I went by the former Norwich Brewdog last night for the first time since it closed and all the signage was removed. It’s a little strange how a building can change its look so quickly, it now gives the impression of being an office building.
I imagine it’ll get let out again by the landlord relatively quickly, it’s a substantial amount of space that has gone through numerous different names over the years. CAMRA notes that it has been known as Hideout, Knowhere, Noir, Indulge, Hogshead, City Ale & Wine Bar, Gundry Whites Cafe Bar, Drummonds and Whites over recent years.
We normally do 2Js to pubs and licensed venues which we feel might surprise and delight us, but this visit was to the local Government hustings being held at Norwich Playhouse.
The debate was introduced by Stephen Crocker, the Chief Executive of Norwich Theatre, and moderated by the editor of the EDP, Richard Porritt (on far left, although I don’t mean that in a political sense). Then we have Steve Morphew (Labour), Nick Taylor (Reform UK), Jan Davis (Green), James Wright (Liberal Democrats) and Andrew Jamieson (Conservative).
There was perhaps one error here from the organisers which is that they ended up with five male middle-aged candidates, which is great, but it didn’t feel very representative. Although the organisers said that they just asked every party to field a representative, there should have perhaps been some more joined up thinking here. James Wright mentioned that as soon as the situation was apparent he made efforts to find a different representative, but it seems they weren’t given enough notice. The issue was brought up by a member of the audience, and Richard Porritt was asked why he had selected two men to ask the first two questions from the audience.
The tickets were free of charge and the venue was around two thirds full. The audience seemed quite well balanced in terms of age, gender and political views, with no one group dominating the arrangement.
Julian had got us tickets on the balcony, which I didn’t even realise existed, and this gentleman was selected to ask a question. The set-up was that every candidate got ninety seconds to introduce themselves, then there were questions from the audience and then every candidate got some time to sum up why people should vote for their party.
Jan Davis.
James Wright.
Andrew Jamieson.
Nick Taylor.
Steve Morphew.
I won’t go into my political thoughts about the candidates as I think it was really useful that they all turned up for a debate such as this. There were interesting questions on the environment, local Government reform, younger people in politics, policing, public transport, care homes, well-being and culture.
One of the candidates seemed a little inexperienced when he bit back at the audience in a way that felt inappropriate, that was perhaps the only low point of the debate. Otherwise the debate was always polite and well mannered, although I always prefer just a little drama. There was a considerable amount of experience from the individuals being questioned and an evident passion for their local communities.
Anyway, this was an enjoyable ninety minutes or so and credit to the organisers for using their space in this manner to further the democratic process. As Stephen Crocker said at the end, the main thing is though to vote.
Everything continues to come down at some pace now, the central core of the buildings around Anglia Square are mostly down and there’s a lot of rubble everywhere.
I’ve written about Cow Tower before when I was wittering on about the parish of St. Helen’s. However, I’d heard that the gate that has for years prevented people entering the site has been removed, so I thought I’d check on that arrangement.
And the gate has indeed been opened, whether by vandalism or design, I don’t know.
This means for the first time, I’ve been able to see inside the whole structure. To repeat what I wrote before:
“The tower was built between 1398 and 1399, used to defend against foreign invasion and local troublemakers. The latter caused the city some problems during Kett’s Rebellion in 1549, and the structure was damaged during that time.
The stairs that go up to the higher parts of the tower, which is all inaccessible now since the floors have collapsed. Much was demolished during the late eighteenth century, including many city walls and towers, but this survived. This was perhaps as it came under the care of the Great Hospital, who had no real need to demolish it. The building was patched up in the nineteenth century, but this was done by sloppy civil engineers and they caused large cracks to appear by their use of modern cement.”
A former fireplace that I haven’t seen before.
And the interior arrangement. Annoyingly, my camera lens was obviously not impeccably clean as there’s a blur on some of the photos which is sub-optimal.
It’s a new season for Norwich bar billiards and time for the first league match for the Artichoke Hearts. Now I appear to be captain (which is either a mark of trust or a sign that standards have slipped, I’m fairly sure I know which it is), this meant that I had the honour of being involved with the draw for the evening. As I don’t get out much, this was all very exciting. The team we were playing was the Serengeti, who I used to play for, which added to the potential drama and I was inevitably going to be on my best behaviour. Many thanks to Roy, the Serengeti captain and one of the nicest people going, for all of this excitement.
And there’s the draw, six singles matches and three doubles. As the Serengeti had seven players, I randomly drew one to not play a singles game and that by chance was my friend Emma, but she was very calm about the matter. We only had five players and poor Terri found herself playing two singles games in a row and it was Luke that was drawn to play two doubles matches.
I thought I’d better have a beer to calm my nerves, this is the Best Laid Plans from Salopian Brewery, a fruity, fluffy and light beer.
It’s all happening now. Emma took charge in the role of being the official scribe which involved writing all the results up on the board, and she generally did this quite well. I think Emma sort of agreed that I was on my best behaviour throughout.
After four games, it was 2-2 and so this all felt quite stressful, so I went to get another beer. This is the Foamy Dome from Three Blind Mice Brewery, which had some orange punching through in terms of the flavour. There was then food and I managed to forget to photograph it, a slightly sub-optimal arrangement. Landlord Oscar marched across the room at this point and everyone was stunned into silence, we think he was trying to pick up some tactics for his team games.
Matters didn’t become less stressful for me, as we found ourselves 4-2 down with the three doubles matches still to play. Luke and Vaughan won their match, then Terri and I won in a very close game against Emma and Roy. That meant it was 4-4 with one game left and not only was it tense, it went down to the final ball. There’s Luke taking his shot and, to cut a long story short, it was all enough and we found ourselves 5-4 up. I pretended that it was all just a game and it didn’t matter, but I was already planning my next beer as I needed a celebration.
And here’s my reward for our team’s performance, a pint of Creme Bearlee and I must have been very stressed as I’ve realised that I didn’t put this on Untappd. And poor Vaughan and PJ in their first league game, I’m pleased that they seemed to enjoy it enough to come back again and not be put off.
The final result, 5-4 to the Artichoke Hearts. Anyway, the Serengeti are a fine team, the games were very close and they were unlucky not to come out ahead. But, that’s enough praise, we all had a lovely time and at least I know we won’t end the season on zero points. And I had an excuse to pop to the Weaver’s and the King’s Head afterwards to settle my nerves. The main thing is though there’s lots of great people involved, it’s a fun thing to do and if anyone is interested in coming along to watch, please do! The next match is at home to the Black Stars next week and they are known to be pretty formidable. I’m wondering if we could have a strategy of overdosing them on bar snacks, that might be our best plan here.
I was walking by the other side of the Anglia Square development yesterday and realised I could see the cathedral from Edward Street for the first time now the demolition is progressing. And the whole lot is now coming steadily down, so there might be posts every couple of days now to excite and delight my two readers.
This news article appeared in the Norwich Mercury 200 years ago this week, although it had evidently taken them some time to hear of the news.
“In August last, on board the Honourable Company’s ship, Vansittart, on his passage from Bombay to China, John Hammont Cooper, aged 17, youngest son of T. H. Cooper, Esq. late of North Walsham, most sincerely lamented by his family and friends.”
In situations like this, I find it intriguing what a young man from the North Walsham area would have been doing travelling from Bombay to China at this time.
The Vansittart was a merchant ship owned by the British East India Company and at the time, although for not much longer, they had a monopoly in terms of their UK trade with India and China. The ship had launched in 1813 and John Hammont Cooper went on its seventh voyage.
The ship left Downs (a shipping area of the North Sea) on 9 January 1825, bound for the Cape, Bombay, and China. The ship reached the Cape on 13 March, and Bombay on 31 May. It left Bombay on 11 August, and arrived at Whampoa, Hong Kong, on 1 October 1825. That was the section of the journey that Cooper didn’t complete.
John Hammont Cooper had been born on 24 December 1807 and was baptised on the following day which was quite festive. He was the son of Thomas Hammont Cooper and Mary Vernon. The family don’t appear to have been hugely wealthy, although they did own some land in North Walsham.
Thomas Hammont Cooper was a Captain-Lieutenant in the Norfolk Militia Western Regiment, a rank now abolished and this was more of a Dad’s Army type set-up in case the French invaded North Norfolk. However, Thomas wrote two books on infantry and military work, so he must have had some military knowledge.
One thing I’ve never much thought about, as this doesn’t impact on my daily life, is how many people would be on one of these ships. It seems that they might have a crew of 100 people and would take 50 or so passengers, although the numbers varied widely. Unfortunately, the crew and passenger lists aren’t available for this journey, so it’s not clear to me whether Cooper was a passenger on some commercial trade, whether he was crew or whether he was some sort of military presence on board.
But, either way, this must have been some considerable adventure…..
Just a random article in the 5 October 1905 about the then landlord of the Artichoke pub in Norwich.
“At the same Court, Frederick Sinclair, the Artichoke, Magdalen Gate, Norwich, was summoned for working a mare in an unfit state.—Inspector Adams said the mare was very lame and not fit to be driven. The animal was suffering from sprained tendons.—Defendant admitted that the mare was not in a fit state to be driven when the Inspector stopped him, but he contended that he (defendant) saw the lameness as soon as the Inspector, and was then about to turn round. He sent the animal home by train.—After further evidence, the Chairman said the Magistrates believed there was a doubt about the case, and defendant would have the benefit of it. The case was therefore dismissed.”
So many questions….. I’m disappointed that it’s not clear in the newspaper article where this mare was discovered. Just popping it on a train home seems like something off a faff and it’s certainly not a service offered by Greater Anglia at the moment. There’s sometimes not enough space for bikes, let alone mares with sprained tendons.
And which railway station? Maybe the now closed Norwich City railway station which would have been the nearest to the pub. And I can imagine that Frederick Sinclair would have been most annoyed by the intrusion into his day, especially as the case was dismissed when he went to court.
– as I became intrigued by this case, I looked into it more and it transpired that Sinclair wasn’t with the mare when it was stopped and he claimed that it hadn’t been in pain when he had last seen it. And the mare had reached Great Yarmouth, so that resolves which train it was….
Having been away for a little while, quite a lot has changed at Anglia Square now. The cinema has entirely gone and the buildings are coming down at quite a pace. It’s surprising just how challenging it already is to work out what was where, but it’s clear that there will soon be very little left. There is though far more water being sprayed over the rubble than before, perhaps to counter the complaints about all the dust everywhere.
This wasn’t a rail journey of any great note, but sometimes the mundane still needs to be recorded. After a rather lovely few days at Beer Con, I departed early on Easter Monday morning from Norwich railway station. It was quiet, people were focused on their Easter eggs.
There’s the Greater Anglia train to Ely at the back of the platform.
This service was only going as far as Ely due to engineering works that prevented it from reaching the promised land that is Cambridge. That meant that most sensible people were going to London directly arriving into London Liverpool Street, but that was more expensive and so I wasn’t. Although there were points failure and sadly a suicide on that line, so it might likely have been a slower option anyway. It did at least mean a quiet and peaceful train service, as this line can get rather busy.
And arriving safely into the beautiful city of Ely.
Then the exciting bus replacement service from Ely to Cambridge. I was the last person to board this before they thought it had better get going and everyone else behind crowded onto what looked like a nicer bus. This one was far too hot, I’m surprised passengers didn’t get heat stroke, but the driver was quite chirpy although it might have been delirium caused by the heat.
After a quick visit to the new Tesco opposite Cambridge railway station, I meandered to the platform with around thirty minutes before my train. For reasons I’ve never quite understood, Thameslink trains seem to sometimes depart one minute before the scheduled departure time, which caused an argument as one passenger ran to the train to try and board before being shouted to stand back as it was about to depart. I was restricted by what train I could get with an advance ticket, so I had less need to rush.
I thought I would embark on my meal deal at this point and very unusually I didn’t go for the prawn mayo option as I felt that this was a chicken day. I should probably get out more….
The Thameslink train thundering into the station.
The Thameslink service, which left one minute before the departure time, remained relatively quiet, although as there are twelve carriages it’s not exactly limited for space. And, as part of my survey of global trends, I noted that a passenger had his feet on the seats. Not that I go on about this….
Farringdon station where I was changing for another Thameslink train to take me to Luton Airport Parkway. I’m not sure why the route took me through London St. Pancras to get to Farringdon, then went back that way, so I went to a station further south than I needed. There were some young football fans shouting something about “we are the blues, we are the blue army, who are we?” as if they’d forgotten. They were ignored by everyone, which I felt was positive.
And onto the next Thameslink train which was heading to Bedford. This was relatively quiet and everything was on time, so I arrived into the delights of Luton Airport Parkway station which is slightly less annoying when leaving it than arriving into it.
And the walk to Luton Airport, which is around twenty minutes as I refuse to pay for the shuttle as it’s too expensive. The ticket price for Norwich to Luton Airport Parkway was £22 and as it was on time, annoyingly, there was no Delay Repay…. The ticket didn’t work at the Cambridge or Luton Airport Parkway station barriers, but there were gateline staff to let me through. So, one Greater Anglia train, one Greater Anglia bus replacement and two Thameslink trains….
