Memories of Geldeston

The lock at Geldeston is a unique spot, steeped in history. Records show it was in operation as early as 1670, a key stopping point along the River Waveney, back in the days when rivers, not roads were used to transport goods from the coast inland. Cargo continued to pass through here for more than 250 years, until the lock closed in 1934.

Henry Gowman

“The wherries are remarkably different for instance from the narrowboats for which we’re most used to seeing in craft-using locks, much wider for a start, much deeper draught, and somewhat shaped differently as well. Very expensive business making a lock, and also huge volume of water used either to empty or to fill. So the most economical way of doing it was to get two craft in at once so you keep the passage of the craft going for one thing, to stop those piratical perishers from shoving their way through when they get impatient, but also the volume of water be the same but you get two craft through”

Arthur Jeremy (father maintained lock)

“My father came in 1912 and he was a maltster, and the wherries used to come down twice a week, probably once a week, full of barley or malt, and in 1920 it was Watney Cole and Reed then, and they bought it, and they had the rights for the wherries to come down and they used to repair the locks and the little things, and in the summertime, they used to finish marking about…May I think it was, until September, and he used to do all the odd jobs, and if there was anything want mending he used to mend it. You see the lock’s all wood, so if one of the [?] was a bit rotten he’d cut that out and put a new piece in. So that held back the water, that was the main reason, that it held the water back.

John Crowfoot

“Strictly speaking, this is ship Meadowlark. And so in Geldeston we became an industrial village, at its peak I think seven maltings, and a brewery which supplied thirty pubs up and down the valley, up to Southwold, including some in Norwich, the nine bells…and great stores for coal and for salt.

Henry Gowman

“She was originally built in 1898, for a maltster and general dealer based at Bungay. So she would have been up and down there quite a lot, carrying barley and wheat one way and probably barrels of beer and the like the other way, and spent hops as well, taking them to farmers fields to build manure heaps and the like”

Arthur Jeremy

"At the back it had a little cubby hole with a stove in, with two bunks. And if they got becalmed or anything, they did what they call quants, and walk down the side and push that along."

Christ Groves, Former Rivers Manager, Great Yarmouth Port and Haven Commissioners

"Wherrymen wanted to push on the whole time because they got paid by the trip not by the hour, and so if they were sailing up here what they should have done was lower sail in good time and come into the lock slowly. But if there was a high tide so they water was nearly levelled off, they would keep sailing, come in quite fast, and the boat would push the gates open against if not too much headwater, and of course that could cause damage. And in order to prevent them from doing that, in time a beam was put across the lock, both at the bottom and top to prevent that. But that of course was a nuisance to the wherrymen, because it meant that they had to lower, not just the sail but the mast as well. The contruction of the lock, the side’s a curve. Now, that doesn’t make more room for the wherries, because they’re restricted by the width of the entrance gates. But those curved sides are for strength. It’s rather like an arch brigdge rather than a flat-top bridge, in the same way this, or corrugated iron is more rigid: it won’t bend in one direction. Most locks throughout the country have straight sides, and they need to have very strong costruction to hold the sides back"

Douglas Money, Grandson of lock keeper

“My grandfather was the lockskeeper. He was huge, he was about 6’4-5, and he weighed close on 18st. Granny had 18 children. He used to amuse us children, by getting two garden spades, and we would stand on it and he’d lift the three of us right in front of you."

Henry Gowman

“Well, the stories are legion of course, of wherrymen drinking and their having a jolly good time, and all the pubs…I mean there were far more pubs around then than they are now of course.

Douglas Money

“That were a small pub as such, that weren’t a proper pub, drink was served which was very mild beer, on the sitting room table, and there’s barrels of beer in the back brewing, and when the wherrymen stopped here they’d go in the back and have a few beers…”

Henry Gowman

“Wherrymen worked hard and tend to play hard as well. So lots of talks of fights over some kind of incident that happened on the way up the river, or somebody pinched somebody’s water or that kind of thing, lots of rivalry…so they were hard men, but their women were fairly doughty as well, quite a few tales of the wherryman being so sloshed that he couldn’t control his boat, and the woman would take him back on board and take charge of the boat and sail it off herself.

Colin Smith (Publican, Locks Inn)

Well as I understand it, the lock came first as a private navigation, this building was a lock-keeper’s cottage, it was taking tolls, it was a natural bottleneck on the river, it was a natural progression to start selling refreshments to people. I think in the 1720s it was granted a public house license, in the old style where a house was licensed to sell to the public. So we’re talking nearly 300 years, the history of the pub. I still get people coming in saying, did you know Susan Ellis, I remember Susan Ellis. She was a particular character just because of the longevity of her stay. And what I will say is that I must take my hat off to the old girl, because to survive the winter down here, as she did, with a gas lamp and an open fire, when I’ve got the benefits of electricty, gas, diesel heating: she must have been a tough old bird indeed.

Christine Bromley (daughter of publican Walter Coe)

Gosh, well, Susan, the stories she had…one night, she said, she had a knock on the door and it was the policeman, to say there was a van floating on the river with a little dog on. And Susan, in her way, said, well I didn’t know what they were talking about, and so I went into the wood later that night, and there was two bodies laying, and the police had left the two bodies in the wood, she said, which was perfectly true. And she was a tough cookie. She has previously been a housekeeper to a previous landlord, whom she always referred to as ‘Grumpy’, we never knew what his real name was, but Susan managed in her own way, and she had strict rules: when you bought a round of drinks, you didn’t pay for them; she kept your score til the end of the evening, and then added it up. And I remember that evening, when it was getting dark, she came in with two candles, and said we’d better have some power on, and then at closing time she came in, clapped her hands, said ‘Amen’, and that was it, everyone’s score was added up, we went away quietly, no arguing.

Linda Gapp (family owned Dunborough Farm)

She was an Irish lady, and she was very…to herself. And if the pub flooded, well, the police came down once to get her out, and she wouldn’t go. She said, I haven’t put my red blanket out, I’m not ready to leave. And she wouldn’t. And people used to bring her water and everything down here.

Charles Thacker (grew up in Geldeston)

My father worked on a farm in Geldeston. And when dinnertime come, the horseman said: should we go in Locks and have a pint? So they did. And in them days, there was no electricity and the only light down in the cellar would be a candle. If you wanted a pint, you had to take the glass and go down the steps, and then draw the pint and bring it back up the stairs, which is what they did. And Jolly (?), he was the horseman, he was a great beer drinker, and he could tip up a pint and it would run straight down. And he did this with his pint and he had something in his mouth when he finished. And so he rolled it round his moth a couple of times and spit it out on the floor, and it was a great big slug.

Christine Bromley

But there was no bar in here. She used to go out the back and get whatever was needed. I don’t know of any other pub that’s like it. But we used to do swimming and everything down here.

Charles Thacker

One woman who used to come down here with her two sons when I were quite young, she thought she would teach them to swim. She stood in the river with the water up to her chest, and she had the most enormous chest. And my youngest brother, he learnt to swim when he were about four, but she thought he could make it across, and he realised he wasn’t going to make it. So he made a grab at her, and he grabbed her most prominent part, or one of them. And she was absolutely livid. And so she grabbed hold of him, and slapped him, and threw him out on the bank. And he was crying, and there were several of us boys there and we thought, well we’re not going to put up with that, so we made some mud-balls and we mud-balled her. So she looked even less attractive after that than she did before. So for some funny reason I never saw her come there again.

Colin Smith

It’s not a community pub, in terms of you know, an estate corner where everybody goes, but here everybody from all walks of life uses the pub, it’s a scattered diverse rural community. But whether they pop in for a pint, show it off to visitors, have a family birthday, this is the venue they come to. You have to remember, it’s only in the last thirty years, as I understand it, there's been some sort of track down to the pub, and people either had to walk some way across the marshes across footpaths, or arrive by the river.

Douglas Sayer (Geldeston resident)

Wee Grumpy had the old motorcar which I got towed, and the breweries never delivered. He used to go down to the railway station and collect the beer, and bring it up himself: the brewers would never come down here, not in those days, they woudn’t send a lorry down here because the road was terrible. And also the road used to flood with every tide. It’s been built up now, but you’d have about a foot of water to go through. He used to go down and get the beer in the back of his car.

Henry Gowman

The area around Geldeston would flood a lot, particularly. On the Broads, after the heavy rain, the water’s trying to get away, and if you get an Easterly wind, that’s holding the water back. And particularly up in the higher reaches of the rivers you get floods. And at Gelderston there would deep enough around the lock for the wherrymen to think, "Ey oop, we can make some time here". And they would miss the lock out altogether and sail across the fields. Quite a remarkable sight, I must have thought.

John Crowfoot

You need to regulate the water if you’re moving big, cargo-carrying boats up and down. You also need to regulate it if you don’t want it to be flooded. And neither Barsham nor Geldeston wanted to be flooded, but they were quite happy to push the water the others’ way. So they built a mill which never ground corn or anything like that; its purpose was just to try and maintain the level of the water. I think throughout the Broads there are quite a lot of these drainiage mills, which are used to maintain the level of the water.

Douglas Sayer

There was a brick pillar, with a stone inlaid in it which said, that this is the site of the old mill. And that was on the little footpath that goes along beside the river there. And when you look at it, I could never make out, it must have been much wider because how you got a wherry, which would have been fifty yard long, through the lock, and then sharp round to the right and round that little bendy bit.

Chris Grove (former Rivers Manager)

The flood channel, that was put in the 1960s, I think about 1965… if the navigation is ever restored, this lock will not be used, as they would go straight up the flood relief channel, but the water won’t be held up, so at low tide some boats won’t be able to get to Ellingham, they’ll have to wait. I was an officer of the River Commission, I got home one day and my wife pointed out an advert in the Eastern Daily Press, that this property was going to be sold by auction, and I thought oh my gosh, if that gets into private hands we’ll lose the moorings. So I put it to the commissioners that they should try to buy it. I said you’ll think I’m mad but at any rate they agreed, we should try to, and they had a limited auction, and I think it was £14,000, went to the auction and they got it for just less than that. But the underbidder, who would otherwise have bought it, was going to use it as a weekend cottage. And that would have been the end of it, both as a moorings and as a public house.

Well then Walter came on the scene, approached the commissioners, could he run it as a pub for the rest of the summer? So the commissioners agreed to that, and he was given, not a lease but a license to run it for the rest of that summer. And then at the end of that summer they had to decide what they were going to do, so the commission decided to sell it and they sold it to Walter. So he bought it and he kept it going as a pub.

Christine Bromley

When my father bought it was just like a house in the desert. There was no refuse collection, no water, no electricity…I know there still isn’t electricity. But then we had a bore put down, and we had to take water to Cambridge to have it analyzed. But yes, both my sister and I worked there, and it was very much run within the family, and because of the flooding, you see, you were restricted on access to get down there. My father would always watch about the winds and the tides, don’t ask me which what where, but we’d be told, right, and we’d try to get as much upstairs as we could, but obviously not living there it wasn’t so bad for us because there was a lot of space to stash everything upstairs. And you really just had to wait and watch for it to start coming in. And then wait for it to go down, and then all hands on deck to scrub out the silt and filthy dirty river water that was left behind.

Charles Thacker

well we used to go on the marshes skating, when that froze, and that did used to freeze quite hard, they’d flood and then the ice would get quite thick on top. And then the water would drain away underneath and then the ice would settle down on the land. So that was perfectly safe to skate on, the only thing about it was that it would crack to its own level. So you had ups and downs on skating. I don’t know where else on skating you have ups and downs in it, but you did there. And we used to do that on moonlit nights, we used to go down there and we thought that was wonderful.

Linda Gapp

We were married at Geldeston Church, and we had the reception in the village hall, and then we parked a boat down here and went on a boat to Beckles, where we’d hid the car up. And people tried to chase us but my father got on the bridge, with his grandfather who was well in his eighties to block the road, so…and a friend of ours tried to jump the haycock but didn’t succeed, damaged his car instead.

John Crowfoot

In Geldeston, there have been two occasions where it has been like somebody has pulled the plug and the whole of that canal has gone dry. Extraordinary. When there’s water up in the river, and the canal goes dry.

Douglas Sayer

Well I think that’s a marvelous area, absolutely. I mean, if you look anywhere across here, this landscape has hardly changed since the 18th century. This is more or less like Constable country, if you think of it. Just marshes and trees and little woods, and it’s very very unspoiled. The Locks is a beautiful place, a lovely setting, it is unique in every shape and way.

Colin Smith

Every single day, there’s a point where I stop and think, what a beautiful site. And I really mean that.