Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Norfolk

  • Marsham – All Saints Church (Robert William Claxton)

    Marsham – All Saints Church (Robert William Claxton)

    This is the only war grave at Marsham Church and is located in the new burial ground, located just behind the main churchyard, commemorating the life of Robert William Claxton.

    Robert was born in 1890 and he married Edith Mary Melton in 1913 and they lived at Turnpike Bungalow in Marsham. Robert joined the Grenadier Guards being given the service number 21587, joining the 13th Company of the 4th Battalion. This battalion was formed to fight in the First World War, but the war diaries at the National Archives don’t start until August 1915 when they went to France. So, at a best guess, Robert never fought overseas.

    Robert died on 28 January 1915 at the age of 25 and his burial took place on 3 February 1915. The relatively short period between death and burial also suggests that he didn’t die that far from home, but, unfortunately, his war records were lost in the air raid during the Second World War, and there are no news articles in the local media.

    The details of Robert’s grave at Marsham, which must have been one of the first in the new burial ground.

    This is another one of these lives which seems to have mostly been lost to history, especially the war record of Robert, which seems to have been relatively short.

  • Marsham – All Saints Church

    Marsham – All Saints Church

    This Grade I listed church in Marsham has a core which was built in the thirteenth century, with numerous fourteenth century additions and a Victorian overhaul.

    There’s a more modern vestry on the left-hand side attached to the church’s north wall. There are north and south aisles, perhaps indicating some level of wealth in this village during the medieval period.

    The south side of the church.

    A book of the parish’s history in the 1840s notes that “many of the ancient inhabitants remember the time when almost every window contained medieval glass and and can tell how it was removed by a so-called antiquary who was sometimes resident in the parish, and who was troubled by few scruples in satisfying his thirst for collecting antiquities. Dispersed by him at his various sales, it is impossible to say where most of these scrolls and coats may now be located”. Perhaps at the time the book couldn’t note that the individual was William Goodall, the church’s rector between 1787 and 1844.

    Theft wasn’t a one-off in this church either, the Norfolk & Norwich Archaeological Society was told in 1895 that the ornate cover above the font had recently been stolen during the restoration of the building in the 1880s. This font cover was known as the ‘laughing boy’, a figure which projected from the top of the second arch of the north aisle and which seemed to be looking at you and smiling wherever someone sat. This loss was blamed on an absent rector appointing a church warden who was willing to steal from the church and it seems likely that the record was William Goodall.

    The tower is likely also from the thirteenth century, with some damage evidence down the centre where some repairs have been made. There’s no large window, so it’s not clear what is causing the structural issue here, but it all looks quite solid so the repairs seem to have implemented some time ago.

    The chancel is mostly a Victorian rebuild, likely needed as the structure needed some repair.

    The side of the chancel and the stones set into the side of the aisle are those from the Howlett family.

    The church’s graveyard.

    The church was unfortunately locked so I couldn’t look inside, but that’s an original medieval wooden door. Inside the hammerbeam roof is of note, as is the medieval screen which it seems fortunate the church’s rector didn’t pinch.

    The bricked up priest’s door.

    This field by the church looks all rather peaceful, but it was once known as Whites’ and was used by the Royal Fighting Corps during 1915 and 1916 as a landing ground.

    The new burial area, located to the west of the church, which contains the one Commonwealth war grave that is located here, commemorating the life of RW Claxton of the Grenadier Guards who died on 28 January 1915.

  • GeoGuessr (Hoveton and Wroxham Version)

    GeoGuessr (Hoveton and Wroxham Version)

    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.

    This walk was very basic, as it was part of our longer Wroxham Wander (I’m pinching the idea of naming walks in the way that the LDWA do now….) walk. Anyway, this was just five random locations in Hoveton and Wroxham, done primarily to see a little bit of the villages that we might not otherwise have done.

    Our five random locations, all within about five minutes walk of each other…..

    Our first location was on Brimbelow Road, which is a long road with many riverside properties, all quite decadent. This was the part of Hoveton that expanded during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, when it became something of a holiday destination.

    Our second location was Roys of Wroxham, known as the largest village store in the world. They’ve been trading since 1895 when the Roy brothers opened their first store in Coltishall, and they opened in Hoveton in 1899. Although the store is located in Hoveton, it takes its name from when supplies used to be sent to them at the local railway station, then known simply as Wroxham (it wasn’t named Hoveton & Wroxham until 1966). That meant that the store became known as Roys of Wroxham and that name has stuck since.

    The building in the above photo is the department store section of Roys and was constructed in 1966, although was nearly entirely destroyed in a fire that took place in May 1995. A temporary store was opened for a year so that Roys could keep trading, but their new store was open by mid-1996.

    Our third location was the chip shop, although we visited Greys Chips over the road for lunch. It’s a busy little area of Wroxham, it’ll be packed in the summer when (well, and if) lockdown is over.

    A photo by the river at the rear of the King’s Head and there’s a path which goes by the river all the way to Hoveton & Wroxham railway station.

    Lots of swans on the River Bure. Clive (someone I know who panicked when he saw a swan in the river and he capsized his canoe) would very much like it here….

    Our fourth location was Grange Walk, named after the Grange building on this street. The Grange is Grade II listed and was built in the early nineteenth century, although it likely has an older core as there’s been a structure there for some centuries. Today, the Grange is in use as an antique dealer’s shop.

    One of the boats in the boatyard next to the Bure.

    We missed the train passing under here by only a minute, so there’s no photo of the new Greater Anglia fleet…. This is the Norwich to Sheringham line, perhaps a surprising survivor of the cuts in the 1950s and 1960s. The line from Hoveton & Wroxham to Aylsham, the Bure Valley line, was less fortunate and was closed, although is still in use as a heritage railway.

    Our fifth location was at Nobel Crescent, located near to St. Mary’s Church.

    St. Mary’s Church, a Grade I listed building of note because of its Norman door, although that wasn’t visible when we visited as the building was locked. We did compare a photo of the graveyard today with the one taken by George Plunkett in 1934, and it’s notable how some gravestones have disappeared since that time. I do wonder where these headstones have ended up, whether they’ve been laid flat or just destroyed.

    The Trafford Mausoleum, located in the churchyard of St. Mary’s and built in around 1830 to be the family vault of the Trafford family, who lived at the now demolished Wroxham Hall. The design was deliberately medieval and is attractive, although it really does dominate the churchyard.

    There’s a drop at the rear of the church down to the River Bure, which shows quite sensibly that they’ve located the church on a raised piece of ground.

    The Grade II listed Church Cottage, located next to the churchyard of St. Mary’s. This property was constructed in around 1830 and it was extended in 1999 in a similar design.

    Walking down Church Lane, whilst listening to Nathan muttering something about me faffing about taking photos…. This street is the old heart of Wroxham when it was a medieval village, although the centre of the settlement has shifted towards today’s tourist heart of the river.

    I never knew about Caen Meadow until we saw a sign pointing towards it, and it’s a rather lovely area near to the River Bure and there are numerous benches and places to sit, along with the opportunity to paddle in the river (we didn’t do this). It’s not known why Caen Meadow has this name, it might be because stone from Caen was used in the building of the nearby St. Mary’s Church and so this could have been brought up from here. Alternatively, it has been suggested that there might have been a monastery on this site which would have perhaps been part of the lands owned by the Abbess of Caen.

    Anyway, this was the shortest GeoGuessr challenge that we’ve done, being completed in around twenty minutes. But, it did have the advantage of bringing us to a part of Wroxham that I’ve never visited before. And then we had to walk back to Norwich…..

  • Norwich – Black Lives Matter Graffiti

    Norwich – Black Lives Matter Graffiti

    I don’t intend to veer into politics on this blog, but this graffiti has appeared under the flyover on Magdalen Street and it seems nicely done. Something which tells a story and adds some interest to the area near Anglia Square is perhaps really quite welcome.

    As an aside, this is a ugly area, it’s a shame that nothing in the past could have been built under the flyover to tidy this whole site up. This rather beautiful building is what used to stand here…..

  • Norwich History by Parish : St. Peter Hungate

    Norwich History by Parish : St. Peter Hungate

    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.

    St. Peter Hungate is the fourth parish we’ve done this for and although it’s relatively small in size, it has got some considerable heritage packed into it. There’s substantially more history than I can mention in this post, a reminder of just how much heritage remains in Norwich.

    The parish boundaries map.

    And a map of the area from the 1880s.

    The parish boundary goes right through the middle of this building, better today known as the Halls and it’s where Norwich Beer Festival is held. It’s actually though two buildings, St. Andrew’s Hall on the left and the building off to the right is Blackfriars’ Hall. We ignored the former today, as it’s in a different parish, just looking at Blackfriars’ Hall which is named after the Dominican Order which took over here in 1307. There’s imagery of inside of Blackfriars’ Hall on their official web-site.

    The area next to Blackfriars’ Hall, which isn’t accessible to the public, but the parish boundary runs through the middle of it, along the line of the concrete wall.

    This keyboard mould was pushed into the concrete in around 2000 by Molly Sole, a local art student, and there was a wave of public interest about it in 2020.

    Formerly one residential property, this house has now been divided into two and in the nineteenth century a corner shop was opened. It’s been used for numerous purposes since then, including as a cafe.

    At the top of Elm Hill, a pair of eighteenth century residential houses, with a plaque noting that the Friars de Sacco settled in a property on this site which was given to them by William de Gissing in around 1250.

    The rear of Blackfriars’ Hall, this is the most complete friary complex remaining in the country. Volunteering at Norwich Beer Festival has numerous exciting benefits, including free beer and food (and meeting people and all that stuff), but also being able to explore this wonderful building.

    The entrance to Monastery Yard.

    This area is now a car park (I think the city council have a plan for Norwich to become the European City of Car Parks), but there were residential properties which were on the left-hand side here. On the right-hand side is a monastery chapel which was built by Father Ignatius (more on him later), but which was forced to close in 1876.

    The rear wall of Monastery Street and there used to be residential properties which backed onto it.

    It’s now possible to walk by the River Wensum, but there were once buildings all along here which went down to the riverside. The situation here was that in the medieval period there were some grand properties owned by wealthy merchants on Elm Hill and they would have gone down to the river. Over time, these rear areas were filled with often poor quality residential properties and industrial buildings accessed by courts and yards, most of which were pulled down during slum clearances.

    This was once Crown Court Yard and its entrance remains, but the buildings have gone and it’s just a car park now. This really isn’t a great use for a site such as this in a prime part of the city.

    This is the remains of Towler’s Court which connects from the river to Elm Hill, with the buildings here being demolished as part of the 1920s slum clearances.

    And these are the parish boundary markers on Elm Hill, with the boundary of St. Simon and St. Jude on the left from 1842, and St. Peter Hungate on the right from 1814 and 1834. The parish boundaries are rarely logical, twisting and turning through buildings, so these iron markers really were essential.

    And the same parish boundary markers on the other side of the road, a real legacy of this system of dividing up the city.

    37 Elm Hill, with an entrance to Norris Court Gardens.

    Elm Hill is one of the more historic streets in Norwich and there are numerous Tudor buildings and undercrofts along here. So, what did the city council want to do in the 1920s? They proposed demolishing the properties along here so that they could build a swimming pool. Fortunately, local opposition and the intervention of the Norwich Society saw off these misguided plans and fortunately this marvellous area survived.

    Some on the council were entirely blindsided by the local opposition, with Mr Manning saying in a council meeting in 1926:

    “The city would be purer and better if the site was cleared. It is one of the festering sores in the city and the council would be well advised if they cleared the whole of the street away and made a public restplace”.

    Just weeks later, the city said that it was reversing its decision and the City Engineer was drawing up plans to restore the frontage of the buildings along Elm Hill, working with William Weir, the architect to the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings.

    As an aside, there was a meeting in early 1926 held by the Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Society and the chairman said that he was hopeful that there were some members of the Labour Party present. The chair said that he was aware that it wasn’t everyone in the Labour Party who wanted old buildings pulled down as “some members in the Labour Party were now very cultured and fond of anything artistic and antique”.

    I mentioned Crown Court Yard earlier in this post, and this is the sign visible from Elm Hill.

    And the entrance to Crown Court Yard from Elm Hill, not that there’s much of a yard to go through to.

    Looking back down Elm Hill.

    There’s a parish pump and an elm tree, although both are modern replacements.

    An old doorway with a plaque commemorating the life of Father Ignatius (1837-1908) who was an Anglican Benedictine monk who wanted to bring back the monastery system. He purchased this house on Elm Hill, definitely suitably located given he could see Blackfriars’ Hall from his window, which must have been a constant inspiration. George Plunkett has a photo from 1935 of this doorway.

    Briton’s Arms is currently closed and is for sale, after being run by sisters Sue Skipper and Gilly Mixer for 45 years. The building likely dates to the middle of the fourteenth century and was a beguinage, or a house for religious women. It was the only house in the street to survive the fire in 1507 and for the next couple of centuries it was used by barbour surgeons and individuals involved in the wool trade. Timothy Gridley, a woolcomber, was perhaps the first landlord here when he was listed as a licensee in 1760. The pub was initially known as the Kings Arms, being changed to the Briton’s Arms in the early part of the nineteenth century. It remained in use as a pub until 1945, when it became a restaurant and cafe.

    Looking back down Elm Hill.

    A drawing, from around the same spot as the above photo, drawn in the 1920s as part of the plan to restore the street.

    The porchway of St. Peter Hungate, the first church in the country to be repurposed when it was declared redundant in 1936. It housed a museum of church art, an inspired and forward-thinking idea, but sadly it closed in 1995. Now under the management of the Norwich Historic Churches Trust, the church is now home to Hungate Medieval Art, a charity which promotes the city’s medieval history.

    Inside the porch, which can’t be accessed and I took this photo through the gate…. I will at some point hopefully find my photos of when I visited this church during the Flintspiration weekend in 2017. There are some photos of how the church looked on the web-site of Hungate Medieval Art.

    There may have been a church on this since the Anglo-Saxon period, although most of the current building dates to the fifteenth century. Much of the cost of this was paid for by John Paston and Margaret Paston, best known perhaps for the Paston Letters. The chancel and tower had been built in 1431 under the supervision of Thomas Ingham, although the chancel had to be rebuilt in 1604 when it fell down, which wasn’t entirely ideal. The church tower was shortened at the beginning of the twentieth century and the belfry was also knocked down, a period when the building was in generally a poor state of repair.

    The chancel end of the church with the graveyard behind, which is currently inaccessible to the general public.

    This building is on Prince’s Street and it used to be a shop, visible in this 1936 photo from George Plunkett. We went to stand by the entrance to where the shop was, but there’s no trace of it left at all, although the grate is in the same place.

    Two more parish markers, St. George Tombland 1777 and St. Peter Hungate from 1834. George Plunkett has a photo of these from 1934, and unfortunately one has gone missing, as his photo showed a St. George Tombland 1828 marker as well.

    Located on a new building on the other side of Princes Street is this parish boundary marker from 1834, a real survivor since this had to be taken off an older building and placed onto its replacement.

    And that was the end of our little tour, which was quite a moist expedition given the amount of rain. There are 16 listed buildings in this one parish and the streetlines haven’t really changed in this parish for over 500 years, so it’s an area of the city that is worth meandering to.

  • Norwich History by Parish : St. Edmund

    Norwich History by Parish : St. Edmund

    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.

    St. Edmund is the third parish we’ve done this for and it’s been the most challenging in terms of trying to compare it to the past, since there’s nearly nothing left with the exception of the medieval church itself.

    On the above map from the 1880s, the street of Fish Gate is at the base (now known as Fishergate), Peacock Street is at the left hand side (now known as Blackfriars) and Cowgate Street is on the right hand side (now known as Whitefriars). All of the buildings inside of that have gone, demolished as part of slum clearances, property redevelopment and road building. This entire site is now taken over by Smurfit Kappa, or the building perhaps still better known by most as the Norwich Corrugated Board, or NCB building.

    The premises of Smurfit Kappa, who produce various types of packaging. Once on this site there were schools, shops and residential buildings, including the courtyards known as Staff of Life yard and Fleece Yard.

    This is the side of the factory and this rather resolved a query we’d had the previous week. The factory wasn’t built in the 1980s as I had thought, it had been refronted in the 1980s and this older part of the building shows the original element of the structure.

    Rather helpfully, a staff member from the company came out at this point, as I don’t think they get many tourists taking photos of their building. It’s lovely, but I suspect more people take photos of Norwich Cathedral and Norwich Castle. What the helpful staff member did provide us with were photos of what the building used to look like, and there’s a walkway here over the road that I didn’t know about.

    This is another photo provided, showing the factory after it had been refronted, with the walkway now removed. The factory building which that walkway led to has now been demolished and has recently been replaced by residential properties. It was also nice for the two long-standing staff members to help us in this quest, they’d worked there for a considerable period of time and added lots of context to how the area had developed. I also very much appreciated their sending me the photos of the site, the one above shows just how much this area has changed, along with the roundabout to the top of the photo which was built for the inner ringroad.

    This is what was formerly known as Peacock Street, which I’ve written about before. These properties are standing on the site of the former Tiger Inn, demolished for road widening in 1936. George Plunkett’s photo of the building shows just what impressive buildings the council has pulled down in its quest to satisfy car drivers.

    Over the road is Hansard Lane, which I’ve written about before.

    This is the the church of St Edmund, from which the parish takes its name. The church has a small footprint with nearly no graveyard, although it perhaps had one in the medieval period. The church became redundant in the late nineteenth century, one of the early casualties of the sheer volume of churches that Norwich had. There has been a church here since the Anglo-Saxon period, but the current structure is from the fifteenth century onwards. The Anglo-Saxon origins are pretty certain, as the church is dedicated to Edmund the Martyr, the Saxon King of the East Angles. Inside the building, there’s a single nave and chancel, with the porch visible in the left of the above photo dating from the nineteenth century.

    Although the building is Grade I listed, it wasn’t far from being demolished in the early 1970s, following a Church of England which seemed to have forgotten that it was the protector of historic churches. Fortunately, the community took an interest into what the church was planning with its disposal of buildings, and it was saved. It’s currently used as a Christian house of worship once again, although has been used for storage and also as the Norwich Pregnancy Crisis centre.

    A shed at the rear of the church which is of no historic interest, I just liked the icicles…. I’m so easily pleased.

    The church was once surrounded on three sides by a factory building which is visible from the overhead photo earlier on. Today these are riverside residential properties and it’s impossible to walk along the river here as it’s gated off.

    It’s possible to reach the river as there’s a car park behind the GP’s surgery.

    The view of the River Wensum.

    Back on the other side of Fishergate, this is the area behind what was Thompson’s Yard, all now council housing which seems to date from around the 1970s. It’s all sadly devoid of history.

    I quite like little stumps of former buildings, a reminder of what was once here. George Plunkett is of help here (yet again), the rest of the building is in one of his photos from 1936. The now demolished building was once the Rampant Horse pub, which had been a licensed premises since the early nineteenth century and was closed in 1912, another pub lost in the wave of forced pub closures.

    The building still standing next to this stump of wall was also a pub, the Duke of Marlborough, at 29 Fishergate and George Plunkett excels himself again by providing a photo of the landlord and customers in the pub in March 1939. This pub had started to serve customers from 1708 and traded until its closure in 1952.

    It’s hard to establish where the parish boundaries were, but I’ve decided that some of Thoroughfare Yard was probably in the parish of St Edmund. The Church of England don’t supply boundaries of this particular parish, which is likely as the church isn’t in their use any more, and the definitive map doesn’t have them on, so they must have shifted at some stage.

    It’s George Plunkett who once again helps me here, as he has a photo from 1936 which has the parish plates visible, and one of them marks the parish boundary of St Edmund.

    Thoroughfare Yard goes through to Magdalen Street, but I feel I need to investigate it further on a future expedition to ascertain whether those parish plates are still visible (likely not, as the buildings have gone), or where these parish boundaries were. For the moment, here’s another photo from 1936 that George Plunkett took of how the yard once looked.

    So, this wasn’t the most historic of areas that we’ve covered so far, but there were elements that remain from the past. Thanks again to the staff of Smurfit Kappa for their assistance, much appreciated! And, after this walk we went to get chips, just in case anyone wondered.

  • Surlingham – St. Mary’s Church

    Surlingham – St. Mary’s Church

    This is St. Mary’s Church in Surlingham, located a short walk away from the River Yare. The church sits on slightly higher ground in a bid to protect it from the nearby marshes, something evident when we were walking through them to get here. George Plunkett has a photo of the church from 1978 which was taken in around the same place as above, although little has changed in that time.

    There is a nearby ruined church, St. Saviour’s, which was constructed in the twelfth century but which became redundant in the early eighteenth century.

    The round tower is Norman at the base, with the octagonal top dating from the fourteenth century. Much of the current nave is also fourteenth century, with the north aisle having been added in the fifteenth century.

    There are numerous patches of repair on the tower, mostly using this tiled style to fill in the gaps. I’m unsure why such a different looking material was chosen in the repairs, although it gives the tower a rather memorable look. As is noticeable on photo further down this post, the tower was once covered in ivy and that might have meant repairs were less noticeable.

    The stair turret on the tower.

    The chancel dates from the eighteenth century and was made from brick, giving quite a contrasting look to the church. Although I’m not sure how comprehensive the repairs were, as there was an appeal made in 1831 to secure funds to pay for a new church roof and advertisements were placed in the Norwich Mercury to find carpenters and bricklayers.

    This photo is from the beginning of the twentieth century, and both graves leaning against the end of the chancel wall are still there, although a few others seem to have disappeared. The church tower is fortunate not to have that much ivy still attached to it.

    The other side of the chancel is built in old stone, seemingly solely with the intention of giving it an older appearance. I’m unsure where that stone has come from, but I suspect that its been taken from another old building at some point.

    The end of the chancel, it’s all quite a clean design, but perhaps not breathtakingly beautiful.

    A rather beautiful carved stone font inside the church and it probably dates to the fourteenth century.

    Looking down the nave of the church into the chancel, where there’s evidence of where the rood screen stairs were located.

    Looking back down the nave towards the organ loft, I thought that everything was nicely proportioned and all seemed calm. It was possible to peer inside the tower and I’m not normally that interested in church bells, but this church has two which were cast in 1381 and that’s a pretty impressive survival……

    I liked that the church was open during this difficult times and although there are bits of Victorian repair which are readily visible, there’s lots of history to the building which hasn’t been swept away. It’s another of those churches where I suspect the parishioners from the late sixteenth century would have found relatively little had changed over the centuries, although they might have wondered where their box pews had disappeared to. These were removed in 1888 and the local press noted that there were now more open and airy pews, although I love the character that box pews have.

  • Carleton St Peter – St. Peter’s Church

    Carleton St Peter – St. Peter’s Church

    This is a remote little church in Carleton St Peter and this is the track which reaches it from the road. The parish is small with just a handful of properties, although there is evidence of prehistoric, Roman and medieval activity in the area. It seems that the villagers have just moved away since the medieval period, which makes the survival of this church all the more remarkable.

    Although there was a church here in late Saxon times, the currently building primarily dates from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with numerous later additions. There are some early Norman features in the building, namely some lancet windows, which have likely been kept from the earlier structure and built into the fabric of the current church.

    An older infilled window, likely Norman.

    The chancel with no windows here on this side of the church, although it’s hard to see from the outside where it joins to the nave, as there’s a continuous slate roof.

    The tower is later than the main fabric of the church, dating to the early sixteenth century, with construction perhaps halted at one point which is evident from the different stonework.

    The polygonal stairs on the church tower.

    The churchyard, with a plot dug for a burial, and the area is quite open and spacious. There was an article in the Lowestoft Journal in 1876 which mentions when Edmund Perkins Hytton was buried in a vault in the graveyard, with his sister, Deborah Perkins Hayward, being buried in the same vault when in 1891 she died at the age of 97.

    The crossed keys of St. Peter on the stonework.

    Unfortunately, this is a church that is currently locked, although the Church of England say that it will open during daylight hours when some form of normality resumes. The porch is nineteenth century and likely replaced an earlier one, but there’s some history to that wooden door and it dates to some time in the medieval period.

    There’s an information board at the entrance to the porch and this notes that the church still has its King James Bible from 1611, which they refer to as a ‘Black Bible’ as it was without colouring (I haven’t heard of that term before). I’ve heard of the Great She Bible and these crop up from time to time, such as in the parish of Gisburn in 2015.

    A tithe map from the 1840s which shows the location of the church, and also how there’s nothing more than just a path to it. And therein lies the beauty of this church, a rural building unburdened by traffic and as familiar today as it would have been to the congregation of 500 years ago. And, hopefully, it’ll still look nearly exactly the same in another 100 years.

  • Norwich – Rosary Cemetery (Alfred Edward Hubbard)

    Norwich – Rosary Cemetery (Alfred Edward Hubbard)

    Alfred Edward Hubbard was born on 22 June 1889 and was baptised on 16 July 1889 at St. Peter Parmentergate in Norwich. He was the son of George Hubbard, who worked as a telegraph clerk, and Bertha Hubbard. The family lived on Synagogue Street, a street off Mountergate sadly now lost, although George Plunkett has a photo of how it looked.

    Alfred was one of a large family, at the 1891 census he had older brothers Frank, Charles and Harry, along with older sisters Alice and Bertha. Tragedy hit the family in the 1890s with the death of George Hubbard, meaning that Bertha was left alone to support her family. A later census noted that she had six children and they were all still alive, which wasn’t all that common, often children died young.

    At the 1901 census, Bertha ran a lodging house at 88 Chapelfield Road, living with her children Frank (working as a carpenter), Alice, Bertha (a pupil teacher), Henry (a clerk) and Alfred. By the time of the 1911 census, the family had moved to 73 St George’s Street, including Bertha and her children Frank (working as a carpenter), Alice, Bertha Constance (a teacher employed by Norwich City Council), Harry (a brewer’s clerk) and Alfred (now working as a teacher employed by Norfolk County Council).

    In early 1915, Alfred married May Mann and they lived on Yarmouth Road in Caister-on-Sea. He joined the Norfolk Regiment, service number 15653.

    Unfortunately, Hubbard’s war records are amongst those which were destroyed in an air raid during the Second World War, but he was in the 7th Battalion, which was formed of volunteers, also known as Kitchener’s Army. Alfred was injured in Hulluch, in northern France, in October 1915. The regimental records written in the field survive, although Hubbard isn’t specifically mentioned, but the above image is from that battalion in the Hulluch area from earlier in October 1915, showing the scale of the losses.

    Copyright Imperial War Museum (45786).

    This image is posted on Wikipedia, showing the state of the area between Loos and Hulluch in 1917. The British trenches are on the left, the German trenches on the right, with a now heavily damaged road going through them.

    Alfred died on 19 December 1919, at the age of 30, likely because of the injuries occurred during the First World War. The inscription on his gravestone reads “having fought a good fight in life and war, rest on”. There aren’t that many burials of the war dead at the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich, they’re mostly at Earlham Cemetery, so this stood out amongst the nearby graves. The uniformity of war graves ensures their visibility in a graveyard, and is a reminder that in death everyone was equal regardless of rank.

    It’s hard to imagine what Alfred’s brothers and sisters must have thought when standing at his graveside in late December 1919, it’s a far cry from the time of the 1911 census when they were all embarking on their new careers. And Alfred’s new career as a teacher was cut short, fighting a battle in a country to which he might never have otherwise visited.

  • 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.