The statue of Charles I above Bank House may be older than the building supporting it. The vaults beneath the garden were discovered, forgotten, and […]
Read moreTag: John Birkbeck
Find what you’re looking for
Recent Blog Posts
- When Pigs Ruled the Streets of Medieval Lynn
- Bank House: Wine Vaults, a King, a Tollbooth, and a Bank
- A Shorter History of King’s Lynn
- Seven Dangerous Days: King’s Lynn and the Wrong Queen
- When Lynn Tried to Tax Invisible Georgian Wealth
- From Clay Holes to a Steel Whale: The Strange Survival of Harding’s Pits
- Who Would Look After Emma? A Widow’s Fight in Medieval King’s Lynn
- The Day Lynn Burned in Norway
- The Sluice King’s Lynn Wanted Destroyed
- “None Were Stiffer”: How King’s Lynn Fought Edward VI for Its Guild Lands
- Campbell’s in King’s Lynn: The Rise and Fall of the Soup Factory
- Nine Centuries Under One Roof: Inside St Margaret’s Church, King’s Lynn
- King’s Lynn’s Victorian Engineering Revival: Aickman, Savage, Dodman, and Cooper
- Margery Kempe and St Margaret’s: The Church at the Centre of Her Lynn
- The Ballroom Built to Keep Out the Town?
- The Exorcist’s House: Who Lived Beside St Nicholas’s Chapel?
- A New Road Through Old Lynn: The Creation of London Road
- When the King and Queen Visited Lynn
- When King’s Lynn Ships Sailed for Africa
- Was Herbert de Losinga Really “Herbert the Flatterer”?
- Marriott’s Warehouse: 700 Years on Lynn’s Waterfront
- Three Ways of Seeing the River: Art on King’s Lynn’s South Quay
- The Blue Death in Lynn: Cholera, Poverty, and the Streets of a Sick Town
- England’s War with the Hanse: The Treaty That Gave Lynn Its Steelyard
- The Soldiers Who Stayed: Lynn’s Ten Years as a Garrison Town, 1643–1653
- “As Long as the World Shall Endure”: Lynn’s Lost Chantries
- A Refuge on the Sands: George Holditch and the Lynn Life-Beacon
- What King John’s 1204 Charter Really Did for Lynn
- The Red Register of King’s Lynn: A Medieval Port Written on Paper
- When Lynn Went Fishing in Iceland
- Gustav Metzger in King’s Lynn: the artist who learnt destruction beside St Nicholas’ Chapel
- One Master, 230 Boys: King’s Lynn’s Lancasterian Schools
- Behind the Georgian Façade: How King’s Lynn Put a New Face on an Old Town
- Wool, Wine, and Wheat: How King’s Lynn Made Its Money
- All Saints’: King’s Lynn’s Oldest Church
- The Sailors, the Mayor, and the Battering Ram: King’s Lynn’s Strike of 1814
- How Did Herbert de Losinga Find £1,000 to Buy a Bishopric?
- The Church Lynn Took Apart: The Rise and Fall of St James’ Chapel
- Linay’s Yard: The Lost Court Behind Friarscot
- From the Purfleet to the Prison Camp: King’s Lynn and Norman Cross
- Two Witches of Lynn? Margaret Read, Mary Smith and the Evidence
- When Lynn’s Coal Measurers Cheated the King
- How Bishop’s Lynn Helped Pay for Agincourt
- When the King Took Control of King’s Lynn: The Corporation Crisis of 1684–88
- Before the Great Ouse: The Lost River of King’s Lynn
- The Bonfires of Lynn: Tracing the Town’s Reformation Purges, 1552–1568
- The Community That Vanished: The Pogrom against Lynn’s Jews in 1190
- Madam Mayor Takes the Chair: Ada Coxon and a King’s Lynn First
- The Songs Vaughan Williams Found in King’s Lynn
- King’s Lynn in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Port, Industry, and Change
- When the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 Reached Bishop’s Lynn
- The Lawns Above the Bodies: St James’ Park, King’s Lynn
- King’s Lynn in Fiction: From Stories about Margery Kempe to Murder Mysteries
- Around 48 Unemployed! When the Monks and Friars Left Lynn
- The Battle of Bouvines: The Sunday Defeat That Broke King John’s Grand Plan
- Milk, Sewage, and Cleopatra’s Needle: King’s Lynn’s Forgotten Chemist
- The Dutch Captain, the Ship-Boys, and the Scandal Lynn Tried to Contain
- Elsden’s Almshouses, Friars Street: The Gift That Had to Wait
- When War Came Out of the Sky: King’s Lynn and the Zeppelin Raid of 1915
- Two Lost Inns of the Tuesday Market Place
- The Royal Arms of St Margaret’s: A Restoration Puzzle
- Robert FitzWalter: The Baron Who Defied King John
- Tide and Seek: The Purfleet and Lost Waterways of King’s Lynn
- The Gate That Stood in the Way: A History of King’s Lynn’s East Gate
- The Merchants Who Busted Richard the Lionheart’s Sanctions in Bishop’s Lynn
- Orange, Blue, and Broken Hustings: King’s Lynn’s Election Riot of 1822
- Grain, spectacle and survival: the Corn Exchange, King’s Lynn
- More Than a Memorial: Burkitt Homes and the Tradition of Charity in King’s Lynn
- William Godwin: The Norfolk Boy Who Imagined a World Without Government
- The Hospital That Refused to Disappear: St Mary Magdalen at King’s Lynn
- Framingham’s Almshouses: the King’s Lynn charity with two founders
- Three horses and a fortune: what Lynn paid for King John’s charter
- When the Music Stopped: King’s Lynn and the Plague of 1636
- Mintlyn Church: King’s Lynn’s Lost Medieval Church Hidden in a Field
- How Did Lynn’s Samuel Gurney Cresswell Cross a Passage His Ship Never Sailed Through?
- Prostitution in King’s Lynn: From Medieval Meretrices to Paradise Lane
- The Priest, the Son, and the Scribe: Who Helped Make Margery Kempe’s Book?
- Mooring Dues and Swimming Shoes: The Secret Pool of Common Staithe
- Stalls, Shambles, and Merchant Houses: Tuesday Market Place, King’s Lynn
- When the Wick Bay Broke Her Back: The Wreck that Changed King’s Lynn
- King’s Lynn Press Gangs: Why 1755 Mattered
- Sir Benjamin Keene: the King’s Lynn diplomat who mastered the Spanish court
- “This Is My Father”: The Stolen Children of Medieval Lynn
- How Lynn’s Merchants Helped Finance Edward III and the Start of the Hundred Years’ War
- Before the Roundabout: The Forgotten River That Built South Lynn
- Bound to the Borough: Freemen and Apprentices in Old Lynn
- Diana Bullock OBE and the Saving of King’s Lynn
- The Ship Nicholas: When Edward I’s Scottish War Reached Bishop’s Lynn
- The Hanseatic League, the English Crown, and King’s Lynn: A Northern Story of Privilege, Profit, and Friction
- East Anglia and the Vikings: Settlement, Place-Names, and the Treaty with Alfred
- The Friars in Sackcloth: King’s Lynn’s Lost Medieval Order
- King’s Lynn’s Lost Shipbuilders
- “God Will Overturn You”: The Lynn Women Who Defied Parliament in 1659
- The Great Guild of Lynn: The Merchants Who Prayed, Traded, and Helped Rule the Town
- Kett’s Rebellion: Norfolk’s Summer of Alarm
- Why Elizabeth I and Charles II Look Down from King’s Lynn Town Hall
- Baptists in King’s Lynn: chapels, quarrels, and a stubborn dissenting tradition
- When Lynn Became One Town: John de Gray and the Great Exchange of 1205
- Half of Lynn? The d’Aubigny Family and a Medieval Myth
- The Highgate Giant: The Rise and Fall of Dodman’s Engineering in King’s Lynn
- St Nicholas Chapel, King’s Lynn: merchants, fishermen, and the making of a great town chapel
- Mice, Mellow Men, and Candlewives: The Strange Names of Medieval Lynn
- Murder by Mortgage: James Blomfield Rush and the Stanfield Hall Murders
- The Bells Beneath Thieves’ Bridge
- When Lynn Seized the Lord of Castle Rising and Paid Heavily
- Cabbages, Corruption, and Commerce: Bishop’s Lynn in Edward I’s Hundred Rolls
- Draining the Fens: How Water, Wealth, and Engineering Remade Eastern England
- John Aickman’s Foundry, King Street, King’s Lynn
- A Stone Boat in King’s Lynn: The Beautiful Star Disaster of 1875
- King Street: Where Medieval Lynn Met the River
- The Bishop Next Door: Gaywood’s Lost Medieval Estate
- Beer, Boots, and Ballots: How Immigrants Found a Place in Medieval Lynn
- No Fool: Robert Armin of King’s Lynn and Shakespeare’s Comedy of Wit
- Money, Mayors, and Mistrust in Bishop’s Lynn
- King’s Lynn and the Railway: How Steam Changed an Old Port
- Candles, Broken Windows, and Radical Words: John Wilkes and John Thelwall in King’s Lynn
- The Falling Stones and the Medieval Miracles
- Locked in Prayer: Anchorites and Hermits in Medieval Lynn
- Reffley Temple: The Lost Secret Society of King’s Lynn
- Books Above the Porch: King’s Lynn’s Long Library Story
- The King’s Lynn Cottages That Were Once Part of a Priory
- Robert Walpole, King’s Lynn, and the South Sea Bubble
- Richard Clampe and the Fortress of King’s Lynn
- No Empty Marsh: The Roots of King’s Lynn Before 1066
- Clifton House: King’s Lynn’s Merchant Mansion with a Twist
- From Fleece to Freight: The Long History of Trade in King’s Lynn
- Bridges at Lynn: The Carpenters Behind Edward I’s Scottish Campaign
- Architecture, Trade, and Civic Ambition: The Custom House, King’s Lynn
- The 1347 Summer when Lynn Seized the Corn
- History as Therapy: the Life and Work of Rev. William Richards of King’s Lynn
- From hidden Catholics to public processions: the story of Roman Catholics in King’s Lynn
- A New Margery Kempe for King’s Lynn’s Minster
- When King’s Lynn Went Conkers: children, chemistry, and the work of war
- The King’s Lynn Invention That Saved Time and Money
- King’s Lynn and the Wool Trade: The Port That Fed Flanders
- The Siege of King’s Lynn, 1643: Why the Town Changed Sides and Paid the Price
- Refugee in King’s Lynn Minster: Naomi Blake’s Quiet Monument
- The Lost Market Cross of King’s Lynn: Henry Bell’s Tuesday Market Missing Centrepiece
- The Crafty Strangers in King’s Lynn
- The Quiet King’s Lynn Cross with a Hard History
- The Many Lives of Little Massingham Manor
- The King Punishes Lynn
- The Listed Buildings of King’s Lynn
- Over 100 things you need to know about the Bayeux Tapestry
- The Valiant Sailor (II): A King’s Lynn House of Sailors, Brewers, an Artist, and a Doctor
- The Valiant Sailor (I): The Architectural Story of 2 Nelson Street, King’s Lynn
- King’s Lynn Shoplifter Shot Dead
- Death by Eggs: Mother Gabley and the Sailors
- Bishop Turbe and His Lies About the Jews
- King’s Lynn Architect Who Helped Shape the English Countryside
- How King’s Lynn Cleaned Up Its Act: The Town’s First Paving Laws
- Walter Dexter: King’s Lynn’s Painter of Light and Place
- From Beer to Baronets: The Bagge Family of King’s Lynn
- The Lost Friaries of Lynn: Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and More
- A Lot of Executions (Mainly Medieval)
- Sir John Oldcastle: Both Hanged and Burned
- A Medieval Guide to Dying Well
- King’s Lynn’s Town Hall Complex
- The King’s Lynn Storm of 1741
- He Came, He Saw, He Pillaged
- Valentine Walton: Cromwell’s Man Who Held King’s Lynn
- The Woman of the Bedchamber in King’s Lynn
- A Gentleman of Vision: Henry Bell and the Shaping of 17th-Century King’s Lynn
- A Political Revolution in Tudor Lynn
- Fighting The Spanish From King’s Lynn
- Sir Hamon L’Estrange: The Hunstanton Royalist Who Shaped The Fate Of King’s Lynn
- Lynn Before 1066: A Re-evaluation
- Charles Burney: The Scholar Who Learned To Like King’s Lynn
- The Lover From Norfolk And The 5 Women Left Behind
- Harriet Fox: Saved By The False Hair In King’s Lynn
- The Bishop of Norwich, the Sheep, and the Unholy War
- King’s Lynn’s Medieval Street Names
- The Drowning of Lizzie Green in King’s Lynn
- The Mesmerising Mr Clarke from King’s Lynn
- Roger From Hunstanton And His Battles For The Kings
- 1953 King’s Lynn Flood – The Bungalow and the Steam Train
- The Tragic Tale of Mary Taylor from King’s Lynn
- Spells, Suspicion, and Sentences: English Witchcraft Laws
- Hanging in Chains
- Copper Shortage In King’s Lynn
- Lynn Man’s Body Covered In Pitch
- Margaret and the Dragons of Lynn
- Capturing the King: the First Battle of Lincoln
- King’s Lynn’s Special Windmill
- Herbert de Losinga
- A Lot of Digging: Eau Brink Cut
- Horses, Pubs, and King’s Lynn Races
- The Walks, King’s Lynn: Pilgrims, Promenade, and Parkour
- The Perpetual Prison of Lynn’s White Martyrs
- Castle Rising Castle
- Three Women And A Castle
- The Fight And The King’s Lynn Treasure: St Nicholas’
- Yes, Minster
- Fanny, The King’s Lynn Bench, And A Place In The London Corner
- The Man, The Galloper, And The Ice Cream Cone
- The Wars of the Roses: A Summary and Study Guide
- Distant Ideas In Lynn Part Two: Thomas Thoresby
- Distant Ideas In Lynn Part One: William Sawtry
- John Brandon – Was he, or wasn’t he?
- Pirates Threaten Lynn
- The Wicked Farmer And Other Errors
- John Wesley: Reluctant Revolutionary Enriches Lynn
- The Civilian Cost of French Liberation
- Thomas Of Lynn
- King’s Lynn’s Charters
- The Lynn Man, The Pub, and The Ruptured Spleen
- Saving the King: the Second Battle of Lincoln
- The Alleged Witches Of Lynn
- Did the King’s Lynn Sailor Witness Cannibalism?
- The Cry, The Murder, Lynn And The Bard
- The Princess, The Folly, And The Train
- The Poor Person’s Anglican Church: St John’s
- South Gate, King’s Lynn
- The Angels Of King’s Lynn
- The Man Who Opened Books In Lynn
- Sea Salt and Sin – The Beginning of King’s Lynn
- The Leaning Tower of Lynn
- St George’s Guildhall, King’s Lynn
- King’s Lynn Teacher Hanged
- Made From Whales in King’s Lynn
- The Red Mount Chapel In King’s Lynn
- Why Is King’s Lynn Called “King’s Lynn”?
- King’s Killers in King’s Lynn
- John Capgrave
- Lynn Man Gets Away With Two Murders
- Lynn Man Buys An Alibi
- Lynn Mayor Cheats Customs For Years
- Castle Rising: National Figures
- The Hanging and the Two Survivors
- The Jews of King’s Lynn
- King’s Lynn’s Compass
- Lynn Lost A Chantry
- King’s Lynn’s Contradictory Window
- Through Lynn to Walsingham
- Margery Kempe’s Horses and Cries
- Hostage Taking in Lynn
- St James’: The Clock That Killed
- Lynn Priest Makes National History
- The Road to the 1688 Revolution: James, Duke of York
- The Custom House That Originally Wasn’t
- Lynn MP’s Netflix Conversation
- Some King Street Secrets
- The House, The Bank, And The Arctic Ice
- Mansion in Queen Street, King’s Lynn
- Executions in King’s Lynn
- George Vancouver: The Overshadowed Achiever
- Time for Edith and Thomas
- Napoleon’s Soldiers in King’s Lynn
- Sir Benjamin Keene
- The Biscuits and the Cannon Ball
- King’s Lynn’s Half Fathoms
- Big Changes to the River and to the Town of Lynn
- King John Had At Least Three Very Cunning Plans
- The Languages Left Behind in Place-Names
- Castle Rising’s She-Wolf Revisited (1 of 2)
- Castle Rising’s She-Wolf Revisited (2 of 2)
- The Riot when Bishop Henry Despenser came to Lynn
- Hanseatic League and King’s Lynn (3 of 3)
- Hanseatic League and King’s Lynn (2 of 3)
- Hanseatic League and King’s Lynn (1 of 3)
- Three Peoples on the Road
- The Siege of King’s Lynn 1643 (4) – Afterwards
- The Siege of King’s Lynn 1643 (3) – Ending
- The Siege of King’s Lynn 1643 (2) – Grenadoes
- The Siege of King’s Lynn 1643 (1) – Which Side?
- The Sinner and the Dragon: St Margaret’s, King’s Lynn