It is interesting to notice that Manship, who wrote in the year 1619, opined a very different reason for the circumscribed limits of the Rows. When contemplating them patriotically, he prognosticated, with glowing satisfaction, the bad half-hour that awaited any rash invader, who might incontinently venture to approach them, feeling assured the brave and hardy inhabitants “of those seven score passes” would render a good account of themselves on any such occasion. { 4} But we must quote his own words. He says: “The number of them (‘the Rows’) at this day be 140; whereby every householder to his private dwelling hath of all necessaries very convenient conveyance, and the same in time of hostility, for the defence and safeguard of the town, is very meet and necessary, for one man against twenty, with shot and powder, is able to make resistance.” Continuing the subject, he says: “These buildings, although dissevered and disjoined each from the other by Rowes or Lanes, the same being in number, as I have before declared, one hundred and forty, yet is there not any more division in comeliness, to be by the eye discovered, amongst them, than unpleasantness to the ear in music, consisting of many discords which do make a perfect concord. The streets being contrived and built in such warlike manner, flankerwise, with such convenient distance from the walls (fortifications) aforesaid, that the enemy having gained the walls, and entered the town (both which God forbid), may with few men, be enforced to retire, and the town recovered without any great danger sustained.”
It seems the most reasonable supposition that the Rows were constructed as we see them, in order that as large a population as possible might be concentrated within the narrowest limits, to make the work of fortifying the town as easy a matter as possible, and give, at the same time, greater security to the whole.
[Picture: A Yarmouth Row] The following imaginative idea may be taken for what it is worth, namely, that the ground plan of the Streets and Rows were suggested by the fishermen’s nets, when spread out in long lines upon the Denes for drying, a narrow pathway being left between the nets of each fisherman, the pathways representing the Rows.