Your chance to help enhance and celebrate medieval Rows in Great Yarmouth

Great Yarmouth Preservation Trust, a charity, is leading a £50,000 investment project to initially enhance two of the narrow alleyways, including repairs and artistic interventions. It is also installing 81 cast iron name plates bearing their historic names in the remaining rows, and interpretation panels are being developed for some rows.

Now project coordinator Rachel Harrison is appealing for volunteers to be involved in research and recording activities about the rows, to initially run over nine weeks from October 17 until December 12. These will be held on Wednesdays from 10am to noon, mostly at Great Yarmouth Library. She would also like hear from people with any memories, stories or memorabilia relating to the rows which they would be willing to share as part of the project.

The Rows Project is part of Making Waves Together, a wider partnership project led jointly by Great Yarmouth Borough Council and Waveney District Council, and funded by the national Great Place Scheme, which is seeing communities and organisations in both areas work together to boost the cultural offer and drive cultural re-imagination as a way of supporting success in the seaside towns.

Cllr Bernard Williamson, the preservation trust's chairman, said: "These thoroughfares are a unique part of the borough's rich cultural history, a remnant of medieval Yarmouth that is still used in everyday life. This is a really special opportunity to get involved in enhancing and celebrating the rows, as well as being trained in online and archive-based research and oral histories. Volunteers will look at the rows' evolution, their links with people, trades, businesses, events, architecture and social history."

Cllr Barry Coleman, chairman of the borough council's economic development committee, said: "By enhancing way-finding and connectivity within the town centre, the Rows Project is a key area of work under the Town Centre Masterplan that's helping to boost Great Yarmouth's historic central area. This is a great opportunity for local residents to get involved, meet new people and learn new skills."

Contact Rachel Harrison on 07785750129 or rachel@gy-pt.org