Besides these trades connected with our fishing and shipping business, there are several others, which show that Lowestoft was much resorted to as a shopping town by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. In these trades we must observe the enormous number of tailors—no less than 39. Lowestoft tailors probably met the requirements of the inhabitants of all the Lothingland parishes, and other parishes near. Doubtless they had got a reputation for a better cut than the tailors of either Yarmouth or Beccles; or was a trade in ready-made clothes carried on here? These men, were of course, all journeymen tailors. The materials were probably supplied by some of the merchants mentioned, from Norwich or elsewhere. The persons mentioned as shoemakers, cordwainers, and cobblers (11) are comparatively few. These names represented the same trade with different pretensions. The presence of a tanner and currier implies that their was a sufficient demand for leather to maintain these two wholesale trades. The tanners may have also found employment in tanning fishing nets—as at the present day. No less than 12 weavers are mentioned; they were probably introduced from Norwich, which was at this time the principal seat of the woollen and linen manufacture in the kingdom. The clothes of some at least of our townspeople were not only made up by Lowestoft tailors, but of Lowestoft cloth and Lowestoft homespun. Other trades are mentioned connected with the supply of wearing apparel, viz.: drapers, glovers, hatters, and dyers. The building and mechanical trades are represented by the carpenters, joiners, and sawyers, the masons (bricklayers were not distinguished from masons as yet), the smiths, the plough-wrights, and the wheelwrights. These tradesmen probably all found employment among the farmers and squires in the neighbourhood as well as in the town—as also the “knackers” (or harness makers)—the tinkers—and the thatchers (“thacsters” as it was spelt). The houses both in town and country and nearly all our churches were thatched at this time, and reeds were abundant on the side of Lake Lothing. The presence in our town at this time of two such trades as the goldsmith and the pewterer is very noticeable. The goldsmith was at this time the prince of tradesmen, soon to develop into the banker of after times. His presence certainly implied the existence of several persons in the town or immediate neighbourhood of sufficient means to be the purchasers of gold and silver ornaments, while the presence of the pewterer implied that our town was up to date in the matter of table furniture, and that pewter plates and goblets had been substituted in many of our houses for the wooden trenchers and horn drinking cups of older times. {70}