Handyman Lowestoft

Lowestoft is famous for being the easternmost point in the British Isles — Ness Point, just north of the centre, is marked by a circular dial showing the distances to other extremities. The town has been a fishing port since at least the medieval period, and by the late nineteenth century it was one of the busiest herring stations in Europe; the silver darlings drove a great annual gathering of Scottish herring girls to Lowestoft each autumn. Boatbuilding and engineering grew up alongside the fishing, and the town remains a centre for marine engineering, particularly now for the offshore wind industry of the southern North Sea.

South of the harbour, the Victorian developer Samuel Morton Peto laid out the elegant Esplanade, Wellington and Kirkley Cliff areas in the 1840s, creating one of England's earliest planned seaside resorts. South Beach is famously sandy and shallow. The town's other half, north of the swing bridge, is older and rougher round the edges, with the High Street running parallel to the narrow medieval lanes called Scores that drop steeply to the sea. Benjamin Britten was born in Lowestoft in 1913, and the town's modern East Point Pavilion and Marina theatre keep the cultural side alive. Sea air, salty winds and Victorian terraces are a combination that asks a lot of paint, putty and timber, which keeps me regular work along the coast.