Oulton Broad

Lock Gates and Park Life

Mutford Lock has two sets of gates, one facing each way, because the water on either side of it runs to different tides. West of the gates lies Oulton Broad, fresh; east lies Lake Lothing, salt, draining out through Lowestoft harbour to the North Sea. The lock has been keeping the two apart since the navigation works of 1827–28, when William Cubitt joined Lowestoft to Norwich. Stand on the bridge beside it and you are at the southernmost open water in the whole Broads system.

The waterfront runs along Bridge Road, which is the commercial spine of the place: shops, pubs and marinas on the eastern and northern shores, and behind them Nicholas Everitt Park. Howard Hollingsworth gave the park to Lowestoft in 1929 and named it for a friend, Nicholas Everitt, a solicitor who wrote about his experiences as a British secret-service agent in the First World War. It has a Victorian bandstand, tennis courts, a bowling green, a boating lake, trampolines and toilets with baby-changing. In summer the Broad is used for yacht racing and powerboat racing, a tradition that goes back to an inaugural steam-launch race during Regatta Week in August 1903.

Museum and Waterfront Dining

Broad House, the eighteenth-century flint-and-brick house at the park's edge, is now Lowestoft Museum. It is especially strong on eighteenth-century Lowestoft porcelain, and takes in fossils, the early humans found at Pakefield, Roman and Anglo-Saxon finds and the town's fishing and naval past. Queen Elizabeth II opened it on 1 August 1985.

For food, the Wherry Hotel is the obvious landmark, a large Victorian pile above the water. The present building went up in 1899 as Broads boating holidays took off, and there is a daily carvery, with dishes such as roast turkey, roast pork, honey-glazed gammon, roast topside of beef and a nut roast, followed by puddings such as Biscoff cheesecake, lemon meringue or Trillionaires tart. Guest moorings are available. The Commodore, run by Moss & Co, has an upstairs dining room, a terrace bar and its own moorings; dogs are welcome in the garden on a lead. Its licensee around 1879 was Mary Ann Stebbings, and in 1880 the pub was granted an extra hour's drinking for the Oulton Regatta.

Pubs, Music and Local Produce

The Lady of the Lake is a single-bar, family-run pub with music, DJs and quizzes in a room to the side; it was once simply The Lake, and Robert Kemp, landlord here by 1844, doubled as a harness maker. The Flying Dutchman, opposite Oulton Broad South station, leans on sport and live music, and the Waveney is a wet-led community pub with two pool tables and a monthly open-mic night. On Bridge Road, Tillo's Deli — opened by Tara and James at Shed 1, number 111 — sells local produce, coffee and a weekly-changing run of sandwiches, tarts, bakes and pies to eat in or take away. A gift shop has traded on the waterside for more than seventy years.

Carlton Marshes and St Mark's

Walk south-west, about twenty minutes from the South station, and the built-up shore opens into Carlton Marshes: a thousand acres of grazing marsh, fen and reedbed, with a visitor centre and café and twenty-eight recorded species of dragonfly. St Mark's, built in 1884 and seating four hundred by 1912, stands a short walk from both the water and the Angles Way.

George Borrow, Railways and Banksy

George Borrow moved here in 1840 and campaigned against the railway, which he was sure would spoil the quiet. His cottage has gone, but the thatched summerhouse where he wrote survives at Lavengro. Two stations now serve the village, north and south, and the trains still run past what he tried to keep out. On the bridge over the water is a Banksy from his 2021 spraycation: "We're all in the same boat."