Lynn

Lynn stands on the Great Ouse a few miles from the Wash, laid out from 1101 by Bishop Herbert de Losinga of Thetford, who built St Margaret's Church and authorised a Saturday market. As Bishop's Lynn it grew into a port, and after the Ouse was turned into its channel in the 13th century the port flourished. In the 14th century Lynn ranked among England's most important ports, trading chiefly with the Hanseatic towns of the North Sea and the Baltic. The Hanse House of 1475 and Marriott's Warehouse, used between the 15th and 17th centuries, are the only buildings of the Hanseatic League left in England.

Margery Kempe, who was born in Lynn around 1373, dictated her account of her visions and pilgrimages there. In 1537 the town was surrendered to the Crown by the Bishop of Norwich and became King's Lynn. In 1643 it was held for the king and besieged by Parliament's Eastern Association army before it surrendered. George Vancouver, who was to chart the Pacific coast of North America, was born in Lynn in 1757.