Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Norfolk

  • Norwich – Norwich Cathedral (Relics Enlightening the Bishop)

    Norwich – Norwich Cathedral (Relics Enlightening the Bishop)

    This is a bit niche, although I rarely let that stop me, but I rather liked this niche (I only realised what I’d done there when typing niche for a second time but I’m going to keep it) which is underneath the Bishop’s Throne at Norwich Cathedral.

    This recess where the relics would have been piled up, with an information sign by this noting that “it was thought that the essence of these relics could rise up through the flue and give the Bishop divine aid and assistance” and that’s quite a nice thought. If you believed in the power of the relics, then this is a perfectly logical thing to do and I like that this hasn’t all been bricked up. These relics would have pulled out of here following the Reformation, so this has been empty for a long time now.

    I understand that this isn’t a normal situation to have survived, not least as the Bishop’s Throne has usually been moved about the place in cathedrals. Although perhaps the ultimate place that this is replicated is the Chair of Saint Peter in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, where the chair is the actual relic.

  • Norwich – Norwich Cathedral (Chantry Tomb of Bishop Richard Nykke)

    Norwich – Norwich Cathedral (Chantry Tomb of Bishop Richard Nykke)

    I suppose that this is rather a nice place to have a tomb, right by the main pulpit so you’re not missing out on much. I don’t know, but I imagine that there was an iron cage around this, possibly stone, to make it feel a little more private.

    It’s the chantry tomb of Bishop Richard Nykke (1447-1535), also known as Bishop Nix, and there would have been a fund for a priest to offer prayer and masses on their behalf, just to speed up the whole process of getting to heaven. This was inevitably just a little ridiculous, people paid a lot of money for positions such as this and the Catholic Church accepted a lot of abuses here for far too long because it was in their financial interests to do so. The Reformation came along and all this chantry tomb stuff came to an end with the Abolition of Chantries Acts.

    Bishop Nykke lived through some of the Reformation and he was one of the last Catholic bishops here, although it was Bishop John Hopton (?-1558) that can claim to be the last one. Hopton, a Catholic Bishop, ordered the burning to death in Norwich of tens of Protestants because they disagreed with him. Some of the people Hopton murdered were burned at Lollards Pit, just outside the city walls, where they were walked from the Cathedral.

    Back to Bishop Nykke who was present at the murder of Thomas Bilney (1495-1531) who was also executed at Lollards Pit. Nykke was found guilty by Parliament of an abuse of his powers and had property confiscated, but it’s fair to say that politics had rather taken over by then.

    This whole situation is a bit unfortunate for Bishop Nykke, forced to remain in a tomb next to generations of those preaching messages which he strongly opposed. This is the slight problem when you get yourself a prime spot in a religious institution, the risk of seeing it handed over to a different denomination. But, maybe over time he’s recanted, like he tried to make the Protestants do.

    Of course, I’ve used AI to try and recreate the scene of what it might have looked liked and I’d suggest this feels a very realistic mock-up.

    There’s a lot of graffiti here at the side of the tomb…..

    And quite a lot at the other end.

  • Norwich – Norwich Cathedral (Effigy of St. Felix)

    Norwich – Norwich Cathedral (Effigy of St. Felix)

    Because I don’t have enough series of posts on this blog already, here’s another one. As I’ll be visiting Norwich Castle many times this year, I thought I should make some parallel visits to its Norman counterpart, the city’s cathedral.

    The cathedral notes that this is the effigy of St. Felix, a reminder that the word effigy seems to have mostly been redefined as representations of people who are normally unloved, the whole tomb effigy thing feels much less commonly here now.

    Historically, it was thought that this was Herbert de Losinga, the first Bishop of Norwich, before I’m sure great academics decided that it was St. Felix, who is known for bringing Christianity to East Anglia.

    This effigy was originally located above the Bishop’s Door in the north transept, before a decision was made to bring it here in 1969. A replacement copy has been made where it used to be located and that’s visible on a George Plunkett photo from 1976. This side of the cathedral can’t be visited, it’s the private access to the Bishop’s Palace (both the new one and it would have been the access from the old one too).

    Obviously, I’ve gone to AI to understand what this might have originally looked like.

  • Norwich – Red Sky at Night

    Norwich – Red Sky at Night

    There are some rather nice skies in Norwich tonight…..

  • Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (Severed Head of St. John the Baptist)

    Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (Severed Head of St. John the Baptist)

    This is the severed head of John the Baptist, I mean what a lovely thing to pop in your living room. This was a popular image in the medieval period and it’s made of terracotta, dating from around 1380 to 1420.

    It was probably once in a church at the top of an arch, but it ended up embedded in a cottage wall in the village of Barney, near to Thursford and was found in 1958 when the wall was demolished. I suppose that it’s quite inspirational in its own way.

    Thanks to Norfolk Heritage Explorer (which is a really wonderful website) the exact location where it was found is marked accurately on the map (the little yellow triangle in the middle of the image), although they only got confirmation of the location in 1984 because a local man remembered where it was found.

  • Norwich – 1781 Map

    Norwich – 1781 Map

    Well, this is nice, it’s a map of Norwich which I haven’t seen before. It is showing me all manner of things that I didn’t expect to be there, so that’s a bit more time I will waste (well, maybe not waste, is any finding out about history a waste?) hours on now…..

    This image should show at full resolution by clicking on it and zooming in to see the details.

  • Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (St Laurence’s Church by David Hodgson)

    Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (St Laurence’s Church by David Hodgson)

    This artwork is of St. Laurence’s Church in Norwich and was painted by David Hodgson (1798-1864) in 1863. This is one of the churches that was nearly demolished in the 1960s and I made reference to that when wittering on about a defaced statue found there. This artwork would have been painted from Westwick Street, but that area has changed too much to be able to put up a before and after photo. George Plunkett does though link to a watercolour which was painted in a similar place.

    As usual, I’ve had AI try and bring back some of the original colours to the painting. Quaint as the building might look, it’s not entirely clear to me that it was actually structurally sound and pleasant inside.

  • Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (1400s Book – John Wycliffe)

    Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (1400s Book – John Wycliffe)

    Friends of mine know that I like books, especially when they come in their thousands at a time, but this is a rather special one published at some stage in the 1400s. I say published, but perhaps more written laboriously out might be more appropriate.

    I let ChatGPT have a go at transcribing this and it didn’t cope with it. However, Google Gemini had a lovely time with it, describing it as text by John Wycliffe (c.1328-1384) that was likely published in the fifteenth century. I know this is correct as the museum stated that it is a book of tracts by John Wycliffe and was published between 1400 and 1500.

    Google Gemini goes further and notes that the general thrust of this is that “it critiques those who hold great benefices and use their positions for worldly gain rather than spiritual care” and this does feel like the sort of text Wycliffe would have written. It’s yet another experiment in the incredible power of AI and I’ve established that it can read Middle English.

    Wycliffe wanted a bit of modernisation in the Catholic Church, ending the abuses and bringing the message of the Bible closer to the people. Pope Gregory XI, who was broadly incompetent for various reasons, condemned that arrangement straight away. There’s a relevance to Norfolk with all of this, as Wycliffe stirred up the Peasant’s Revolt, a national uprising which gained traction in the area. And the Lollards were sort of led by Wycliffe and they had a strong presence in East Anglia.

  • Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (Mould for Walsingham Shrine Pilgrim Badges)

    Norwich – Norwich Castle Museum (Mould for Walsingham Shrine Pilgrim Badges)

    There’s something a little tacky about this fascinating item in the collections of Norwich Castle Museum. It’s a special piece, it’s the pre-cut mould for pilgrim badges that were sold at Walsingham’s shrine before the Reformation.

    This is obviously how they were made, but perhaps the pilgrims who went there didn’t realise just how mass produced this whole arrangement was. Or, maybe they did, but even the museum notes that this method was designed to be “quick and cheap” rather than something produced to a high standard. And maybe there was a choice of pilgrim badges, from rather more decadent ones to cheap and cheerful. It seems though that some pilgrimage sites were selling over 100,000 badges a year, this truly was the Great Yarmouth of its day.

    King Henry III made a pilgrimage to Walsingham and the shrine of the Virgin Mary in the thirteenth century and then King Edward I, King Edward II, King Henry IV, King Henry VII and King Henry VIII all went afterwards during their reigns. That’s some destination and it’s clear why it also became desirable to pilgrims. King Henry VIII couldn’t have been entirely surprised and delighted by his visit as he later approved it being pulled down during the Reformation.

    I haven’t been able to find any badges in museums or for sale that look similar to this, I had hoped to see what one would have looked like.

  • Norwich – 1830 Tombland Painting by John Thirtle

    Norwich – 1830 Tombland Painting by John Thirtle

    I’m finding this interesting as it’s a view of Tombland from 1830 which I haven’t seen before. Although in very many ways nothing has really changed here in terms of the Erpingham Gateway, the road layout and the buildings on the right hand side of the road, there are some other changes.

    One change is the removal of the buildings to the right hand side of the Erpingham Gateway which is where the statue commemorating the life of Edith Cavell is now located. There’s also a gateway that I hadn’t known existed on the extreme left of the painting, that’s now gone but there is a blue door there today which gives entrance to Norwich School and there is today evidence of the former gateway that surrounded it.

    Back to the artist, John Thirtle (1777-1839) who became a key member of the Norwich School group of painters and he became known for his watercolour landscapes. He was also an art framer and print-seller and Norwich Castle Museum, who own this artwork, have several of his paintings in their collections. Some of his artworks have suffered from the fading of the indigo pigment he used on many paintings, something which is a little sub-optimal. He suffered from illness towards the later part of his life, from long-time health issues from tuberculosis reducing his output.

    I’ve asked AI to restore the image to how the sky might have looked and I think it’s done a generally decent job here. There’s a mistake that AI thought there was a fountain, and thus water, in the background that isn’t actually there, but the image does feel like it has been brought back to life.