Wells-next-the-Sea is a village and port on the North Norfolk coast of England. The civil parish has a location of 16.31 km2 (6.30 sq mi) and in 2001 had a population of 2,451, decreasing to 2,165 at the 2011 Census. Wells is 15 miles (24 kilometres) to the eastern of the resort of Hunstanton, 20 miles (32 km) to the west of Cromer, and 10 miles (16 km) north of Fakenham. The city of Norwich lies 32 miles (51 km) to the south-east. Close-by towns include Blakeney, Burnham Market, Burnham Thorpe, Holkham and Walsingham. The North Sea is currently a mile from the community; the primary channel which once strayed through marshes, grazed by lamb for centuries, was confined by earthworks to the west in 1859 when Holkham Estate reclaimed some 800 hectares of saltmarsh north-west of Wells with the building of a mile-long bank. This recovery was declared to have actually reduced the tidal scour though the West Fleet which provided a lot of the water entered the network to its north.Because the community has no river going through it, it counts on the tides to comb the harbour. The issue of siltation had preoccupied the merchants of the community for hundreds of years and also inhabited the focus of numerous designers, leading at some point to disputes which concerned court in the eighteenth century. Sir John Coode, who had been knighted for his work with the completion of Portland harbour was hired to solve its siltation troubles in the 1880s. No tried option showed long-term. The growth of faster aquatic web traffic whose wake cleans at the banks of the marshes has widened the channel and also decreased tidal flow further. The town has been a port because prior to the fourteenth century when it provided grain to London as well as subsequently to the miners of the north eastern in return for which Wells was provided with coal. Up until the 19th century, it was much easier to bring bulk cargoes by sea than overland. Wells was likewise an angling port: in 1337 it is recorded as having had thirteen angling watercrafts; next door Holkham had nine. Its sailors brought first herring and after that cod from Iceland in quantity in between the fifteenth as well as seventeenth centuries. The regulation of the harbour in order to preserve its usage was by Act of Parliament in 1663; and in 1769 Harbour Commissioners were designated with powers over vessels entering and leaving (as they still have today). The Quay was substantially rebuilt in 1845 as part of attempts to boost the town. At the same time, Improvement Commissioners were selected with the task of making the town commodious and appealing to locals as well as the burgeoning traveler profession. As a small port, it built ships until the late nineteenth century; it never transferred to building electric motor vessels or to steel hulls. The coming of the train in 1857 decreased the harbour profession however it revitalized quickly after the Second World War for the import of fertilizer and also animal feed. In 1982 there were 258 ship movements right into the harbour.