into the leading container port in the country. The growth of each of these havens is discussed further in the Introduction to Suffolk.
Before the 20 th century, a good deal of the passenger traffic and goods that would now be transported by road went by sea instead. Lowestoft, and also smaller towns such as Southwold, Dunwich, Orford and Aldeburgh, were ports of significance.
In the case of Aldeburgh, the quay was actually at nearby Slaughden, which was lost to the sea early in the 20 th century. Like Dunwich (which had been a major port in the early Middle Ages) Aldeburgh also extended much further east, until the sea encroached - this happened in Tudor times at Aldeburgh, earlier at Dunwich.
Ironically Orford, to the south, also became inaccessible because material that had been eroded from the Dunwich-Aldeburgh area was deposited there. in a long spit of sand that left the quay over ten miles from the open sea. (See also the Shifting Coastline section of the Introduction to Suffolk.)
When Lowestoft developed as an access port for Norwich, in the first half of the 19 th century, keeping a harbour-mouth clear of sand was again a problem. This time it was solved, however, by the construction of an outer harbour, in the 1840s by Samuel Peto.
Peto's connection of the port to the newly developed rail system, and his opening up of trade with Denmark and the Baltic, was a 19 th century development as dramatic, perhaps, as that of Felixstowe as a container port a century later.
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