Wells-next-the-Sea is a village as well as 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, lowering to 2,165 at the 2011 Census. Wells is 15 miles (24 kilometres) to the east of the hotel of Hunstanton, 20 miles (32 kilometres) to the west of Cromer, and 10 miles (16 kilometres) north of Fakenham. The city of Norwich exists 32 miles (51 km) to the south-east. Close-by villages consist of Blakeney, Burnham Market, Burnham Thorpe, Holkham and Walsingham. The North Sea is now a mile from the community; the primary channel which once roamed via marshes, grazed by sheep for hundreds of years, was constrained by earthworks to the west in 1859 when Holkham Estate redeemed some 800 hectares of saltmarsh north-west of Wells with the structure of a mile-long bank. This improvement was declared to have reduced the tidal scour though the West Fleet which offered a lot of the water entered the channel to its north.Because the town has no river running through it, it relies upon the trends to comb the harbour. The issue of siltation had preoccupied the merchants of the town for hundreds of years and inhabited the attentions of different engineers, leading ultimately to conflicts which concerned court in the eighteenth century. Sir John Coode, who had been knighted for his deal with the conclusion of Portland harbour was hired to address its siltation problems in the 1880s. No attempted option verified long-term. The development of faster marine web traffic whose wake cleans at the banks of the marshes has broadened the channel and also lowered tidal flow even more. The town has been a seaport since prior to the fourteenth century when it provided grain to London and subsequently to the miners of the north eastern in return for which Wells was supplied with coal. Up until the 19th century, it was less complicated to bring mass cargoes by sea than overland. Wells was likewise a fishing port: in 1337 it is recorded as having had thirteen fishing watercrafts; next door Holkham had 9. Its sailors brought first herring and afterwards cod from Iceland in quantity in between the fifteenth and also seventeenth centuries. The law of the harbour in order to preserve its use was by Act of Parliament in 1663; and in 1769 Harbour Commissioners were selected with powers over vessels getting in and also leaving (as they still have today). The Quay was significantly reconstructed in 1845 as part of attempts to improve the town. At the same time, Improvement Commissioners were selected with the job of making the community commodious as well as appealing to residents and the expanding tourist profession. As a little port, it developed ships till the late nineteenth century; it never ever transferred to building motor vessels or to steel hulls. The coming of the train in 1857 reduced the harbour trade yet it revived quickly after the Second World War for the import of plant food and also animal feed. In 1982 there were 258 ship activities right into the harbour.