True's Yard Fisherfolk Museum facts for kids
True's Yard Fisherfolk Museum is a special place in King's Lynn, Norfolk. It's a museum that tells the story of how fishing families used to live in the old North End area of King's Lynn. This museum is independent, meaning it runs on its own, mostly thanks to amazing volunteers who give their time to keep history alive. Many parts of the old North End were changed in the 1930s and 1960s to build new homes, but True's Yard helps us remember what life was like before.
Exploring the Cottages
The museum lets you step inside real cottages where families once lived. These homes were very small, usually with just two rooms: one downstairs and one upstairs. Imagine a family of eleven people living in one of these tiny cottages! In one cottage, nine children had to share a single double bed, sleeping head-to-toe, while their parents slept on the floor.
Back then, homes didn't have indoor toilets. Instead, people used a special pot called a chamber pot, which they kept under the bed. This shows how different daily life was for families in the past compared to today.
The Historic Smokehouse
The museum also features a smokehouse, which was a very important building for fishing families. This particular smokehouse was opened in the 1890s by a retired fisherman named Thomas Westwood. He ran it with his wife, Mary, and their three daughters, Mary, Penelope, and Emily. They also had two sons, Thomas and Charles.
The Westwood family didn't just smoke fish; they also sold it! They had a fish shop right in the front room of their house, which faced St. Ann's Street. The fish they sold there was smoked in the smokehouse located behind their home. A very popular smoked fish in the North End was the 'bloater', which is a herring fish smoked whole.
