Our historical guide to Inverness is now available for exploring on Google Maps. Over 90 historical landmarks and sites are provided for your education and entertainment.
Visit our website, autotrails.net, for this free guide and many others.
Explore the historical sites and landmarks of the city of Great Yarmouth using our guide in Google Maps. Over 50 historical points of interest are identified with text providing background information. This a link to the guide is available on our Auto Trails website.
Site of Walrond Memorial Smack Boys’ Home (16 Southgates Road, Great Yarmouth)
The Smack Boys’ Home and Fishermen’s Institute, on the Ballast quay, was erected in 1875, the chief object of which was to provide proper accommodation when ashore for the neglected class of smack boys. These boys served on fishing vessels that had a well to preserve the catch. These vessels were called smacks.
The buildings were of a Gothic character, freely treated, and contained office, dining room, reading-room, large room for meetings, dormitories on the separate bunk system, rooms for the manager and the necessary offices. The following is from an article The Sunday Magazine, published in 1879:
“On the groundfloor I find two good-sized rooms, in the larger of which some smack boys, looking very much at home, are chatting or playing at bagatelle. Above this is a fishermen’s reading-room, and on the same floor a small dormitory with five beds, the gift of the “Waterside Mission,” or rather of some ladies connected with it. At the top of the house, running the whole length of the building, is the large sleeping place, divided into little cabins, with a bed and locker in each, and there is another set of beds resting on the wooden ceilings of these “cubicles,” as they are called. These strike one at first sight as making the room unnecessarily close; but I suppose from their name they contain the right amount of cubic air, and fish-boys’ ordinary sea-quarters are the reverse of lofty. At any rate, the smack boys well appreciate the advantages of their Home, as, in the two years it has been open, three hundred and nineteen lads have lodged here. Seventy is about the number of the regular inmates.”
It stood from 1875 until 18 February 1941 when it received a direct hit and was destroyed in a Luftwaffe bombing raid which took place between the hours of 0300 and 0544. That same night shrapnel from a German High Explosive bomb punctured and ignited the Gas Holder on Admiralty Road, which lit up the skies. Until the Civil Defence and Fire Brigade cooled down and extinguished the blaze it was a marker for the other German bombers. Twenty-eight High Explosive bombs and 100 Incendiary Bombs hit Great Yarmouth that night, 6 falling on the Quayside, 1 hitting and destroying this building.[i]
Vintage advertisement on wall of building across from site.
[i] epw001876 ENGLAND (1920), South Quay, Great Yarmouth, 1920 (www.britainfromabove.org.uk)
Links to Google Map and Companion Text
Historical Cities-Dublin, Ireland provides information about the historic sites and landmarks within the city centre of Dublin and in the surrounding vicinity. It is not our desire to dramatize the history or expand on it in any way. We believe that the character and culture of the city can speak for itself. The guide has been created, not for just travelers new to the city, but for current residents who may not realize what lies just around the corner in their own neighborhood. This is not intended to be an exhaustive guide to all sites, as the individual traveler will find their own historical treasures amongst the landmarks we present.
On 7/25/2012, we launched the first in our A London Nobody Knows series. Volume 1 explores 170 historical sites and landmarks throughout the city of London, including Kensington, Knightsbridge, Chelsea, Southwark, Highgate, and the Docklands. Future volumes will include additional sites, and we are considering creating guides for other UK cities and districts. Most of the historic sites listed are outside those typically carried in the tourist guides, encouraging the user to explore the city in greater detail with greater rewards.
Included in the guide are reference maps locating each site, as well as GPS coordinates for the more technically savvy.
Guide is currently available for the Amazon Kindle at $2.99 and will be available soon in the iBookstore and for the Barnes & Noble Nook.
The Britain Nobody Knows 