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Category: Norwich

  • Streets of Norwich – Stracey Road

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    This is Stracey Road, located off of Thorpe Road and connecting to Lower Clarence Road.

    There’s not really much change to the layout of this area over the last 125 years, with the church behind the properties off Stracey Road still there.

    This building at the end of the road and in the photo above is Marlborough House, which was turned from a private residence into a guest house in 1969. It was also though a dwelling house in the past, as is in March 1909 a William Coxall broke into the property and stole an overcoat, gloves and half a cake. No point going hungry if you plan to go burgling I suppose…..

    These were quite decent houses at the beginning of the twentieth century (I’m sure they are now as well) and there’s a reminder of this as many of them employed servants and maids. The residence at number 10 was looking for a “mother’s help” in December 1902 and they promised that the accommodation for the applicant wouldn’t be in the cellar or attic.

    I had better not upload every single one of the 1939 registers as part of this project, as that might be seen as too much of an infringement of copyright. But, in 1939, there was an inspector of taxes, a surgeon, a children’s nurse, a retired LNER inspector, a railway clerk, a warehouse goods clerk and an inspector for the LNER who all lived on the street.

    On the issue of the street name, I don’t know why it took the name Stracey Road, although the Stracey baronetcy is a local title and the family were important figures in Norwich during the nineteenth century.

  • Streets of Norwich…..

    I was reading recently about Matt Green, who has a project to walk every single street in New York. All told, and including walking some other pedestrian routes in the city, he thinks that this will total around 12,000 kilometres of walking. I’d looked at this project a few years ago, but I was reminded about it by a film which was recently released about Green, entitled “I’m just walkin’”.

    Green writes about his project:

    “In many ways, this is an exhaustive approach to getting to know a place. By the time I’m finished, I’ll have seen as much of New York as anyone ever has. And yet, the sum total of my experiences over these thousands of miles will be just a tiny speck, imperceptible against the immensity of this city.

    What kind of truth can I hope to find? Every step I take will be deeply colored by many transient factors — the weather, the time of day, my mood, the people around me. I could go back to any given spot the next day and have an entirely different experience. Who knows how many fascinating things I’ll totally overlook? Maybe I’ll be facing the other way as I pass by, or maybe the fascination lies in some story or context that I won’t be aware of. There are countless indoor spaces that I’ll never see. My walking experience will be largely confined to street level, even though much of what makes New York New York exists above the first floor.

    If you try to make this quest into a conquest — an attempt to subjugate the bewildering vastness of this metropolis beneath the well-worn heels of my boots — then perhaps it seems dispiriting to contemplate how little of the city I’ll have actually seen and experienced after my extensive journey. But why would you ever want to know a place completely? The excitement of New York, and the whole world for that matter, is that there’s always something else to see, and something else to learn, no matter how long you’ve been around. To me it is profoundly encouraging to think how many secrets will still lie undiscovered after I’ve walked every last one of these goddamned streets. At its core, my walk is an oxymoron: an exhaustive journey through an inexhaustible city.”

    And, I like this as a project, the always seeing something new. So, not wanting to miss out on this transcendental experience, I’ve decided to do the same for Norwich. Not the being followed by a film crew bit, since I can’t imagine even the media giants of Look East would want to follow this rubbish, but simply completing a walking project which aims to enable me to see as much of Norwich as anyone else has.

    Most historians of Norfolk will be aware of the photographs by George Plunkett, an amazing archive of photos that he took over many decades. This has meant that I have an additional angle to look at my meanderings from, as he has photographed many of the locations where I’ll eventually be walking.

    By my estimation, starting as I am in August 2019, I’ll either finish this little project by the end of 2020 or I’ll have got bored of it and so there will be an incomplete set of streets listed. I’ll be surprised though if I don’t find out a lot more about Norwich and it history, which can only be an exciting thing…..

  • Norwich – Ice Cream

    How lovely – a free ice cream from Tesco and Vodafone…… I’m easily pleased.

  • Norwich – Benoli

    Benoli is an Italian restaurant which opened a few weeks ago in Orford Street, conveniently (well for me anyway) opposite the entrance to the Bell Hotel. It’s run by Oli Boon, who was a finalist in Masterchef the Professionals and who was also previously Head Chef at Roux at the Landau, a role he held in his mid-twenties.

    Anyway, although Norwich isn’t necessarily short of fine dining options, I’m not sure that I can think of another chef in the city with such a glittering CV. I’m sure that Greggs will soon be listed in the Michelin Guide and Norwich will then have several top-rated restaurants, but until then, Benoli is a marvellous addition to Norwich’s dining scene.

    The starter, or to be more accurate, the snack before the starter. I was at the restaurant with eight other people in the private dining room, but I won’t bore everyone with the gossip from the other members of Hike Norfolk, some of which would be unwritable (untypeable) anyway.

    The pre-starter was Pagnotta bread, which has evolved from being a rustic loaf cooked by working classes in Italy. The exterior is dark and firm, whilst the interior is soft and just a little fluffy. Served with oils, I could have perhaps just have had three courses of this. Rather lovely.

    I had to ask the waiter, who incidentally was engaging and competent, what the ‘baccala mantecato’ was. It’s apparently a Venetian dish of salt cod which is mashed and served with the consistency of a pate. At Benoli, this is then served with grilled onions on a sourdough bread.

    I can’t say that I’ve ever eaten anything similar to this and I’m not sure that I would have guessed what the dish was if it just presented to me. However, the mashed cod was light in texture but had a rich and pleasant flavour. The onions added texture and the sourdough bread was softened slightly by the cod, but it remained crisp. Again, quite marvellous.

    For main, I went for the bucatini pasta served with octopus and flavoured with lemon and oregano. Again, I didn’t know what bucatini was, but the waiter patiently explained that it was spaghetti with a hole inside it. That hole running through the centre means that the pasta picks up more of the sauce and it also makes for a softer taste.

    The octopus, and indeed the pasta, almost melted in the mouth and the pangrattato (or bread crumbs) added texture to the dish. The flavours were strong, but the dish was simple in its make-up and tasted freshly made. Perhaps there could have been just a little more octopus to balance the pasta, but I certainly have no complaints.

    On which point, the prices. This pasta dish came in at £12, which seems to me, when taking into account the experience of the chef and the quality of the dining environment, perfectly good value for money. Other mains were a little more expensive, with starters around the £8 to £9 mark and desserts were mostly £8.

    And, finally, the dessert which was morello cherry sorbet served with an amaretti biscuit and garnished with fresh almond. The flavour of the sorbet was intense and the cherry was very much in evidence, with the texture being soft and not grainy. The biscuit is one of the largest of its type I’ve seen served with a dessert and it had a subtle flavour of almond and a suitably crispy texture.

    Partly, writing this post is a bit pointless insomuch as the chef is clearly an expert in his craft and I had to have a waiter explain some of the dishes to me. However, since my only perspective is whether it tastes good, I can confirm that it does. And it was all well presented and at the appropriate temperature.

    The service was attentive and professional throughout, with the dining environment being clean and comfortable. In terms of negatives, I’m hard pushed to find any. Perhaps some of the seating in the restaurant is a little exposed and there’s a traffic of customers going by, but there’s still an authentic feel to the whole arrangement. I also like the bar section at the front of the restaurant, so those just wanting a quick snack can easily pop in.

    There has unfortunately been a lot of rubbish served up as Italian food in restaurants in Norwich and across the country over the last few years. Mid-market restaurants have opened up, and in some circumstances served some really low quality fare and then tried to get customers in by cheap and even slightly squalid Groupon offers. Fortunately, Benoli appears to be authentic, genuine and informal, based on quality and not generic mass produced pasta dishes. So, how lovely.

  • Norwich to Dereham Tickets….

    Next on Julian’s list of things to complain about….

    Why does the live feed for Norwich railway station departures include a service to Dereham, which doesn’t even have a Network Rail station….. There is admittedly a bus that goes there, but there are buses that go to a lot of places from the railway station.

    Just to add more confusion…. The ticket to Dereham, which is a coach ticket, is priced at £2.60. Unless you read the top section which says that the train is £2.60 and takes 48 minutes and the coach is £8.30 and takes 30 minutes.

    As clear as mud….

  • Norwich – WH Smiths Railway Station

    Cheery little selection of books at the railway station bookshop in Norwich. Nice to get some light reading in on the train…..

  • Norwich Library – Book Sale

    Perhaps a sign of an over resourced library is when it dumps out hundreds of books in generally excellent condition to be flogged off cheaply. Why on earth are these, and boxes and boxes more, being removed from stock from Norwich library?

    I managed to resist the urge to buy hundreds of them, just buying one book about beer.

  • Norwich – KindaKafe Tour

    Steve kindly organised a tour for 24 of us to visit the hidden rooms under KindaKafe in Norwich. Twelve members of Hike Norfolk went down at 19:00 and then the other twelve members went down at 20:00. I was in the latter group and was fortunate to have an extended tour which went on for one hour and forty minutes.

    In short, the property was once lived and worked in by weavers, with the area to the rear being a courtyard. The building up of Castle Meadow meant that the ground level rose and the old property was extended upwards and a new frontage was constructed onto what was then known as Castle Ditches. So the courtyard disappeared under the new building and the old rooms became used as storage areas for Ponds the shoe shop.

    Down one flight of stairs, this is the old first floor of the property, the windows are of the room where the weaving would once have taken place. This is the back of the property, which would have overlooked the courtyard.

    Two flights of stairs down from where we started and this is the old ground floor of the house that was built here. The window frame is more recent, but is in the same place as the original window.

    Inside the former living area of the house which is where the weavers would have lived. The floor above this is where they would have worked.

    The ceiling of the property’s former ground floor, which has seen better days….

    Old graffiti on the wall, seemingly dating to 1739. There’s a similar piece of graffiti in Norwich Cathedral which appears to be representative of a religious building, that’s my best guess for this as well.

    An old bed, it’s thought that this was used when the basement was an air raid shelter during the Second World War.

    And a desk lamp from the same period.

    A separate undercroft area under a different section of the building. The strange collection of items are related to the escape rooms which have recently been opened as an attraction.

    This door comes out on to Castle Meadow. All this history that I’ve walked straight by for years without even thinking about….

    The rear of the building opens out into a courtyard area.

    And our tour also came out opposite the Cosy Club and right near to Greggs. Which is very lovely indeed.

    The guide was marvellous, she was engaging and knowledgeable and managed to keep talking for over 100 minutes on the topic. During this time she was never boring and didn’t seem to be tempted to move into the realms of making things up for effect, so there was solid history behind her dialogue. This tour is booked up for some months, and rightfully so given just how much heritage there is to see. I had expected the evening to be interesting, but I hadn’t expected to see this much or for the guide to be so engaging.

  • Norwich – Old Library Wood Sculptures

    These beautiful wooden sculptures and carvings have appeared in Old Library Wood in Norwich since I last walked through it around ten days ago. They look marvellous and I hope no idiot damages them, as it has been a problem area for some years. It’s nice to see that some people are making an effort to make the area visually more attractive.

  • Norwich – Fatso’s

    It’s many years since Fatso’s left Norwich city centre, when they closed their Prince of Wales Road location. This was then turned into Lost, a nightclub, and then more recently it has become Popworld, not somewhere that I am particularly engaged with….

    Anyway, the chain is back in the city, on the site that was previously Artorio’s, although I think that the owners are the same. I might visit at some point when it opens, just to check if it’s as I remember….