rivers, to make a community archive. Here is one story, from an interview with the late John Wiggins, who died in 2003.
A skipper on the Yare I came up to Norwich with many, many different cargoes: coal for the power station, fertilizer up to Riverside quay, mustard seed up to Colmans, scrap from ABC Wharf and several cargoes of grain from Reads Flour Mill, both in and out. |
I actually on one occasion brought a cargo of china clay up to Norwich. It was in bags not in bulk.
That's a very slippery cargo, very slippery underfoot. We used to say it was like walking on a bucket of herring.
It's 30 miles from Yarmouth to Norwich, or thereabouts, and in those days we could only make passage in the hours of daylight, because there are several bridges and ferries to negotiate on the way up, and there was no lighted buoyage on the river. And so it wouldn't be uncommon to see us tied up at the Woods End at Bramerton, which was where we would put ropes round a couple of trees and spend the night at the pub.'
Click to view larger pictures.
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