Great Yarmouth Row Houses

Walking into these 17th-century terrace houses in Great Yarmouth is like stepping through a door that's been sealed for 300 years. The Row Houses preserve what life actually looked like for ordinary people in a Georgian fishing town - cramped, vertical, real. You're not looking at grand staircases or gilded furniture. Instead you get narrow staircases that creak under your feet, tiny bedrooms barely wider than a cupboard, and kitchens where families would have cooked over open fires.

The museum does a proper job of explaining how these buildings were constructed back-to-back to save space, with some homes only 16 feet wide. Walking through the interconnected rooms gives you a genuine sense of the claustrophobia and ingenuity required to live in such tight quarters. It's genuinely eye-opening for anyone curious about social history and how working-class families managed in centuries past.

Historians and anyone with an interest in domestic archaeology will find this absorbing. It's less exciting for young children unless they're already keen on period details - there's not much to touch or interact with. Allow 45 minutes to an hour to look properly without rushing.

If you're staying at one of the nearby Haven parks - Seashore, Caister-on-Sea, or Wild Duck - this makes a solid indoor option when the weather turns. It's only a few miles from your base and breaks up a holiday focused mainly on beach time and arcades. Small but worthwhile.