“This admirable little building originally consisted of an open loggia about 40 feet by 32 feet outside, with four columns down the centre, supporting the first floor, and an attic storey above.  The walls are of Portland stone, with a Doric order to the ground storey supporting an Ionic order to the first floor.  The cornice is of wood, and above this is a steep-pitched tile roof with dormers, surmounted by a balustrade inclosing a flat, from which rises a most picturesque wooden cupola.  The details are extremely refined, and the technical knowledge and delicate sense of scale and proportion shown in this building are surprising in a designer who was under thirty, and is not known to have done any previous work."[5]

  [5] History of Renaissance Architecture, by R. Blomfield.

A building which the town should make an effort to preserve is the old “Greenland Fishery House,” a tenement dating from the commencement of the seventeenth century.

The Duke’s Head Inn, erected in 1689, now spoilt by its coating of plaster, a house in Queen’s Street, the old market cross, destroyed in 1831 and sold for old materials, and the altarpieces of the churches of St. Margaret and St. Nicholas, destroyed during “restoration,” and North Runcton church, three miles from Lynn, are other works of this very able artist.

Until the Reformation Lynn was known as Bishop’s Lynn, and galled itself under the yoke of the Bishop of Norwich; but Henry freed the townsfolk from their bondage and ordered the name to be changed to Lynn Regis.  Whether the good people throve better under the control of the tyrant who crushed all their guilds and appropriated the spoil than under the episcopal yoke may be doubtful; but the change pleased them, and with satisfaction they placed the royal arms on their East Gate, which, after the manner of gates and walls, has been pulled down.  If you doubt the former greatness of this old seaport you must examine its civic plate.  It possesses the oldest and most important and most beautiful specimen of municipal plate in England, a grand, massive silver-gilt cup of exquisite workmanship.  It is called “King John’s Cup,” but it cannot be earlier than the reign of Edward III.  In addition to this there is a superb sword of state of the time of Henry VIII, another cup, four silver maces, and other treasures.  Moreover, the town had a famous goldsmiths’ company, and several specimens of their handicraft remain.  The defences of the town were sorely tried in the Civil War, when for three weeks it sustained the attacks of the rebels.  The town was forced to surrender, and the poor folk were obliged to pay ten shillings a head, besides a month’s pay to the soldiers, in order to save their homes from plunder.  Lynn has many memories.  It sheltered King John when fleeing from the revolting barons, and kept his treasures until he took them away and left them in a still more secure place buried in the sands of the Wash.  It welcomed Queen Isabella during her retirement at Castle Rising, entertained Edward IV when he was hotly pursued by the Earl of Warwick, and has been worthy of its name as a loyal king’s town.