Yarmouth
Yarmouth names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Yarmouth or, as it is more strickly called GREAT YARMOUTH
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
or, as it is more strickly called GREAT YARMOUTH, an English seaport, important fishing station, watering place, and municipal and parliamentary borough, in the county of Norfolk, 20 miles E. of N Norwich; on a long and narrow tongue of land running from N. to S. between the German Ocean and the estuary of the Yare. The town is connected by a bridge with Little Yarmouth, or South Town, in Suffolk. Along the sea frontage stretches a promenade and carriage drive for three miles, with two piers. Parallel with the N. and S. quays, extending for nearly a mile and a quarter, are the principal streets, crossed by numerous lanes called "rows." The parish church of St. Nicholas, founded in 1101, and of late years completely restored, is one of the largest in the kingdom. Yarmouth has a naval lunatic asylum. It is the great seat of the English herring and mackerel fishery, and also furnishes large quantities of white fish. The curing of herring as "Yarmouth bloaters" is an important industry. The coast is dangerous, but Yarmouth Roads between the shore and a range of sandbanks offers a safe anchorage. Pop. about 55,000.
Yarmouth a town and port of entry of Yarmouth co.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a town and port of entry of Yarmouth co., Nova Scotia; on the Bay of Fundy, the Atlantic Ocean, and the Dominion Atlantic railroad; 90 miles S. of St. John, N. B. The town has extensive fishing, shipping, and manufacturing interests, Yarmouth Seminary, schools, daily and weekly newspapers, electric lights, and street railways. Pop. about 7,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, Yarmouth was "the great seat of the English herring and mackerel fishery," with the bloater trade at its heart; that industry is finished, the North Sea herring fishery having collapsed to the point of a total ban on herring fishing in 1977-78, and the port now serves the offshore energy business instead — North Sea gas from the 1960s and, more recently, wind farms including Scroby Sands just off the beach. The other great change was the war: the medieval "rows" Collier's describes and the church of St Nicholas, "one of the largest in the kingdom," were gutted by German bombing, and the church was rebuilt in the 1950s inside its surviving walls. Little Yarmouth, or Southtown, is no longer across a county line, as the Norfolk-Suffolk boundary here was long ago settled in Norfolk's favour. Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, remains a fishing and ferry town of roughly the same modest size Collier's gave it, though its ferry link to Maine has been repeatedly suspended and revived.
Written for this edition, 2026.