Monument record SUF 092 - Norwich And Lowestoft Navigation

Taken from NRHE Record:
The Yare has carried traffic since Roman times, but no improvements were made to the river until the 19th century. Under an Act of 1698, duties on coal had been charged at Yarmouth for the maintenance of the haven there, but because of the shallowness of Breydon Water, cargo for Norwich had to be transhipped. Norwich wanted to be a port for sea-going vessels and the Norfolk engineer William Cubitt proposed an outlet at Lowestoft, via a canal from Reedham on the Yare to Haddiscoe on the Waveney, and from the Waveney a navigation via Oulton Dyke, Oulton Board and Lake Lothing to Lowestoft. In 1827 an Act for the navigation was passed and work commenced, all the money coming from the Exchequer Bill Loan Commissioners. Harbour works at Lowestoft were completed in 1832, and the Reedham-Haddiscoe Canal (the New Cut, was opened in 1833. Norwich was now open to sea-going vessels but no docks were ever built. The navigation was a failure because the entrance lock at Lowestoft was constantly blocked by sand and the harbour works undermined. The Exchequer Bill Loan could not be repaid so the Government forced the sale of Lowestoft harbour in 1842. In 1844 this came into the hands of Samuel Morton Peto, the railway contractor. The following year the Eastern Counties Railway bought both the harbour and the navigation and developed Lowestoft as a railway-fed port. Although Lowestoft flourished, the navigation did not because in the 1840s the Yarmouth authorities dredged the Breydon channel so that sea-going ships could use the Yare up to Norwich as they still do. The New Cut, which sees less commercial traffic, has remained open as has the rest of the navigation to Lowestoft, nine miles form Haddiscoe via the Waveney to the port, with one lock at Mutford Bridge. The Yare has no locks in its navigation from Yarmouth to Norwich, where navigation ends on the Wensum, about 2.75 miles above the confluence of the Wensum and the Yare.