Great Yarmouth Archaeological Map

What is the Great Yarmouth Archaeological Map?

The Great Yarmouth Archaeological Map is a series of maps of the archaeology of the Great Yarmouth area, from prehistory to the present day. The map also contains a deposit model - a 3D representation of the historic town centre built up from past excavations and boreholes. The completed map will also be available through Great Yarmouth Museums.

The Great Yarmouth Archaeological Map has two purposes:

• to bring all the information about Great Yarmouth into one place, to demonstrate the value of the town to the region's and the nation's heritage;
• to help draft Supplementary Planning Guidance for the town, so that development does not damage Yarmouth's archaeology unnecessarily and, more importantly, so that development is not impeded or slowed by archaeology.

Why Great Yarmouth?

There have been people living in Great Yarmouth for over a thousand years. Until 1800, almost all of that settlement has been inside the town walls. This means that the town centre has had 1000 years of uninterrupted occupation, leading to over 4m (13 feet) of archaeological deposits in some areas. Unlike historic cities like York and London, there have been very few archaeological investigations within the town, so the true extent and depth of deposits is not known. Great Yarmouth had an unusual street plan: the Rows. The Rows were a series of very narrow streets running from the Market Place to the River Yare (and the River Bure, in the North end of the town). No one knows when or why this street plan developed, but we know it existed by the time the walls were built, and lasted until the Second World War. No other town in Britain has a street plan like it.

Click on the links above to read about how we are compiling the maps of the archaeology of Great Yarmouth.

The project is funded by European Union Objective 2 funding, English Heritage and Norfolk County Council.

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