Wells-next-the-Sea is a village and port on the North Norfolk coast of England. The civil parish has an area of 16.31 km2 (6.30 sq mi) and also in 2001 had a population of 2,451, reducing to 2,165 at the 2011 Census. Wells is 15 miles (24 kilometres) to the eastern of the hotel of Hunstanton, 20 miles (32 km) to the west of Cromer, as well as 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 also Walsingham. The North Sea is now a mile from the town; the major channel which as soon as roamed via marshes, foraged by lamb for hundreds of years, was constrained by earthworks to the west in 1859 when Holkham Estate recovered some 800 hectares of saltmarsh north-west of Wells with the building of a mile-long bank. This recovery was claimed to have decreased the tidal comb though the West Fleet which gave much of the water entered the network to its north.Because the community has no river going through it, it counts on the trends to scour the harbour. The problem of siltation had busied the sellers of the town for centuries and inhabited the interests of different designers, leading eventually to conflicts which involved court in the 18th century. Sir John Coode, that had been knighted for his work on the completion of Portland harbour was recruited to solve its siltation issues in the 1880s. No tried option verified long-term. The growth of faster aquatic website traffic whose wake washes at the banks of the marshes has expanded the network and also reduced tidal flow better. The community has actually been a port since before the fourteenth century when it supplied grain to London and also subsequently to the miners of the north eastern in return for which Wells was provided with coal. Until the 19th century, it was easier to carry bulk freights by sea than overland. Wells was likewise a fishing port: in 1337 it is recorded as having had thirteen fishing boats; next door Holkham had nine. Its mariners brought initially herring and then cod from Iceland in quantity between the fifteenth as well as seventeenth centuries. The law of the harbour in order to maintain its usage was by Act of Parliament in 1663; and in 1769 Harbour Commissioners were selected with powers over vessels getting in and leaving (as they still have today). The Quay was substantially rebuilt in 1845 as part of attempts to improve the community. At the same time, Improvement Commissioners were assigned with the task of making the community commodious as well as eye-catching to residents as well as the growing visitor profession. As a tiny port, it built ships till the late 19th century; it never moved to constructing motor vessels or to steel hulls. The resulting the train in 1857 decreased the harbour trade however it revived quickly after the Second World War for the import of fertilizer and also pet feed. In 1982 there were 258 ship movements right into the harbour.