GRIT FEST

Come rain or shine, GritFest will fill Sparrows Nest Gardens with free family activities on Sunday 27 May from 10.30am – 4pm.

The day gets off to a cracking start with a Grand Opening by BBC Broadcaster and Lowestoft local Zeb Soanes with his News from The Grit at 11am from the Bandstand. Followed by Dance East with the Scotch Fisher Girls and a dance for all ages to join in at 11.30am. The afternoon Bandstand programme sees a musical bent with The Rogue Shanty Buoys and their songs of the sea, followed by classic rustic humour from Andrew Stannard’s Singing Postman. The Seagull Strummers, Pakefield’s ukelele pluckers will give a salty set before Dean Parkin’s Nitty Gritty at 2.30pm. The Bandstand programme rounds up at 3pm with a grand finale from The Austin Beats reliving the 60’s heydays of the Dockside Dandies. 

There’s loads more besides – with demonstrations from Waveney Valley Smokehouse on kippers and bloaters, the International Boatbuilding Training College and Excelsior Trust on the vessels so important to the people who lived in the fishing village, Face Painting, Grit Knit and Quilt (women, men and children all knew how to do this), a chance to print your own Grit postcard with Paper-works* and see The Grit book illustrator Paula White in action. 

GRITFEST

The Studio Theatre will be screening a series of Grit TV films, with archive material and stories from Lowestoft Movie Makers and a Jack Rose Tribute. These will be interspersed with talks starting with Zeb Soanes and James Mayhew on their children’s book ‘Gaspard the Fox, followed by Colin Bannister from CEFAS on The Herring, local historian Ivan Bunn on The Floods, and author Dorothy Stewart on The Fisher Girls. 

Lowestoft Maritime Museum, The Grit Project Partners, will be open all day with free entry and a specially devised scavenger hunt for GritFest goers. You can also visit the Royal Naval Patrol Service and War Memorial Museum based in the park.

A taste of the old beach village will be provided by a special GritFest menu from Martellos and Giardino’s, plus fresh cockles and mussels, Portuguese custard tarts and lashings of Happy Welham’s lemonade.

The Lowestoft beach population is in every sense of the term a peculiar people. They acquire a sturdy independence of character and are generally speaking a quiet unobtrusive class of persons, but when the latent ‘Viking’ spirit is aroused in their breasts, they are like the ocean in a storm.

The Lowestoft Journal, 1903

Poetry People 

Poetry People is a new Community Interest Company, co-founded by Dean Parkin and Naomi Jaffa and based in Halesworth. Poetry People projects reach out to the wider community through competitions, poem posters, workshops and live events. 

Dean is a full-time freelance poet, delivering his own residences, projects and workshops. He has published four poetry pamphlets, a full-length collection, The Swan Machine, and his first book of poems for children, The Bubble Wrap, was released this year. He has also written and published over 20 local history books.  To find out more, go to www.deanparkin.co.uk

Naomi began in music management before becoming Suffolk’s first literature development officer. She started work for the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival in 1993 and was its Director 1999–2014. Her second pamphlet collection, Driver, was published in 2017.

www.poetrypeople.co.uk

Lowestoft Maritime Museum

2018 is not only the 60th anniversary of the formation of the Lowestoft & East Suffolk Maritime Society but also the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Lowestoft Maritime Museum.

Nestling beside the North Sea in Lowestoft’s lovely Sparrow’s Nest Gardens, Lowestoft Maritime Museum offers a fascinating few hours of enjoyment and discovery for all ages.

Heritage Lottery Fund

Thanks to National Lottery players, we invest money to help people across the UK explore, enjoy and protect the heritage they care about – from the archaeology under our feet to the historic parks and buildings we love, from precious memories and collections to rare wildlife. www.hlf.org.uk.  Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and use #HLFsupported

Extracts from the book of The Grit

There were three cottages in Spurgeon Score which had 70 young children between three houses. All the men were fishermen. The man in the middle was lost at sea, and between the three houses they brought up these 70 children. This will tell you what the Beach people were like. Generous and kind-hearted.  ROSE SANSOM 

Our house in Coleman Square was tiny, two up, two down with an outside lavatory. There was the luxury of gas light in the downstairs front room – the rest of the stone-floored house was lit by candles and paraffin lamps. The small kitchen had an open fire, with an oven set in the wall beside it. All the family cooking was done there, including the twice-weekly bread making. SHEILA MAY 

On our way to school we would run and kick the herring barrels so the brine would go all over the boy running behind us! And after that, if you got to school at Mariners Score, sat near the stoves and got hot, you would really stink of fish!  RONNIE JAMES