With the history of Lowestoft during the early modern period having been duly explored and a study produced (Lowestoft 1550–1750), it is time to turn to the town's medieval antecedents. The previous volume was a carefully integrated piece of work based on a wide range of source material collected over many years and closely interconnected and cross-referenced, wherever possible, to produce an intricate picture of a local society at a crucial point in its evolution. Such a statement is not possible for earlier phases of the town's past, because the necessary variety of documentary sources with which to create a rich and complex reconstruction of life at the time does not exist. So this volume presents a series of individual studies of specific areas of human activity which helped to form the community of Lowestoft as it was at the time, with certain of them (particularly within the maritime context) having the capacity to influence later developments.

However, it also needs to be said that this book does not consist solely of a series of ‘stand-alone’ chapters each of which addresses a discrete aspect of Lowestoft's medieval past. A certain degree of linkage is possible (particularly with reference to the local topography), whereby a sense of the township's growth and development is able to be grasped. Two key documents assist the process – the Domesday Survey (1086) and the Lothingland Hundred Roll (1274) – and their respective collections of data not only reveal features of Lowestoft's physical and economic being but also provide information regarding social structure. Other useful and relevant medieval sources include the Patent Rolls, Close Rolls and Fine Rolls, whose published calendars are instructive in a variety of ways, shedding light on different aspects of community activity.

It is worth pointing out that Lowestoft, as it is seen today, is very much the product of mid–late nineteenth-century development brought about by the builder/contractor/entrepreneur Samuel Morton Peto, who purchased the ailing harbour works in 1844 and established rail links with Norwich (1847) and Ipswich (1859), thereby creating a major boost to maritime enterprise based on fishing and cross-North Sea trade. The 1831 census shows the town with a population of 4,238; by 1911, it had grown to 37,886.