Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Norfolk

  • Streets of Norwich – Church Alley

    Streets of Norwich – Church Alley

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    Church Alley is a small street, or well, alley, which is located off Redwell Street and is behind St. Michael-at-Plea Church.

    On the left is Boardman House, which I have some internal photos of somewhere as I toured this on a Heritage Open Days weekend a couple of years ago. On the far left, not really visible in the photo, is the rear of the United Reform Church. On the right is St. Michael-at-Plea Church and it’s possible in theory to walk down this alley and through another courtyard, coming out on Tombland (I resisted on this occasion given the Coronavirus situation).

    The road goes between the old Sunday School (now Boardman House) and the church, with the boot and shoe manufactory now demolished. On a side note, the word manufactory used to be a common word for a factory, but it’s pretty archaic now.

  • Streets of Norwich – Chalk Hill Road

    Streets of Norwich – Chalk Hill Road

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    Chalk Hill Road is located roughly between the S and V of Wensum, going from the river and meeting Rosary Road in this 1830 map.

    By the 1880s, the street still didn’t exist, it is located just on the bend of Rosary Road, behind Aspland House.

    The street today, which was built at the end of the nineteenth century, looking towards the Wensum River.

    Looking back to 1939, the register of the street revealed:

    1 – Vacant

    2 – Bullock household

    3 – Anderson household

    4 – Morter household

    5 – Vacant

    6 – Vacant

    7 – Vacant

    8 – Nutt household

    9 – Ducker household

    10 – Holdstock household

    11 – Sadler household

    12 – Nickalls household

    13 – Lynes household

    14 – England household

    15 – Wilson household

    16 – Woodrow household

    17 – Sexton household

    18 – Hannant household

    19 – Knowles household

    20 – Westland household

    21 – Fisher household

    22 – Frostick household

    23 – Rudd household

    24 – Wright household

    25 – Bridgens household

    26 – Vacant

    27 – Jermy household

    28 – Norton household

    29 – Reeve household

    30 – Cooper household

    31 – Rumball household

    32 – Hill household

    33 – Howes household

    34 – White household

    35 – Benison household

    36 – Amers household

    37 – Coombs household

  • Streets of Norwich – Clement Court

    Streets of Norwich – Clement Court

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    There’s not much history left in Clement Court, but it does still exist behind the locked gates and the street name by its entrance remains.

    One of the most important pieces of history here is that Francis Burges published the first English provincial newspaper on 6 September 1701, the Norwich Post. The newspaper was published between 1701 and 1713, although unfortunately the earliest surviving copy is from 1707.

    This map from the 1880s shows that there was a Plymouth Brethren meeting room in the court, which could seat 260 people. The buildings around the court were mostly destroyed in 1957 when the Norfolk News Company extended their premises.

  • Streets of Norwich – King Street (upper end between Rose Lane and Prince of Wales Road)

    Streets of Norwich – King Street (upper end between Rose Lane and Prince of Wales Road)

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    King Street is one of the longer streets in the city centre, with this section running between Prince of Wales Road and Rose Lane.

    This is how the street looked like in the 1880s.

    The building on the left is, I think, the former Royal Oak public house, in operation between the 1850s and closed in 1921.

    The building which has what looks like a black frontage (behind the blue sign) was the Cock pub which was a licensed premises between the mid-eighteenth century and 1975 when it finally closed. It’s located at 32 King Street and the frontage is an original pub frontage from the nineteenth century.

    What is now the Last Pub Standing, which is a reference to it being the last public house on King Street, but was formerly known as Kings, Bar Rio, Tusk and the Nags Head. The building, which is at 27-29 King Street, was formerly two residential properties from the seventeenth century.

    The building on the left is the side of Hardwick House, which was built as a bank, before becoming the city’s main Post Office.

    The stretch of King Street was once the main road through, but this section has now been mostly pedestrianised.

  • Streets of Norwich – The Nest

    Streets of Norwich – The Nest

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    This is quite an easy street in terms of the history of the buildings on it, as they were all built over the last couple of years.

    It’s located off of Rosary Road, which is a much older street, with The Nest being located around where it says ‘Lime Kilns’ on the above map from 1830.

    By 1885, the current location of The Nest is pretty much where the buildings were located under the Brick Works site.

    The street takes its name from The Nest, which was Norwich City’s football ground between 1908 and 1935. Although the street isn’t on the site of the former ground, it is relatively near.

  • Streets of Norwich – School Lane

    Streets of Norwich – School Lane

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    School Yard is located off of Bedford Street, just to the left and above of the letter B of Bedford in the above map from 1885.

    This map from the 1830s suggests that this street was then known as the Hole in Wall Lane, with 27 representing the Girls Charity School. It’s from this that I assume the street takes its current name.

    This leads through to St. Andrew’s Street, although I’m not sure that there is a right of way down there.

    The building on the right is a former granary, but its frontage is on Bedford Street.

    The sign with white writing on a black background denotes that this is the boundary of St. Andrew’s parish.

  • Streets of Norwich – Old Post Office Yard

    Streets of Norwich – Old Post Office Yard

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    Looking into Old Post Office Yard, which is accessible from Bedford Street. Bedfords Bar now takes up much of this little arrangement, they’ve also got a fourteenth century undercroft in their building, which is all to the right once going through the arch. This building was saved in the 1980s and George Plunkett’s archive has a photo of what it once looked like.

    The building on the left-hand side of the arch was once the Nelson Tavern, with Bedfords Bar being on the other side to this. There was a Bedford Arms, but that was further down Bedford Street. The Norfolk Pubs web-site mentions that the Nelson Tavern was in operation from the mid-nineteenth century until it was closed down in 1918, during the period when the Government wanted to cut down on the number of licensed premises. It was also known, quite ridiculously perhaps, as the Pink Dominoes in 1881 (that’s almost a gastropub name from today) and as Klondyke towards the end of its existence as a pub. History often comes full circle though and it’s now a licensed premises once again, known as Frank’s Bar.

    The Post Office connection is better described from St. Andrew’s Street (which is what the court backs on to), so more on that another time.

  • Streets of Norwich – Opie Street

    Streets of Norwich – Opie Street

    Part of my Streets of Norwich project….

    Norwich in the 1880s, with Opie Street not having change much since then. It connects Castle Meadow to London Street. The name of the street did have to be changed, as the legacy of the medieval period was that it was called Gropekuntelane, for reasons of prostitution, so it was changed in the 1860s to be named after Amelia Opie. Opie was a local woman who was a Quaker, a writer and she also involved herself in politics, particularly in the anti-slavery movement.

    The street had also been called Devil’s Alley.

    On the wall just to the left of the hairdressers on the right-hand side of the photo is a stone plaque dating from around the 1930s marking where a sedan chair stood for hire in the early nineteenth century.

    The street is a little steep (especially for Norfolk) and at one point there were steps along part of its route up to Castle Meadow.

    A post-box from the reign of King Edward VII. One thing I didn’t know until today, and it’s one thing that I didn’t really need to know, is that the Post Office don’t need planning permission to put a new post-box up. So they can shove them where they like, which must be an exciting possibility.

    What is now Trailfinders was once The Queen public house.

    In the 1939 register, Louis Marchesi was living at number 6 Opie Street, a man who founded the Round Table movement in 1927. There’s also a pub named after him opposite the Erpingham Gate, fortunately reverted back recently after it was briefly renamed to Take 5.

  • Panxworth – All Saints Church

    Panxworth – All Saints Church

    This is one of my favourite churches in Norfolk, or at least, what’s left of it.

    The church was originally built in the fourteenth century, but as can be seen from this 1826 map, at this stage the church was in ruins (it’s located on the map just after the word ruins, at the little cross). It’s notable that there’s nothing else around there in terms of residential properties, the community had literally moved on. It’s not known when the church fell into ruins, but it was probably around the sixteenth century, which would coincide with depopulation in the area.

    However, the Victorians in a surge of confidence about church-going spent a fair sum of money on bringing the building back into use. An article in the Norfolk Chronicle in September 1845 noted that £500 was needed to complete the project and the local landowners made a donation, and there were events held including a “fancy fair”. At the fair there were “drawings on the tables of the intended design, with the building in the style of the fourteenth century, with a nave and chancel”.

    The project (there’s a plan from 1846 here) was overseen by James Weston and he didn’t really do much work to the tower itself, just tidying the structure up and adding a new nave. This plan worked for a while, with the church remaining in use until 1959 and it was finally declared as redundant in 1976. As usual, the wonderful George Plunkett has a photo of the church as it looked in the 1970s.

    Rather than repair the nave, which by the 1980s was becoming in need of some attention, they knocked it down, which wasn’t a huge historical loss as it was a Victorian structure anyway. So, in 1981, the nave and the south porch were taken down. As if that wasn’t enough for the church, a lightning strike hit the tower in 2005, which required more repair work.

    A damaged window frame, but this looks original from the fourteenth century (the frame, not the damage).

    Inside the church tower.

    The churchyard, where the graves are still tended.

    And there’s the tower, standing somewhat adrift in the landscape. Over recent years there have been rumours that the site has been used for Satanic worship and for a while the site was closed off. Fortunately, the structure is now accessible again for visiting and I think it still looks elegant. I do though still feel sorry for those Victorian donors, who contributed money to make it an operating church once again, but instead it’s come to this.

  • Norwich – St John the Baptist’s Church, Timberhill (James Tillott)

    Norwich – St John the Baptist’s Church, Timberhill (James Tillott)

    Further to my post about St. John the Baptist’s Church at Timberhill, this is one of the graves which is located within the building.

    I liked this tombstone, it’s so very eighteenth century and it’s in a reasonable state of repair. The tomb holds the graves of James Tillott (1715-1763) and his wife, Elizabeth Tillott (1714-1783), with James apparently being “a good husband, a humane master and a sincere friend”. The church’s records for both of these burials have survived, so it’s known that James was buried on Tuesday 28 June 1763 and Elizabeth was buried on Monday 16 June 1783, both three days after they died.

    Tallow chandlers usually made and sold candles out of animal fat that were used in homes, whilst wax chandlers usually made and sold candles out of beeswax that were used in churches and grander residential properties.