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Caption: No caption.

This is a wax seal that has been mounted into a circular frame. The size of the frame is 11.5cm in diameter and the size of the seal itself is 7cm.

The seal is made of red wax and has a raised bas-relief sculpture of a 2-masted sailing ship and a corner of what appears to be a town wall that rises out of the water. In the background there is a castle that looks a lot like the castle in Norwich and a very tall church spire. I assume that because both of those buildings are carefully modeled and placed to be visible, they mean something to the company owners and aren't simply background fill.

Around the edge of the seal are the words "The Company of Proprietors of the Norwich & Lowestoft Navigation".

On the back of the seal is hand written, in ink, on rather crudely cut out paper these words,
"This Impression
of the Original Seal of
The Norwich & Lowestoft
Navigation Company
is presented by Joseph Geldart
to S. M. Peto, Esq.
In Memoriam Rei
1851"

The "S. M. Peto, Esq" is surely Samual Morton Peto. "In Memoriam Rei" means "in memory of the event", and that tells me this is a souvenir given to Peto commemorating a significant event. The year 1851 was a banner year for the 42-year-old Peto. The house at Somerleyton was finishing up its rebuild, the Crystal Palace and Exhibition in London was in development, a railroad was being built in Norway, and he was serving as an MP for Norwich. Although the Haddiscoe Cut had been developed a few years earlier by the Norwich & Lowestoft Navigation Company and many of Peto's projects in Lowestoft were finished, this seems to be a gift to a man at the peak of his career by a group who wanted to acknowledge that.