Caister Castle and Motor Museum

Wednesday 21 August 2002. After looking around the older parts of Great Yarmouth the sky was still a little threatening and we decided to visit Caister Castle which had a motor museum where we could spend the rest of the afternoon indoors, looking at the collection of cars.

There is little left of the castle itself. It was built in (well... "from") 1432 by Sir John Fastolfe. Born in 1378 he was ambitious, brave, educated and religious. He was a patron of the arts and universities, a statesman and a soldier with 40 years service.

It seems a shame that Shakespeare was to defame him so badly with his character of Falstaff. Fighting against Joan of Arc with extended supply lines he chose correctly to withdraw. Shakespeare depicted this as cowardice. However in real life he was awarded Governorship of Normandy for the following four years.

The tower from across the moat (previous photograph) presents almost a chocolate box image. From inside the castle (seen in this photograph) there is access to a spiral staircase that takes you up to the top of the tower where you can strike weird and wonderful poses for the cameras of your fellow tourists below. There are quite a few examples of graffiti from centuries gone by etched into the walls by daggers or coin edges.

A few vehicles are dotted about the grounds. We first came across this old London horse-drawn tram as a barely recogniseable "shed" of bare rotting wood in 1981. Ten years later it looked almost brand new. Now it was once again looking as though it needed some TLC, at least a coat of paint.

A railway platform tractor - they were used to pull trains of flat wagons for luggage. The majority of the vehicles and just about all of the cars are under cover. They are preserved rather than concours. Cleaners use dusters but not water or polish. However, the place is well worth a visit and I would not want to hazard a guess at the total value of cars on display.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

The London Horse Drawn Tram

Looking back over the years at a few visits to Caister Castle in Norfolk.

This was taken in 1981. From somewhere the castle - they have a large motor museum - had acquired a London horse drawn tramcar. In fairly poor condition, it had been severely chopped about with the driver's platform removed along with the brakes and the entire top deck folded flat with a tarpaulin over it. It looked as though someone had saved it from disappearing altogether by using it as a shed...

Every bit of paint had worn away and the woodwork was in a state of distress. It needed a lot of work to restore it.

The next time I remember seeing it was ten years later in 1991. A superb restoration job had been done on it. The driver's platform, controls and staircase had been replaced and the top deck had been opened up. The woodwork had been restored and the whole given a brilliant paint job of red and cream with gold striping over the red.

A few weeks ago we were back in Norfolk and we visited the castle again. The motor museum has grown in size but I wanted to see the tram to see how it had fared after another twenty odd years had gone by.

It is now housed under shelter, which is good. It looks as though it could do with a tidy up - years spent out in the open never does anything to help the brightness of red paint whether on a tramcar, a motor car, or a house! It has to be expensive to try to maintain anything of this age in anything like good condition and Caister has a massive collection of cars, a Welsh mining locomotive and, let's not forget, a 15th century moated castle with a 100 foot tower that is still sturdy enough for visitors to climb.

Caister Roman Fort

Monday 1 October 2012. After leaving Sheringham we drove around the coast back to Great Yarmouth for our final evening before heading back to Blackpool on Tuesday.

On the way out I had taken a wrong turn and ended driving through the town of Caister instead of using the bypass which affords a view of the castle, which we have visited many times, but which closed for the winter season the day before we came down to Norfolk!

I was intrigued to see a brown sign for "Roman Fort" and glimpsed some low walls of a familiar type behind the hedge. So on our way back we passed through the town again and stopped in the lay-by at the side of the site.

The fort was built around 200AD to the Roman standard plan. It defended the huge estuary of four rivers, the Ant, Bure, Yare and Waveney. The land it stood on was a small island at the time to the north of the estuary which covered a large area to the south now covered by land. In fact, now covered by Great Yarmouth...

We are looking at the foundations for one of the gate towers. We are inside the fort and the gate was to the left of the structure with a similar but mirrored tower on the other side. The line of the wall runs off to the right and beyond is a ditch with a deeper ditch which has been filled in and would have been under the modern roadway.

Some of the building foundations from inside the fort. After about 60 years another fort was built on the opposite shore of the estuary at Burgh. This has also been partially excavated and can be visited or seen from the many cruises up the River Yare from Great Yarmouth's dosckside area.

The site is owned or managed by English Heritage and there is a page with a map of the area at the time and a reconstruction of how the fort might have appeared from the air as sketched from an original roman Tigus Moth... Go to the link I have provided then search for "Caister roman fort"

Well, that concludes the entries about this holiday weekend - I'm going to have to go somewhere else now!

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