If you had lived in Southwold a thousand years ago, you’d have eaten herring nearly every day, fresh when they were in season, salted at other times of the year. For centuries, shoals of these plentiful silvery fish meant food and wealth for the town. But the story of fishing hasn’t always been plain sailing.

Rich boat-owners, fishermen and merchants paid to build St Edmund’s Church in the 1400s. The industry was still buoyant in the 1600s, with a fleet of fifty boats sailing from Southwold for herring, cod and sprats. Soon afterwards, however, the harbour mouth silted up, putting the industry into decline.

The risk of storms, pirate attack and shipwreck had always been a reality for fishermen. As harbour conditions worsened in the 1800s, poor fishing families had to live on the beach in flimsy wooden huts. An early-1900s industry revival was halted by two World Wars – and Southwold’s fishing prosperity has never returned.