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Set right between Great Yarmouth and Wroxham just off the main A149 road, Potter Heigham is geographically and spiritually right at the heart of the Norfolk Broads. As far back as 1900, Potter Heigham was famous as the Norfolk Broads holiday destination linked by railway to the Midlands. Visitors would return year on year to take the Norfolk air and to meet up with the locals again with whom they had come to know on first name terms. Many returned during August each year when the annual Potter Heigham Regatta was held - hundreds of boats, fairs and thousands of visitors made it one of the events on the Broads during the year. Boat building has been established for many decades at Potter Heigham and include the famous Applegate Boatyard and the Herbert Woods Boatyard, established in the early 1900's and still present opposite Lathams to this day. This boatyard started building and operating the first Broads cruisers at the turn of the century. During the war they were commissioned to build motor torpedo boats and at one time also built lifeboats to be used aboard HMS Shackelton. Other famous customers of the boatyard include George Formeby who lived in nearby Wroxham. The Lathams story begins in 1963 when Ken Latham opened the general store - known as 'Aladdin's Cave'. Lathams used to stock everything for the holidaymaker and visiting fisherman, even supplying grocery orders to cruisers who had moored up nearby. Today Potter Heigham has lost none of it's charm. It is still one of the most popular places to visit on the Norfolk Broads - whether as a centre for cruising holidays, a perfect place to hire day boats, or simply to watch the boats go by. Lathams itself has grown to be a major attraction in its own right and the Broads Authority's Museum of the Broads' is also in Potter Heigham and well worth a visit. For those with a keen eye, Potter Heigham provides abundant clues to the past; see if you can spot the WW2 dance hall that is now more used to the sound of frying fish than Glen Miller!

Watch Lathams being built - from a field to the Broads' best loved discount superstore - click here!

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