Walking. Gossip. Travel.

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  • GeoGuessr (Norwich Version) – Walk 2

    GeoGuessr (Norwich Version) – Walk 2

    I already have a better explanation (well, longer explanation anyway) for this plan. In essence, whilst lockdown is on, I need to find ways of walking nearby to Norwich in quiet areas for my LDWA 100 training. So, I’m using GeoGuessr to pick out five random locations within a certain area which I’ve defined and then walking to them, to see what kind of story I can uncover.

    So, this was the second of these walks, this time Nathan was dragged out to walk in the dark. We were using a map which used the ring-road as our limit, simply for time reasons, although we did manage to get the B&Q right on that line. Tonight’s little expedition was 11.2 miles, in the rain……

    This was the start of the walk, there really was no beginning to our bravery tonight…..

    Once we had summited Gas Mountain, we had a little rest and looked back down towards the city of Norwich, nestled in the foothills. We had walked around thirty metres at this point.

    My local voting station. How lovely.

    The Gordon pub, which I haven’t visited for a while, it’s a reasonably popular community pub though.

    And we reached our first location. We didn’t make much effort to match the photos up exactly, life’s too short…. Well, actually, it doesn’t seem too short to do this walking thing, so perhaps we could have made more of an effort.

    Past Thorpe St. Andrew School and I had a look on Wikipedia to see which former pupils went there. There are four listed and I haven’t heard of three of them, but I have discovered that Ben Bradshaw MP went to school there.

    In the diminishing light we strolled into some woods, which wasn’t perhaps ideal. The inaugural tree at Queen Elizabeth II Woods was planted by Chloe Smith, another fascinating fact that people should know.

    The second location, which wasn’t lined up at all, primarily as I didn’t want to stand outside someone’s house at night taking photos.

    Nathan had just spent thirty minutes complaining that he couldn’t get his phone to display the map, so I led us efficiently during that time. In a crisis, I’m always calm and reassured. Then Nathan, after a fit of pique, announced that he had worked out how to turn his phone on (or whatever he was faffing about doing) and he would lead us. So, here we went, entering some park with minimal lighting.

    The “please consider” is perhaps in vain, the careful and caring dog owners would anyway, and those inconsiderate ones won’t. Always worth a try though, passive aggressive signs can work.

    Remember I mentioned that Nathan was in charge of navigating? He found the muddiest path in Norfolk to walk down in Norwich City Centre, which isn’t generally known for its muddy paths. I didn’t complain though.

    After walking miles through a sea of mud, we decided that a road might be nice. This is the Norfolk Regiment War Memorial, located near to Mousehold Heath, and I’ll take a better photo in the day as this warrants that.

    The Rishi Indian, which was the Duke of Norfolk pub between 1938 and 2009, re-opening as a restaurant in 2011.

    We then popped into the Co-operative, and their beer selection wasn’t entirely dreadful. But, I wasn’t sufficiently tempted and I couldn’t be much bothered to carry it. Tonight didn’t feel like a drinking night, although I suspect the next walk might well have a few craft beer delights along the way.

    I could though be bothered to carry my five custard doughnuts for 21p that I found in the reduced section. Not that I had to carry them for long if I’m being honest, they were very moreish.

    Nathan, who is much more decadent than me, splashed out 34p on sausage rolls. We had been intending to get chips, but this seemed satisfactory under the circumstances.

    The third stop was the B&Q car park. It’s not ideal is it? But, we have to get walk training in for the LDWA 100, so this is as good a place as any. There were a fair few people around at B&Q, but we couldn’t much complain about that whilst standing in the middle of their car park. On the bright side, we walked past nearly no other pedestrians, just a few joggers.

    Walking back into Norwich city centre, these are the houses looking out onto St. Augustine’s Church.

    Our fourth location, which was sort of lined up, this is St. George’s Street.

    I faffed about taking photos of this willow tree, located by the River Wensum.

    St. Andrew’s Hall and Blackfriars’ Hall, the scene for one of my highlights of the year, Norwich Beer Festival held at the end of October every year. Fingers crossed that this year’s can go ahead, I’m missing doing my annual volunteering effort at glasses and tokens.

    Tombland road works, there were toilets here, but they’ve been removed. I had expected the council to be building another car park, but they’re creating some open space (which will likely happen to have cars parked on it if the council get their way). The council spent some money a couple of years ago putting in traffic lights for cyclists, but they’ve been ripped out.

    And our fifth location and we could have had much worse than Norwich Cathedral Close which looked rather beautiful in the fading light. Incidentally, it was actually pretty dark, my phone was in night setting and the images look much lighter than the reality.

    St. Ethelbert’s Gate, built in 1316 and still maintaining its beauty.

    And I couldn’t resist a photo of Norwich Cathedral, taken from under the Erpingham Gate.

    That concluded this little adventure, which we did at quite a fast pace. Given how quickly the whole evening went, it’s given us some more confidence about the 100, that if we can just gossip and complain about our friends for 40 hours or so (this is quite likely) then we might just get round. Well, maybe.

  • Norwich History by Parish : St. Martin at Palace

    Norwich History by Parish : St. Martin at Palace

    And a new little project that Jonathan and I are undertaking because this lockdown is clearly here for at least a few more weeks. It’s a bit niche (our project I mean, not the lockdown), I’ll accept that, but there we go. Effectively, it’s walking around Norwich, ancient parish by ancient parish and seeing what is there now compared to a map from the 1880s (the map above is from 1789, but the one from the 1880s is more detailed, which is why we used that). There’s a PDF of these boundaries to provide some extra background to this whole project. Our first parish was St. Helen’s and this is the neighbouring parish of St. Martin at Palace.

    The precise ward boundaries are in the PDF above, but this is the area of Norwich that we had a little meander around.

    This is an area that neither Jonathan or I were aware of, despite my having walked by it hundreds of times. It’s located in front of the courts complex in Norwich and it’s the former site of the Tabernacle. This church, which held 1,000 people, was opened in 1753 and there’s plenty of information about the history of the building at https://ukwells.org/wells/the-tabernacle-norwich.

    The 200th anniversary of the building wasn’t the most fortunate, as it was entirely demolished in 1953 as it had fallen into a state of disrepair. The demolition was perhaps a mistake, this would have remained an interesting and quirky building if it had been allowed to stand. George Plunkett has a photo of what it looked like in 1941 and to give an idea of where it stood, that kerb on the bottom right hand side of the photo is where the Adam and Eve pub is located today.

    Nearly nothing remains of the Tabernacle, but this now quite damaged tablet is visible in the area where the house next to the tabernacle stood.

    Jonathan noticed a giant rat just before I decided I needed to have a look at this grave, but I braved the area anyway. There is very little I won’t brave for the sake of historical investigation. Well, not snakes though, I wouldn’t have gone in here if it had been ridden with snakes.

    This whole area of land is now used by the courts, but 100 years ago this was the site of a large gas works. The road in the foreground is modern, but at this end it follows the route of the old World’s End Lane. The area to the left is now just left empty, but this is where it fronts onto Bishopgate today, although the buildings that George Plunkett took a photo of in 1936 have been demolished. I’m really not sure that the courts need such a large car park, there’s definitely space for a Greggs or something here.

    This might not be much to look at, but underneath here is the Norman House (https://www.norwich360.com/normanhouse.html). I visited here on a Heritage Open Day, it’s well worth going to see for those who can, and I’ll put photos up in due course from when I went. Upstairs in the court area there’s also the Arminghall Arch.

    This is the Bishop’s Gate (and is where the street Bishopgate gets its name, although I think most people would guess that) which is Grade I listed and was constructed in around 1436. Just behind it is the new Bishop’s Palace, but this was also the entrance to the old Bishop’s Palace, today part of Norwich School.

    And I have managed never to notice this sizeable building which is attached to the Bishop’s Gate. This is a medieval barn and granary, although it was much changed in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries and is now offices. This also leads to the area where St Matthew the Apostle’s church once stood, long since demolished. The former churchyard, which was formerly left as a park, has now been built on by the council.

    St. Martin’s Vicarage, serving the church that this parish takes its name from and is located opposite, St. Martin’s at Palace Plain. The building dates to the middle of the nineteenth century, although there was another building here before that.

    St. Martin’s at Palace Plain church, which ceased to be used for services in 1971 and was later converted to be used by the Probation Service. It’s now used by the Norwich Historic Churches Trust as their base, and access is encouraged (well, not at the moment, but it will be again when normality resumes). There’s a George Plunkett photo of the interior from 1938, it’s quite a charming and well-ordered church.

    When the building was being converted to better suit its new office usage, which as an aside was done quite sensitively, there was an archaeological dig underneath the floor. This discovered that there were once two Saxon wooden churches on this site, with the foundations of the current church dating from the eleventh century. Most of the current structure dates to the fifteenth century, although following a little incident in the 1840s when the nave and chancel fell down (which wasn’t ideal), with a Victorian restoration of the structure. The slum clearances of the 1930s swept away much of the church’s congregation, so it did well to manage to survive as a working parish church until the beginning of the 1970s.

    The chancel wall, with the graves having been removed from their original place and shoved up against the church.

    A garage type arrangement, visible on the left of the photo, has been inserted under the churchyard. This road is now private access to the courts, but it was once the end of World’s End Lane, so effectively the church site was in the middle of a traffic island.

    The parish boundary takes in territory across the River Wensum, requiring a walk over Whitefriars Bridge. I’m not sure why it does this, I assume it was some medieval way of trying to balance out the population sizes between churches.

    All that remains of the Anchorite House, part of the Whitefriars Monastery, which stood here between 1256 and 1538.

    When younger, I thought that this was the National Coal Board building, which isn’t perhaps a bad guess. It’s actually the premises of Norwich Corrugated Board (well, Smurfit Kappa now, which goes to show that putting a company name on a building in brick isn’t perhaps ideal when the ownership changes) in what is an unusually large manufacturing building still in the centre of the city. More about this in the parish we visited the week after….

    The corner area here now has a modern building on it, but this was the site of a shoe factory a century ago. The street here is now known as Whitefriars, although it has historically been known as Cowgate. When the council smashed through the area with their new road, it split Cowgate into two, hence why this section has now been given the new Whitefriars name.

    This is Whitefriars Bridge, which has also historically been known as St. Martin’s Bridge. It was first constructed in around 1110, but this story is best told by the formidable George Plunkett (and he has a photo of the bridge from 1933):

    “Whitefriars Bridge is one of several in Norwich rebuilt during the 20c. Formerly known as St Martin’s bridge, it is first mentioned in a grant made by King Henry I to Bishop Herbert de Losinga shortly after 1100. In 1290 it was washed away by a great flood, and there are records of it having to be rebuilt at different times throughout the centuries. The earlier ones would have been wooden constructions; during Kett’s rebellion in 1549, we are told, the bridge was deliberately demolished with the dual purpose of impeding the rebels and using its timbers to strengthen the nearby city gates. In 1591 a more permanent edifice was built of stone, with a single pointed arch. This survived until replaced by the present bridge designed by Arthur E.Collins, City Engineer, and built by unemployed labour under a skilled foreman. It is of concrete reinforced by 1.5 inch steel bars and faced with mica quartz and white cement. The first half was opened to traffic on 19th February 1925. Its span of about 80 feet is some 50 feet wider than that of its predecessor.

    It was said at the time that the stones of the old bridge would be marked in order that it could be re-erected on a different site, but this was never done. Several suggestions have been put forward as to their fate, one of the least plausible being “that they happened to fall into a wherry as it passed under the bridge” and were conveyed by water to Wroxham and Horning to be used as foundations for riverside bungalows. It sees more likely that some at least were taken from the bridge to the Corporation Depot at Infirmary Square (now Starling Rd), and were later moved to another store at St Martin at Oak Wall Lane, finally ending up as foundations for roadworks on Aylsham Rd.”

    Now known as Quayside, this row of houses facing the river are around 100 years old. Although it wouldn’t have been possible at the time, there’s a path now along the river for those want to walk along it, a project which must have showed considerable foresight to establish.

    Pyes Yard, which has also been known as Fyes Yard and Pyes Court. In 1938, there was a slum clearance of the 17 houses down here, so everything of historic interest down to the river is lost. George Plunkett took a photo shortly before the area was condemned, which might have today made for some rather beautiful townhouses with a little (well, quite a lot) of modernisation.

    The old signage to the yard.

    The buildings facing Palace Plain have survived, even if the yards behind them have now been taken down. The white building on the left is 1 and 2 Palace Plain, originally built in the seventeenth century, then used as a shop before more recently being incorporated into an office building. The white building in the centre of the photo is what is historically known as the White Lion pub which has been a licensed premises from the mid eighteenth century and which was originally built in the sixteenth century as a residential property. When the courts were opened in 1985, the pub name was changed to the Wig and Pen, perhaps to tempt the wealthy lawyers and judges over. The red brick building on the right of the photo is Cotman House, originally built in the eighteenth century as a residential property.

    Cotman House is so named as John Sell Cotman (1782-1842) lived at the property. He was one of the artists who was part of the Norwich School of Painters, one of the first local art movements in the UK. The group was originally led by John Chrome, before Cotman took over to keep the informal movement going, although it fell apart a bit when he moved to London.

    The back of what was Busseys, the Ford car dealership, whose city centre land no doubt just became worth far more for building than it did for selling cars. The street that runs behind the back of these buildings, connecting Bedding Lane to Pigg Lane, is Joseph Lancaster Way.

    I’m not entirely confident that I know why this modern street has been given this name, so I’ll have to make a guess. The area behind Busseys was once a school and there is a Joseph Lancaster who was important in the nineteenth century for the establishment of more modern educational methods. He’s known for the phrase “a place for everything and everything in its place”, which makes him sound rather organised…. Anyway, I’ll probably find out that it’s been named after some local councillor, but that’s the best reasoning I’ve got as to the naming of the street.

    The building in the centre is 17 Palace Street, which dates from the eighteenth century, although the range stretching back a little at the rear is from the seventeenth century. The building next to it is modern and is where the entrance to Busseys once was, and George Plunkett has a photo of that from 1987.

    That concluded the day’s historical activities, we then went to try Ron’s Chips.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 284, 285 and 286

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 284, 285 and 286

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…. And to catch up after getting behind with these posts, and because I’m getting towards the end of the book, I’m doing three days at once now. How lovely….

     

    Red Lattice

    One of Grose’s more concise definitions, simply “a public house”. This phrase was in usage from the sixteenth century until around the mid nineteenth century and it’s a descriptive term, as many pubs used to have red latticework at their frontage. There are no pubs today with this as their name, although Greens Dictionary of Slang notes that there was one at Butcher’s Row, located off of the Strand in London.

    Google Ngram shows how the phrase fell out of usage, likely perhaps as pubs stopped have such red latticework and it all became less relevant.

     

    Red Letter Day

    Grose refers to this as “a saint’s day or holiday, marked in the calendars with red letters. Red letter men: Roman Catholics: from their observation of the saint days marked in red letters”. Although this practice has been happening since Roman times, the common usage has likely evolved from the late medieval religious manuscripts, with the phrase being used since at least the seventeenth century. The Wikipedia page on this subject also has a list of the days of the year when judges of the English High Court wear their scarlet robes, a concept that I hadn’t been aware of.

    Despite a company being founded recently with the same name which got some media publicity for various reasons, Google Ngram suggests that the phrase was much more commonly used in the early twentieth century.

     

    Remember Parson Melham

    It’d be remiss of me not to mention something that Grose writes about Norfolk and his definition is “drink about: a Norfolk phrase”. Not that I can add much to it or establish who Parson Melham was, although ‘drink about’ just means to be rather drunk. A letter was written to the Illustrated London News in February 1857 asking for the origins of Grose’s definition, but it doesn’t seem that anyone was able to respond. Whoever this Parson Melham was though, he sounds an interesting character.

  • Norwich – Barrett’s Fish and Chips

    Norwich – Barrett’s Fish and Chips

    Whilst meandering near to the Reepham Road on a random walk, I thought that I’d pop in here as the chip shop was well reviewed. It takes its name from Noel Barrett who owned and operated these premises for some decades, but there’s a new family now managing the shop. Incidentally, I’m not entirely taken by that signage, feels a bit generic to me.

    Anyway, the service here was marvellous, and that’s evident in the reviews I read as well. One reviewer wrote, and wasn’t being sarcastic, that he refers to the owners as “Mr and Mrs Smiler”, which seems a suitable name given the friendly welcome that I received. It’s always nice to get a bit of welcoming enthusiasm, especially on a drab day.

    The chips costs £1.80, which is a little higher than the average, but hardly anything to become overly irate about. And another of my complaints about not accepting cards is true here, although I was pre-prepared on this occasion so as not to be deprived of chips. Anyway, the packaging was rather thrifty, but the chips were suitably hot, firm on the exterior and cooked appropriately, just what I was hoping for. So, all rather lovely.

  • GeoGuessr (Norwich Version) – Walk 1

    GeoGuessr (Norwich Version) – Walk 1

    I already have a better explanation (well, longer explanation anyway) for this plan. In essence, whilst lockdown is on, I need to find ways of walking nearby to Norwich in quiet areas for my LDWA 100 training. So, I’m using GeoGuessr to pick out five random locations within a certain area which I’ve defined and then walking to them, to see what kind of story I can uncover.

    Pointless? Well, yes, it is a bit. But it’s good exercise and I’m hoping to always see something new or uncover a different part of Norwich. And I’ve got Liam, Nathan and Jonathan signed up to do these walks with me as well (separately as the maximum group size is two), so I won’t have any shortage of opportunities to meander around Norwich.

    Anyway, the five locations randomly selected using GeoGuessr are in the map above. I used Komoot to draw a line between them, although I didn’t always follow it if something else looked interesting nearby. And, I accept this isn’t the most exciting walking adventure possible, but it’s about all that’s safe to do at the moment, so it’ll have to do.

    So, the start of the walk in Barrack Street, which take its name from the Cavalry Barracks which were located here between 1792 and 1963. It’s now the Heathgate estate, which doesn’t seem to get a very good press in the local media.

    The route goes up the big hill of Mousehold, by the entrance to Dragoon Way, a former cavalry way.

    I realised at this point that I hadn’t bothered putting on walking boots, just normal shoes, which wasn’t entirely in keeping with meandering through the mud of Mousehold Heath. This route wasn’t too bad, although there were numerous options that looked quite moist.

    I had a minor problem here, as I needed to get down to the road. And there were some slightly steep elements where I could have fallen down the slope. There’s a road at the back of this photo and people walking along it, so I didn’t wish them to have their walk distracted by the sound of someone falling down a hole. So I found a more manageable route back down to the safety of the pavement and I don’t think anyone noticed. I didn’t go too far into Mousehold Heath based on this experience, sticking to firmer ground.

    This is a quite wonderful building and one of the oldest in the city, at over 900 years old. It’s the city’s lazar house, or leper hospital, founded by the first Bishop of Norwich, Herbert de Losinga. After centuries of helping the ill and poor, it was closed following the Dissolution of the Monasteries and used as a barn. The city was fortunate to have had people who managed to save it from destruction in the early twentieth century and it was restored and turned into a branch library. As yet another appalling decision from the local council, they decided in 2003 to scrap this library and stop free public access to the building. It is now used by a charity to help those with learning difficulties and they no doubt do an admirable job, but it’s a great shame that the usage as a library had to stop.

    This is St. George’s Catholic Church on Sprowston Road. Simon Knott, who writes in detail on Norfolk churches, has an appalling tale about the unfriendliness of this church. I’ve never been turned away from a church and I’d be equally disappointed to be turned away in such a manner. If it was me, I’d be so annoyed that I’d stomp off whilst writing in my mind the letter that I was going to send to the Pope.

    I don’t often see the word ‘Loke’ used in Norwich, another word to describe a road which come to a dead end or a narrow path.

    I don’t have any interest in live music, so this is a pub that holds little relevance to me, but it has a formidable reputation for its work. There was a petition last year to keep this place going and I hope that it can continue, live music is important in pubs (albeit not the ones I visit) and it would be a shame to lose it.

    Now starting to enter Old Catton, this is School Lane and appropriately this is the large former school building. It’s now the Sprowston Diamond Centre, but it was originally built as a school in 1860, soon being extended in 1873.

    The Woodman pub, which I can’t say that I’ve ever been to. it was opened as a pub in the early nineteenth century and there were rumours of its closure a couple of years ago, but it’s still here.

    GEOGUESSR 1 – I haven’t taken a huge amount of care in finding the exact spot of the five GeoGuessr locations in terms of matching up photos. This was the first one in Old Catton, on George Hill.

    One of the things that I wanted to do on these walks was to identify some listed buildings that I’ve never noticed before. This is one, which is The Firs in Old Catton, and it was first constructed in around 1750. It has since been split into four buildings, although apparently the historic eighteenth century interior is intact.

    This is the best non-pub pub sign that I’ve seen.

    Taken over by Enterprise Inns in 2009, so it’s fortunate that it’s still here, this is the Maid’s Head which has been trading since around 1830. Now a Stonegate pub, I’ve never been to it, although perhaps I’ll get back here again to try the real ale (which judging from Whatpub looks a bit generic to be honest).

    This is Catton Park, which wasn’t exactly the busiest today. This land was originally part of Catton Hall, which was built in the 1770s by Charles Buckle. That property is still standing, now owned by Norfolk County Council, but the land can be used by the public. The paths here were quite wet and muddy, but it’s a nice piece of open space.

    Some World War Two history in Old Catton.

    The Old Catton village sign and St. Margaret’s Church.

    Mary Sewell is perhaps better known for being the mother of Anna Sewell, the author of Black Beauty.

    Another listed building, this is the Manor House in Old Catton, built in the sixteenth century and extended in the following century.

    Moving away from Old Catton, I had forgotten about this Greggs on Fifers Lane, although I’ve visited a few times before. It mainly serves the industrial units in the area, and, today it had the delight of my custom.

    And a quick sausage roll, which was entirely delicious.

    Norse Groups is owned by Norfolk County Council and it’s a trading company providing services to local Governments across the country. Their company sign seems to have included random bits of material that they use and I couldn’t work out whether it looked really smart or really tacky.

    The sad end to the Firs pub in Norwich, which closed down in 2009 and was turned into a Tesco. At least the building is still there, but I’d rather that it was in use as a pub selling decadent craft beer.

    GEOGUESSR 2 – OK, I’ve cheated here (and I can hear Nathan tutting). The actual route that got selected for me was on the NDR, which isn’t accessible to pedestrians as they annoy Norfolk County Council. So, I was going to just get a photo of it from the nearest point, but that would have involved a huge detour. So, I thought I’d get a photo of it from Norwich Airport, but it was all a bit misty. So, this is the memorial at Norwich Airport to RAF Horsham St Faith, and that’s doing me as the second point.

    Well, it was open, so I went in, as if I’m traipsing out to these places I might as well take advantage of the situation.

    I’ll write about this elsewhere in more detail, but the service here was welcoming, the prices were OK (although not particularly cheap) and the chips were delicious.

    Sad to see the Whiffler, a JD Wetherspoon pub, all closed up. This was, until last year, their car park, but to encourage social distancing and to give them more space, they opened it up as an external seating area. I hope that change of use continues in the future.

    I noticed on the side of this sign it has printed on it “Do Not Display on Drive-Thru Lane”. I suspect this is because it mentions their cheap products on the Saver Menu (the ones I keep buying) and they don’t actually want customers to be reminded of them at the point of ordering.

    I’ve been meaning to visit this, hence my detour along the Boundary Road, it’s the boundary cross which was erected in the fifteenth century to mark where the King’s Way crossed the Norwich City boundary.

    I was slightly annoyed at this. I saw a sign to “new cemetery” and I’m intrigued by cemeteries, so went to have a look. It transpired that this was the back of St. Mary’s Church in Hellesdon, which I hadn’t initially realised. And, the sign was a lie, as there’s a bloody great big gate which stops pedestrians getting in. Looking at old maps, there were footpaths here which allowed people to access the rear of the church, but they never made it through to the Definitive Map and the church has taken the opportunity to restrict access. Or, at least, I couldn’t find access, hence the above photo. It’s also clear that people have been trying to gain access and the fence there has been added to stop them. Personally, if I had a church (which I don’t, and I don’t intend to acquire one), I’d quite like people to go in it.

    Back on the route that Nathan and I undertook a few weeks ago.

    GEOGUESSR 3 – this is the reason that I went out this far, to get to Gunton Lane.

    This is the Marlpit Community Garden, a seven acre plot of land that was once part of Lower Earlham Farm. Individuals now use the land for communal growing and there’s a bee area, footpaths, orchards and wild flowers.

    To get back to the city centre, I ignored the Komoot suggested route and just went along Marriott’s Way, which was much quieter than I had expected.

    One of the sculptures along Marriott’s Way, a former railway line. There’s a sculpture every mile along the route, this is the second one along which was installed in 2009, designed by John Behm and Nigel Barnett.

    The former inspection platforms at the engine shed at the now closed Norwich City Station.

    I’m always sad to see railway lines closed, this is the site of Norwich City Station which closed to passengers in 1959.

    This is a listed structure, a urinal which was designed by AE Collins, the city engineer, in 1919. It’s the oldest surviving concrete urinal in Britain and the city council now use it for people to graffiti on.

    The walk back into Norwich covers areas that I’ve written about already, but I hadn’t noticed these flood level markers at New Mills Yard before.

    Some information about St Giles’s Street that I hadn’t noticed before.

    GEOGUESSR 4 – the fourth location was Norwich City Hall, a building that destroyed much local heritage when it was constructed in 1938. I quickly popped into Tesco on Westlegate at this point to buy their reduced sandwiches…..

    Walking past St. Julian’s Church, which I wrote about the other day.

    Going onto King Street, this is Dragon’s Hall, sadly no longer open to the public, but this was a museum that wasn’t allowed to continue. It’s a Grade I listed building, with much of the current structure dating to the fifteenth century, although there is evidence of a ninth century structure having been here before. I hope that this building can in future be repurposed and brought back into public use, as it’s currently been taken over by the National Centre for Writing.

    Work has started this week on the development of the former Ferry Boat Inn site by the River Wensum. I don’t see why the developers couldn’t have restored the pub element in their project, but apparently the building was too damaged (although not too damaged to allow its conversion into two residential properties). It’s positive to see this area being brought back into usage though, it’s been derelict for over a decade now.

    GEOGUESSR 5 – and the final point of the day, Norwich City Football Club. The club was founded in 1902 and they’ve played at this Carrow Road site since 1935.

    And that was the end of the walk. It was fourteen miles and took me just under five hours, although I did keep getting distracted along the way, hence the slow pace. I’m not sure that there’s any great unifying story for me to tell here, but I discovered some things that I didn’t know existed in Norwich. And I like this element of random, it gives a purpose to an expedition, as otherwise there’s no way I’d have been bothered to have walked so far.

  • Norwich – Ron’s Fish and Chips

    Norwich – Ron’s Fish and Chips

    I haven’t been to Ron’s Fish and Chips on the market before, not least because I have been rather obsessed with Grosvenor for two decades. I visited a different chip shop on Norwich Market a few months ago and it was, to be honest, a really unimpressive effort from Norwich City Council who operate the market. There was near zero Covid-19 compliance and the chip shop (not Ron’s) in question was failing to operate with any care.

    The picture today was really very different, and everything feels very safe and well managed. The one-way system is in operation, individual units no longer have customers standing and eating there and everything seems clean and organised. A polite member of security staff was explaining that there is no eating anywhere near the stalls, customers need to take food just a short walk away. All very professional, I’m suitably impressed.

    Back to Ron’s. I’ve muttered and moaned (but not in a very grumpy manner….) about chip shops not taking cards, it’s just a faff to be forced to use cash. Ron’s isn’t one of those, they have a card machine (although I had come armed with coins just in case). They also have a very friendly member of staff serving, a clean operation and rather cheap prices. My battered sausage and chips came to £1.80, which I thought was really quite acceptable. The chips were hot and tasted sufficiently chip like for my needs (nice and firm on the exterior, fluffy inside and with plenty of smaller chips), with the batter on the sausage having some depth of flavour, I was again impressed.

    So, all told, this is now one of my favourite chip shop locations in Norwich. Which will mean I’ll have to pop back a few times, but I think I can manage that.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 281, 282 and 283

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day 281, 282 and 283

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the current health crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…. And to catch up after getting behind with these posts, and because I’m getting towards the end of the book, I’m doing three days at once now. How lovely….

     

    Ralph Spooner

    Annoyingly, I can’t find out anything more about this, simply defined by Grose as “a fool”. I’m not convinced that this phrase was much in usage, and he likely just took it from Nathan Bailey’s 1736 canting dictionary. The word ‘spoon’ was used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to describe someone as a fool, although I’m not sure what they had against Ralph….

     

    Rank

    This is defined by Grose as “stinking, rammish, ill-flavoured; also strong, great. A rank knave; a rank coward: perhaps the latter may allude to an ill savour caused by fear”. On the second part of that definition, the phrase “rank coward” is still in usage, but its original meaning of being a stinking coward is perhaps forgotten.

    Back to the main part of the definition, what might be the most interesting element of this is that the word remains in use today. I suspect that at least a few people hearing a younger person use the phrase “that’s rank” might query their use of English, but it has had this meaning of something disgusting since around the late seventeenth century.

    It’s derived from the old English word ‘ranc’, meaning something strong or powerful. That changed over time to something that was strong and unpleasant, with the alternate spelling ‘ranck’ being more common for a period.

     

    Reader Merchants

    And here we perhaps verge into some slight anti-semitism, this being defined as “pickpockets, chiefly young Jews, who play about the Bank to steal the pocket-books of persons who have just received their dividends there”. A pocket-book is a wallet, and a reader was also another word for a wallet, hence the origin of the phrase. There was another similar phrase at the time, ‘reader hunter’, which meant the same thing.

  • Attlebridge – St. Andrew’s Church

    Attlebridge – St. Andrew’s Church

    I quite like the Attlebridge village sign, it seems to suggest that the church is something similar to St Michael’s Mount, towering above the local countryside.

    And here it is, on top of its own hill. But, it’s Norfolk, so I suppose that is quite high. Anyway, Attlebridge was a very different place fifty years ago, the main road to Fakenham thundered by in front of the church and it was a short walk to the nearby railway station. Sadly, that’s gone, with the Marriott’s Way railway line swept away, although the village is likely pleased that a bypass has meant that cars no longer flood through the village.

    The church was first built here in what was likely the end of the eleventh century, but the nave was reconstructed in the thirteenth century. The porch is sixteenth century, but perhaps from before the Reformation. George Plunkett has a photo of how the church looked in 1939, taken just a couple of weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War.

    The north aisle visible above is fourteenth century. There is a stair turret on the side of the tower, although it only reaches the second stage. Some documentation provided in the church mentions that this was inaccessible by the early twentieth century and it was only reopened in 1984.

    The tower is thirteenth or fourteenth century, likely replacing a round tower from the eleventh century. The Victorians spent some money here as the church had become a little derelict by the middle of the nineteenth century, although the Norfolk Chronicle reports in 1903 that funds had been raised to deal with the “tower which has for some time been in a precarious position”.

    There’s a niche at the base of the tower that was perhaps previously a window.

    The Priest’s Door has been filled in, with some rather big lumps of flint, at some stage in the early nineteenth century.

    There some character here, with the old door and the niche on the left hand side.

    Located in that niche, this stone figure was found dumped in the river in the 1960s and it was thought that it might be from some form of religious structure, especially as it was nearby to a hermitage side. It is though likely from Attle Bridge, from which the village takes its name, which was reconstructed in 1913. Chances are a workman just thought the stone looked a bit old and dumped it in the river, so a rather less mystical history than might have been hoped for.

    The rather old door, I’m unsure of its age, although the arch of the door is likely from the fourteenth century rebuild. I’m still intrigued with the concept of just how many people have crossed the threshold of this door over the centuries, for all manner of weddings, funerals, baptisms and sermons.

    Ignoring the restorations of the Victorians, this still feels like a medieval church. Peaceful, slightly damp, and calm, time hasn’t much moved on here. Thanks to Campbell Wodehouse, the vicar here in the late 1850s, there were numerous talks relating to the RNLI, which at that stage was in its relative infancy. The Norfolk News reported in 1860 that the organisation wasn’t that well heard of inland, but Wodehouse had encouraged numerous churches to become involved with their good work.

    The chancel. I put my name in the visitor book, the first in a few months.

    The north aisle.

    The church tower which is blocked off, likely to prevent people meandering up the stairs.

    The church’s font, dating to 1866.

    I’m not entirely sure why the church has two fonts, this one is located at the entrance to the chancel.

    There would have been some rood stair arrangement in the wall here, but that’s a bit complex for me to work out….

    An archaeological dig took place in 1989 in the field just to the north of the church, which found evidence of Romano-British settlement. Since the church is on raised ground that would have surely been used, there must have been something located on the site of where the church is now getting on for perhaps not far off two millennia. That’s not a bad heritage to have.

  • GeoGuessr – The Joy of the Random…..

    GeoGuessr – The Joy of the Random…..

    A couple of years ago, Nathan and myself set ourselves a plan to use GeoGuessr to pick a random location in the UK and then just go to it. The plan was that everywhere had a story and that the journey there would be part of that. We completed two of these and were pleased at how they turned out, with our third location already planned. Unfortunately, the situation meant in 2020 that we never got to go to that location, that’s been postponed for a future date when we can get there. It’s an awkward place to get, so it’s not one that can be quickly reached in a day.

    But, undeterred, we’ve formulated a plan to do a version using a Norfolk specific map on GeoGuessr, visiting five random locations in Norfolk in one day using only public transport. Again, as of early February 2021, we can’t do this either as random trips on public transport aren’t allowed, but hopefully lockdown will lighten and we can get going with this plan soon enough. Not least because these challenges involve a fair chunk of walking, primarily because public transport in Norfolk is pretty dreadful. And that walking is useful (well, essential), we’re walking the LDWA 100 in May….

    So, I need a new interim plan until lockdown is loosened, one which ensures I am getting enough exercise for that LDWA 100, but without going on public transport or needlessly walking where others are likely to be. So, I’m switching this plan down to just a Norwich specific map on GeoGuessr. Users can create their own area, so I’ve created an area which is something like within what I would call the outer ring road (I don’t think that’s what it’s actually called).

    This is my area, with a potential 1,400 locations. Some will be easy to reach, others a bloody nightmare, although that’s half the excitement and way of getting my walk mileage up a bit. I shall be trying to rope other people into this plan (so far Nathan, Jonathan and Liam have been dragged into this), I mean it’ll be a lovely day out (well, maybe). Five random locations in the area selected in advance, which can be walked in any order and there’s my own mini challenge. Not exactly riveting I accept, but it’ll do…..

    I’ve added in my own extra challenges to this whole arrangement to liven it up. If one of the five locations is within 150 metres of a chip shop or a church, then I’m going to it. And if it’s within 150 metres of a pub, then I’ll go to it (or, more realistically it’ll be shut so I’ll have to take some delicious craft beer to have instead, as it’s important to support the brewing industry in some form). I’ll also be diverting slightly to ensure I see five listed buildings that I haven’t visited before as well as finding routes which aren’t likely to be busy.

    So, I still think that any adventure such as this will enable me to find out something new about the local area and there’s always a story to be told of some sort. I’ll use Komoot to plot the route between the five points, it seems to do a nice job of finding interesting walking routes and not just putting me on main roads. How lovely   🙂

    WALK 1 (just me)

    WALK 2 (with Nathan, using a smaller map area)

    WALK 3 (with Nathan, using a smaller map area)

    WALK 4 (with Liam)

  • London – Greenwich (Borough of) – National Maritime Museum (Nelson’s Death Coat)

    London – Greenwich (Borough of) – National Maritime Museum (Nelson’s Death Coat)

    This is “one of the most iconic items in our collections” the National Maritime Museum note, the uniform which Admiral Horatio Nelson was wearing when he died. Vice Admiral Nelson was killed on 21 October 1805 during the Battle of Trafalgar, when a bullet fired from the French ship Redoutable hit his left shoulder. The damage done was fatal and Nelson was aware of this immediately and he’s quoted as saying “Hardy, I do believe they have done it at last, my backbone is shot through”. He was carried off to get medical help, stopping en route whilst he gave advice to others whilst the battle continued, dying around three hours after he was injured.

    It was suggested to Nelson that he perhaps shouldn’t wear medals on board the ship as it made him stand out to the opposing forces, who could target him. However, removing them was a slight faff as they were sewn on and such was the inaccuracy of weaponry at this time, Nelson didn’t seem to fear much. The ones on display here are those which were on the coat when he died, but they themselves were replicas.

    It’s possible to see on the coat a hole where the bullet hit Nelson on the shoulder, making this a slightly grim exhibit, albeit one of national importance. There are also blood marks on the sleeve, which aren’t particularly visible, although it’s thought that these are likely that of Nelson’s secretary, John Scott, who had died about an hour before. Scott’s body’s had been thrown into the sea but blood remained on the deck and Nelson fell onto that spot when he was hit.

    The coat was given to Lady Emma Hamilton, who was Nelson’s mistress, but she was in a slight predicament that the Government excluded her from events, and her own husband wasn’t best pleased at this entire situation. She sold the coat in 1814 to help pay off some of her debts and it was later repurchased by Prince Albert, who gave it to Greenwich Hospital.

    Copyright of the Royal Collection Trust

    One of the joys of history is that most things entwine with each other, although that’s sort of literally the case here. The bullet which killed Nelson, along with bits of his coat that got caught up with it, are exhibited at the Queen’s Guard Chamber at Windsor Castle. It was taken from Nelson’s body by William Beatty, the doctor of HMS Victory, who decided that he quite fancied having a souvenir of the whole incident. He wore this locket for the rest of his life, but when he died his family donated it (probably with some relief) to Queen Victoria.

    As an aside, Nelson didn’t want his body chucking overboard as the usual way of getting rid of dead bodies. So, it was Beatty was put Nelson’s body in a barrel of brandy to preserve it whilst the ship set sail back for England. During this period of transportation the gases from the body forced the lid of the barrel off. It’s said that the sailors guarding the barrel were rather surprised by this occurrence….