Webcam Wells-Next. Port panorama
Wells-next-the-Sea is a small town and port on the coast of North Norfolk, England. The county has an area of 16.31 km, and in 2011 the population was 2165.
Wells-the-Sea is 24 km east of Hunstanton Resort, 32 km west of Cromer and 16 km north of Fakenham. Neighboring villages include Blakeney, Burnham Market, Burnham Thorpe, Holkham and Walsingham.
The town was a seaport even before the fourteenth century, when it supplied grain to London and then to the miners of the northeast, in return for which Wells Next was supplied with coal. Until the nineteenth century it was easier to transport bulk cargoes by sea than by land. It was an important port in the sixteenth century. In 1580, nineteen ships of more than sixteen tons were leaving Wells, making it the principal port in the area; the main trade was corn. Wells Next also produced malts from the early days . In its heyday there were as many as twelve malt houses in the city , it accounted in 1750 for one-third of the country's malt exports, mostly to Holland, more than any other port except Yarmouth.
Wells Next was also a fishing port: in 1337 it had thirteen fishing boats; nearby Holkham had nine. Its mariners brought first herring and then cod from Iceland in large quantities between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The regulation of the harbor to preserve its use was adopted by an Act of Parliament in 1663; and in 1769 harbor commissioners were appointed with powers of ingress and egress (as they are today). The waterfront was substantially rebuilt in 1845 as part of an effort to improve the city.
At the same time, beautification commissioners were appointed with the task of making the city spacious and attractive to residents and the growing tourist trade. As a small port, it built ships until the end of the nineteenth century; it never converted to building motor ships or steel hulls. The opening of the railroad in 1857 led to a decline in port trade, but it revived briefly after World War II by importing fertilizer and animal feed. In 1982, 258 ships called at the harbor.
