The Herring Time: Fishing and Fortune on the Medieval Suffolk Coast

Every autumn, billions of herring spawned off the coasts of East Anglia. For eight weeks from the end of September, fishermen from all of over England and Northern Europe congregated along the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts to take part in the great herring fare. Dr Tom Johnson, from the University of Oxford, talks about the importance of herring to everyday life on the medieval Suffolk coast through the perspective of one village, Walberswick. Its unusually rich archive allows us to see how fishermen and their families lived, worked, and thrived in the herring time.