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The name is said to come from 'toft' (a Viking word for 'homestead') and 'Loth' or 'Lowe' (a Viking male name). The town's name has been spelled variously: Lothnwistoft, Lestoffe, Laistoe, Loystoft, Laystoft. The town is divided in two by Lake Lothing, the northern half being the commercial centre, the southern half the holiday resort. The surrounding area is known as Lothingland. There are two piers. Lowestoft Ness is the most easterly point in England, the United Kingdom, Great Britain, and the British Isles.
In the Domesday Book, Lowestoft is described as a small agricultural village of 20 families, i.e. about 100 people. Rent for the land was paid to the landowner Hugh de Montfort in herrings.
In the Middle Ages, Lowestoft developed into a fishing port. Great Yarmouth saw Lowestoft as a rival and tried to push it out of the herring trade.
During the 1790s, Lowestoft's fishing community established their own "Beach Village", living in upturned boats.
In the 19th century, the arrival of Sir Samuel Morton Peto brought about a huge change in Lowestoft's fortunes. Peto started by building a rail link between Lowestoft and Norwich, and links with other town soon followed. He developed the harbour and provided mooring for 1,000 boats. This gave a boost to trade with the Continent. He also established Lowestoft as a flourishing seaside holiday resort.
The composer Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft in 1913.
In the 1840s, Charles DickensCharles John Huffam Dickens ( February 7, 1812 June 9, 1870), pen-name " Boz", was an English novelist of the Victorian era. The popularity of his books during his lifetime and to the present is demonstrated by the fact that none of his novels has ever go came to stay with Sir Samuel Morton Peto. Lowestoft's Beach Village became, along with Blundeston village, the inspiration for David CopperfieldDavid Copperfield is a Bildungsroman by Charles Dickens, first published in 1849. Like most of his other works, it originally appeared in serial form (published in monthly installments). Many elements within the novel closely follow events in Dickens's ow.
Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad ( December 3, 1857 August 3, 1924) was a Polish-born British novelist. Born Jozef Teodor Nalecz Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857 in Berdyczow, in what is now Ukraine, he was brought up in Russian-occupied Poland. His father, an impove came to live in Lowestoft in 1878Events January Cleopatra's Needle arrives in London January 9 Humbert I becomes King of Italy January 23 Disraeli orders British fleet to Dardanelles January 28 The Yale News becomes the first daily, college newspaper in the United States. January 31 Turk from his native PolandThe Republic of Poland a country in Central Europe, lies between Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, and the Baltic Sea, Lithuania and Russia (in the form of the Kaliningrad Oblast exclave) t. Edward Fitzgerald, the translator of the Rubayyat of Omar Khayyam, lived in Lowestoft. W.G. Sebald, who taught at the University of East Anglia, and was tragically killed three years ago wrote about Lowestoft in The Rings of Saturn . Glam rock band, The Darkness come from Lowestoft. English seaside resorts Towns in Suffolk