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  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Fifty-One

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Fifty-One

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    Bulk and File

    Defined by the dictionary as “two pickpockets; the bulk jostles the party to be robbed, and the file does the business”, a reminder of how long distraction robbery has gone on for. The phrase was being used as early as the seventeenth century and its origins are unclear. The bulk likely means the ‘main part’, in the same way that a bulky person could push someone around. The word ‘bulk-monger’ also dates from this period, meaning a prostitute who converses with pickpockets.

  • Norwich – St. Ethelbert’s Gate

    Norwich – St. Ethelbert’s Gate

    St. Ethelbert’s Gate is one of the two main entrances to Norwich Cathedral close, the other being the Erpingham Gate. It was first constructed in 1316, but the reason for its being dates back to the thirteenth century.

    It’s fair to say that the monks in the cathedral didn’t entirely always get on with the ruffians that formed the population of Norwich at the time. There was a busy market at Tombland, which was perhaps quite raucous from time to time with its fairs and parties.

    At this time, the church was also powerful and the monks were conscious that they exerted significant influence. The fairs had been established for the financial benefit of the monks and there were three per year, but instead, the city residents used them to amuse themselves by “displaying goods and animals”. This wasn’t really what the monks had wanted and there’s some suggestion that the residents of the city were trying to best to irritate the monks as best they could.

    Arguments aside, this was all going marvellously until 1272 when the monks managed to kill some Norwich residents, which perhaps wasn’t their best idea. The legal system swung into action, but the church had consistory courts (on a side note, Norfolk Record Office still have the papers from these courts and they’re well worth looking at) and so they were quite content for, well, the monks to deal with the action of the monks.

    The population of Norwich didn’t take well to this little arrangement, so they argued about it with the monks, who promptly locked the city gate. Perhaps the monks may have got away with this if it wasn’t for them employing mercenary soldiers who were accused of amusing themselves by firing at passers-by. To be fair, if I was walking in Tombland and was attacked by a representative of a monk, I would have been displeased.

    And, the people of Norwich showed their displeasure in quite a violent way. They set fire to the whole cathedral and its attached buildings, causing significant damage to the structure and destroyed buildings such as St. Ethelbert’s church. They also pinched the nice things of the cathedral, such as vestments, they damaged books and killed some monks, with some other monks fleeing.

    I’ve never found that violence such as this is the answer, whatever the population of the city might have thought at the time. But anyway, in 1272 Norwich isn’t looking in the best of shapes at this time. There’s now a burnt-out cathedral, angry monks, angry residents and a not inconsiderable amount of tension in the air. It was time for King Edward I to come to Norwich to see what his subjects were getting up to.

    King Edward I, by most accounts, wasn’t best pleased. He blamed the city’s residents, which was perhaps more tied in with the power and influence of the church, but that’s a different matter. He fined the wealthy of the city and for the riff-raff, or “the inferior sort” as they were termed at the time, well, he just executed some of them. To balance things out a bit, he imprisoned some of the monks (although not for long, he was already worried about the Pope not being happy) and ordered that everyone should now try and get on. He actually just installed wardens to supervise the matter, but the intention was that everyone should get on.

    To try and resolve the situation that now existed, in 1275, it was decided that there had to be some financial payments made to settle the matter. This included the construction of a new gate, since the city dwellers had smashed the old one down, and it was to be dedicated to St. Ethelbert since the church with this dedication had also been knocked down.

    And here’s what they built, with everything finished off nicely in 1316. Looking out towards Tombland, the room above the gateway was once used as a chapel but is now a classroom that I’ve visited several times. The entire structure was repaired in 1815 under the supervision of William Wilkins, an architect who also built the city’s new prison in the castle.

    The Lierne vaulting on the roof of the gateway, with the walls on either side looking somewhat battered now. Unfortunately, the location of the gate means that it has to remain open for road traffic, with pedestrians pushed towards the sides. On the left-hand side is a doorway which is an entrance to the room above, although another more practical set of stairs has been constructed which reaches the room from the next-door building.

    Incidentally, the monks and the city residents didn’t settle their differences and the arguments persisted for decades. But at least the monks had a lovely new gate to use, and it’s a fine structure which the city is still fortunate to have. So something positive came from the rioting.

  • Norwich – St Mary the Less Church

    Norwich – St Mary the Less Church

    This is the only one of Norwich’s medieval churches, and the city has a lot, which I haven’t visited. It didn’t open on Flintspiration weekend a couple of years ago when the others did, so it’s something of a challenge to see inside. The heritage bodies have struggled to get their representatives inside and it was last opened to the public back in 2010. There is though an information board, visible above, which draws attention to the gateway, as otherwise, it’d be easy to miss it.

    The church was originally built in the thirteenth century with extensions in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it became redundant during the mid-sixteenth century. Used by the Dutch migrants as a trading hall, it returned to religious use in 1637 when it became a French Protestant church. This state of affairs existed until 1832 when it became a Swedish Lutheran church, then in 1869 it became a Catholic church once again, just as it had initially been. After the Second World War, it stopped being used as a church and was instead rented out as a storage facility and community building.

    This is the doorway that leads from Queen Street, with the church having been rather hemmed in by buildings on all sides. That graffiti is annoying (and has been there for at least three years), but most people are unlikely to notice it since this isn’t exactly a door that’s ever open. As ever, George Plunkett has a photo of the interior of the church.

  • Streets of Norwich – St. Augustine’s Street (West Side)

    Streets of Norwich – St. Augustine’s Street (West Side)

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    This is how St. Augustine’s Street looked at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Starting in this post just with the buildings on the west side of the street.

    The road starts with St. Augustine’s Church, but more on this in another post as I went on a tour of this rather lovely church and have plenty more photos. But, what is perhaps of most obvious note about the building is its brick tower, which dates to the seventeenth century and is the only one of its type in Norwich.

    This is the entrance to Winecoopers Arms Yard, the building that juts out is the former pub of the same name (without the word yard at the end obviously). The buildings on the far left, next to the trees, are mostly all listed and were constructed in the early nineteenth century as shops and residences.

    The building on the right-hand side (and indeed those attached to it along the street) are listed, as they’re seen as important examples of early nineteenth shopfronts. The corner building itself was once the Sussex Arms public house which traded from the 1850s until it was closed by Bullards in 1963.

    The building in white was the Royal Oak public house, the pub sign was once where there’s a stretch of white wall which looks like it could have a window. The pub had started trading in the late eighteenth century and survived until the late 1960s, when it was converted into a residential property.

    Stretching into Bakers Road, this is the side of the Staff of Life public house. It was opened in the 1830s as a bakery and pub, remaining open until 1971, despite being damaged during the Second World War.

    Not much has really changed on this side of the street, the buildings have changed their uses, but most of them have survived. Some of the yards have been closed off, but again, many of the structures in them remain. The element that has changed the most is that this is no longer an upmarket shopping street, as it was split off from the main shopping area by a clumsy road development that lost Botolph Street. The tone of the street changed and most of the shops closed and the area didn’t have the best of reputations.

  • April 2020 Travel – Thanks Google…..

    April 2020 Travel – Thanks Google…..

    I like getting the monthly e-mail from Google telling me how far that I’ve travelled in the month, it’s a reminder that they can see at all times where I am, but I like looking at the numbers. That flippancy would probably irritate at least some privacy campaigners, but there we go. The data above is for the last four years and it makes me feel happy.

    But, Google reminded me today just what the impact of Covid-19 was on my travel arrangements in April 2020.

    And, yes, this has been my monthly highlight. It’s made for slightly more challenging blogging, I’ve had to start hunting through a lot of older photos and miscellaneous rubbish to amuse myself during the month. And realistically, no-one else.

  • LDWA – Outdoors Fitness and Adventure

    LDWA – Outdoors Fitness and Adventure

    And a very nice little piece in this month’s Outdoors Fitness and Adventure magazine about the 2021 LDWA 100. The photo is the one I sent from Norfolk & Suffolk’s very own Jayne Cook, with the helpful journalist changing the text at the last minute as we finalised where next year’s 100 would actually be held given the impact of Covid-19……

    I’m almost quite excited for this 100…..

  • London – British Museum (Ship Tavern, Great Yarmouth)

    London – British Museum (Ship Tavern, Great Yarmouth)

    I usually visit the British Museum three or four times a year, something which is a little difficult to do with the current virus situation, primarily because it’s shut. However, they’ve placed hundreds of thousands of images on their web-site, so this will have to do me for the moment. The images can be used non-commercially, as long as the British Museum is credited. So, this is their credit.

    I’m not sure that there’s much advertising from pubs at the turn of the nineteenth century surviving, especially not in two languages. But this advertising card in English and German is now in the collection of the British Museum and they acquired it in 1960 from the estate of Sir Ambrose Heal. Heal was a collector of trade cards, and had a large number in his collection, as well being the chairman of Heal’s on Tottenham Court Road, which is still trading.

    The Ship Tavern is though sadly no longer trading, it lasted from the 1760s until 2010, being located next to Row 84 in the town. But there’s something quite captivating about how multi-national the docks and port of Great Yarmouth once were. Indeed, in 1797 this pub had welcomed (I use welcomed slightly loosely here….) Dutch naval prisoners from the Battle of Camperdown. As for William Ungleman who produced these trade cards, he ran the pub between September 1809 and 1819, but I have no idea where he went after that.

  • Brandon – Brandon Railway Station (Again)

    Brandon – Brandon Railway Station (Again)

    A couple of years ago I posted about Brandon railway station, a pretty and quaint station which is a little similar in style to nearby Thetford railway station. Thetford is partially closed up, but Brandon is entirely closed up and the station buildings are falling down. And now there is a plan to demolish them entirely, which has seemingly been passed by the local council.

    Much as Greater Anglia annoy me occasionally, I’ve still been very impressed generally about their responsibility towards their railway infrastructure. But, it looks to me that there’s been a slight failure of communication here from Greater Anglia, who have presented nearly nothing about what they’re doing to mitigate the historic loss if the station buildings are demolished.

    I post on this blog quite a lot about the dreadful mistakes made in the past, indeed, just yesterday I whittled on about the demolition of a street in Norwich which was turned into a beautiful car park. And here, in Brandon, that’s what Greater Anglia wants to build. A car park that apparently needs the demolition of the station buildings, even though building a car park wouldn’t require their demolition so that all seems something of a misnomer. Perhaps the building is too far gone, but there’s no talk about saving any interiors, about keeping any part of the structure, about keeping the facade or indeed anything.

    There’s a news release from Greater Anglia which really seeks to shift the blame onto the Railway Heritage Trust, which strikes me as clever, but unfortunate. The news release seems clumsy to me as well, I’m really not sure that many people reading it are that engaged about improving drainage on the site that could be achieved by demolishing some buildings of not inconsiderable heritage.

    Personally, I think the demolition is something that will be regretted in years, rather than decades, but Greater Anglia does perhaps owe it to the public to actually state what they’re doing to preserve what heritage they can, rather than applaud their exciting new car park. Their logic about how it has been falling down for years with nothing being done also perhaps says more about Greater Anglia’s corporate responsibility rather than anything else. They’re spending a million pounds on this project and I’m struggling to see how they can manage to save absolutely none of the heritage in any shape or form with that level of funding.

    To those heritage groups fighting for the railway station, good luck….

  • Narbonne – Eglise Notre-Dame de Lamourguier (and Narbo Via Museum)

    Narbonne – Eglise Notre-Dame de Lamourguier (and Narbo Via Museum)

    This is Eglise Notre-Dame de Lamourguier in Narbonne, a beautiful thirteenth century Gothic church. I visited in 2017, not just because it looked an interesting church, but because it housed nearly 2,000 blocks from the Roman period. They had been used in the construction of the city walls in the sixteenth century and when in the 1860s the walls were taken down, they clearly didn’t know what to do, so they dumped them all in the church. And there they remained until very recently, although fortunately, I saw them in situ.

    When I visited I tried the door and it was shut. I assumed that I had misunderstood the opening times or that they were perhaps a little fluid, so I meandered off, probably slightly grumpy. A staff member then rushed out of the door and said something random in French (it probably wasn’t random to her), which transpired to be her telling me she had forgotten to unlock the doors and had wondered why the museum was quiet. Fortunately, I banged about on the door because I’m slightly clumsy, so she heard me. Very friendly welcome incidentally, I was given a sheet in English telling me what to look out for.

    I accept that this looks like some arrangement that I’ve set up, stacking up thousands of pieces of Roman stone in an historic building.

    Perhaps at first it looked like it might all fall down, but it was in fact all quite safe. Or, at least, I didn’t knock anything over. So, here are some photos of the stone and it’s pretty clear to me now that I’ve forgotten to take a photo of the information sheet, so I have no bloody idea what half of this is. Or indeed any of it. But I know I spent well over an hour looking for the stones the curators thought were of particularly importance.

    I thought that this was quite magical, especially as I was the only person meandering their way around the museum, which was primarily I suspect because the staff member had forgotten to open it.

    One sad thing though, and as usual, I’ve found something to moan about. I visited here in 2017 and I’ve discovered that they’ve moved all this to a brand new museum designed by Foster & Partners. The museum isn’t quite yet open and having looked at the plans that have been published, I completely hate the new building.

    This looks hideous to me, creating a sense of distance between the stones and the visitor, and instead getting them to use a screen to no doubt find out more. They’re stacking up these items up so they can’t been engaged with and it looks like an Amazon warehouse, bright, but not really conducive to a useful visitor experience. If that means you can see the objects up close like at the National Railway Museum stores, then that is quite marvellous, but in the image above the barrier that forces visitors several feet away from the stones is visible. The plan is to split the nearly 2,000 stones that were in the church so they heap a load in a wall which has no relevance to anything, and put hundreds of others of them in a reserve store. A great deal of bloody use they’ll be there.

    This is the other design image. Well, what a lovely cafe the museum will have. Who needs heritage when you can have a lovely cafe?

    I’ve spent a little time trying to find out what the reaction of other people in the locality is, as I tend to have an instant dislike to museums where they put technology ahead of the thing they’re meant to be displaying. I haven’t found much, but what I have found is pretty negative about the presentation of the stones and one person has said they’ve shoved them all behind wire mesh. Anyway, since the museum isn’t open yet and I haven’t visited it in its new location anyway, perhaps it’s all lovely and better than I expected.

    But, I still love how the stones were presented in the Eglise Notre-Dame de Lamourguier, making it one of the most memorable museums that I’ve visited.

  • Streets of Norwich – Nunns Yard

    Streets of Norwich – Nunns Yard

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    I like how the council have placed several of these tablets on the pavement along St. Augustine’s Street, noting where a number of yards are located.

    The yard is now closed off and its named after the Nunn family who ran a number of businesses in this locality in the early nineteenth century. Looking at some old census records for this yard, it’s notable just how many people lived in each household. In one house, the head of which was Charles Coxford, there were seven people in a small property (and some along this street had twice that number), including three lodgers.