Join Dr Tom Johnson from the University of Oxford, who specialises in the social and legal history of medieval Europe. He explores the social, economic, and cultural history of Suffolks rich maritime history during the Middle Ages.
His first book, Law in Common: Legal Culture in Late-Medieval England, was published by Oxford in 2020. He is currently working on his second book, The Fishermen's Church: Reckoning and Ruin in a Medieval Fishing Village, an economic microhistory of the fishing village Walberswick during the 15th Century.

"The Herring Time": Fishing and Fortune on the Medieval Suffolk Coast
Every autumn, billions of herring spawned off the coasts of East Anglia. For eight weeks from the end of September, fishermen from all of over England and Northern Europe congregated along the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts to take part in the great herring fare. By the time of Domesday Book (1086), herring were being caught in astonishing quantities. Gutted and salted and smoked and barrelled they produced the first convenience food, a cheap, durable commodity that could last for months or even years in its preserved forms. Herring generated great wealth for East Anglian fishermen and merchants. The industry was so important that it was subject to national legislation: The State of Herring in 1357 regulated its sale. But over the medieval centuries, a combination of climate change, overfishing, and political interference put increasing pressure on the trade, driving fishermen to develop new technologies and explore new fishing grounds as far away as Iceland, Greenland, and beyond. In this talk, we explore the importance of herring to everyday life on the medieval Suffolk coast through the perspective of one village, Walberswick. Its unusually rich archive allows us to see how fishermen and their families lived, worked, and thrived in "the herring time