Cromer is a seaside town and civil parish on the north coast of the English county of Norfolk, 40 km due north of the city of Norwich. The Romans had in Norwich, their regional capital at Venta Icenorum on the river to the south which is now at modern day Caistor St Edmund. The Domesday Book states that it had approximately twenty-five churches. Cromer is not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, but two other settlements are, Shipden-juxta-mere and Shipden-juxta-Felbrigg. The name Cromer possibly dates back to the 9th century at the time of the Danish conquest in the form of Kroemmer and covers East Anglia. It is reasonable to assume that the present site of Cromer, round the parish church of St Peter and St Paul, is what was then Shipden-juxta-Felbrigg. The other Shipden is now about four hundred metres to the north-east of the end of Cromer pier, under the sea. Its site is marked by 'Church Rock', now no longer visible, even at a low spring tide. During the Tudor period to the Stuart reign in history, constant effort was made to keep the pier in working order. The problem had not been helped by the Kett Rebellion of 1549. The rebellion had hit Cromer hard, all it's ammunition had been used up and the damage done had threatened the fishing industry, transport and the harbour. Sir Edmund Wyndham brought their plight to the council who helped in re-establishing Cromer as a fishing port.
With a long run of coastline with no harbour—Great Yarmouth, north of the Suffolk town of Lowestoft is 40 miles by sea to the south-east and the restricted harbour of Wells (Wells-next-the-Sea) 25 miles to the west. Lying only a mile from the North Sea, much of the land around Wells was reclaimed from the sea. The charter of King John (1208), which gave his burgesses of Yarmouth general liberties according to the customs of Oxford, a gild merchant and weekly hustings, was amplified by several later charters asserting the rights of the borough against Little Yarmouth and Gorleston. The town Yarmouth numbered 70 burgesses before the Norman Conquest. Yarmouth has two piers, Britannia Pier and Wellington Pier.
By 1565 the number of householders in Cromer had risen to 117, 48 of which were mariners or fishermen. Queen Elizabeth later in 1582 granted letters to the people of Cromer to export 20,000 quarters of wheat, barley, and malt for the upkeep of their own. Very little reference is made to Cromer from the various sources during this period in history, but during the reign of Elizabeth various Dutch ships ran ashore close by. The great immigration of 1567 to Norwich brought a substantial Walloon community of weavers to Norwich. Norwich has been the home of various dissident minorities, notably the French Huguenot and the Belgian Walloon communities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Norwich Canary was first introduced into England by Flemish refugees fleeing from Spanish persecution in the 1500s. They brought with them not only advanced working skills in textiles but also their pet canaries, which they began to breed.
In 1623 a ship carrying poet John Taylor was made to land at Cromer due to adverse weather and the town's folk mistook them for invaders and took everyone prisoner. One of the worst incidents in Cromer happened during a storm in 1692, where over 1000 people were reputed to have perished in about 200 ships, off of the coast. The first lighthouse built in Cromer was one of five paid for by Sir John Clayton in 1669, but due to the fact that ship owners refused to pay him any money the fire was never lit. A beacon was lit on a column attached to the church tower for many years and served as the main light up until 1719. The Church during this period had become a ruin and the Rev. Thomas Gill Rector of Ingworth blew up the chancel in 1681 and had the end bricked up. It was to stay in a dilapidated condition for the next 86 years.