HOME · LATEST 100 POSTS · BAR BILLIARDS · GOOD BEER GUIDE · NORWICH MARKET · FLIGHTS · RAILWAYS · INDIAN MEALS · CONTACT

Category: UK

King’s Lynn – NORAH event at King’s Lynn Town Hall

Despite all my expeditions to King’s Lynn recently, I’ve never made it to the historic Town Hall. Fortunately, a NorAH event was taking place and a trustee I thought it would made an ideal opportunity to have a look around the building.

The building is too complex to give a comprehensive history here, but there’s more information at their official web-site. But I’ll do my best at a potted history of the building in this post, with this grand room being the Assembly Room. These became popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, generally used by the more wealthy to take part in events such as balls, concerts, dances and all manner of other decadent events. The room has been decorated as it would have looked in the Georgian period and when they did some analysis of the walls they discovered six very different paint schemes which had been used over the years.

At the rear end of the Assembly Room, and constructed at the same time in 1768, is what is now known as the Card Room. This was used as a quieter and more intimate space which was frequently used by card playing following in the traditions of King George III and King George IV. Today the venue is used for weddings and other formal events, so the traditions of being a meeting place for those in the town continues.

At the other end of the Assembly Room is what I consider to be the centrepiece of the building, the Stone Hall. This was built in 1422 and was originally a merchant guildhall (the Merchant Guild Hall of the Holy Trinity), replacing an earlier building that had caught fire in 1421. The floor is made from Ketton stone (which is from Rutland and is used extensively in a number of colleges at Cambridge University) and was added in 1716, with marks on the floor from when they put in the judge’s bench, defendant’s dock and the jury stalls. The whole design of this room and its long heritage does remind me of similar halls in countries such as Poland, they have no shortage of buildings such as this there, usually by the city’s main market square.

The large tracery window at the end of the Stone Hall has numerous inscriptions that glaziers and plumbers (lead workers) have scratched into the glass over the years, likely annoying generations of custodians of the building.

A close-up of some of the handiwork. There is a guide on the window which shows where the inscriptions are and details of what they say.

A side door from the Stone Hall leads through to the former courtroom which was built in 1767 to serve as the Borough’s council chamber. In 1830 the room was repurposed to become the Petty Sessions, or Magistrate’s Court, and it remained in use until 1982. Modernisation is inevitable and the facilities were dated for the modern age, but there is an element of sadness when traditions come to an end. There’s plenty of centralisation in public services today, a lot of the power and civic functions of King’s Lynn have ebbed away over the years.

The retiring room which was added in 1895 to link the Georgian town hall with the new municipal wing.

The porch where visitors enter the building. It’s an odd design with a fair amount of wasted space, I’m not sure whether they’ve repurposed this area over the years.

Onto the documents that were on display, this is a survey of the lands in Terrington St Clement and Terrington St John.

These documents can often be hard to make out where the handwriting isn’t clear, but the book on the left (which is the one in the previous photo) had a scribe who was clearly proud of their handiwork. The documents and maps on display were all purchased for Norfolk Record Office at public auction following donations made by NorAH and the Audrey Muriel Stratford Trust.

I do like knowing what’s behind a door like this.

And thanks to Luke and his guided tour, I was able to find out. These are the bottom of those stairs, where the prisoners would trudge up to the court and then back down again after having found out their sentence.

All told, a rather lovely evening and it’s positive to see documents being acquired that can be read and accessed for free by anyone who visits the King’s Lynn Borough Archives. It was also a highlight of course to see this historic building and to get a tour of it, I’m very pleased that no-one has ever turned it into a restaurant, hotel or bar in the way that some of these venues are repurposed. Also, for anyone interested, here are details of the NorAH Supporter’s Scheme.

April 20, 2023
Harwich – Kindertransport Memorial

I’ve seen a few Kindertransport sculptures and memorials around Europe, not least in Gdansk and at London Liverpool Street railway station. This memorial in Harwich is titled Safe Haven and was sculpted by Ian Wolter (https://ianwolter.com/safe-haven/), having been unveiled at Harwich Quayside on 1 September 2022.

It’s located here as nearby on 2 December 1938 a ferry docked which included 200 mostly Jewish children from Germany, a Kindertransport designed to save their lives. Around 10,000 children, mostly from children’s homes, were brought to Britain as part of the process and many were sent to the nearby Dovercourt Bay Holiday Camp. The first transportation took place just days after Kristallnacht, the organised campaign of terror against Jewish communities across Germany.

It’s a beautiful and touching sculpture with an information board nearby to explain the concept of the Kindertransport. The imagery is powerful, these five scared children walking down a plank to a new world which would have no doubt been frightening to them, but it was likely a journey that saved their lives. I’ve noted before that every time I write about this subject, I feel the need to mention Sir Nicholas Winton, one of the greatest humanitarians of the twentieth century. Some politicians today might perhaps be better served, or at least the country would be, by being inspired by his politics of compassion rather than deciding to opt for hatred and scaremongering.

The memorial has its own web-site which has plenty more information about its history and what the children involved went through.

April 17, 2023
Harwich – Ha’Penny Pier

I love a nice pier, there’s something quite exotic about walking out over the sea whilst peering (no pun intended) through the holes in the wood at the waves crashing below. Harwich’s pier doesn’t quite have the water underneath which is being flung against the sand by the power of the moon, but it still allows for a little walk out.

The pier has a kink in the middle of it, towards the right is where the entrance is located and off to the left is where the landing area is for the ferry across to Felixstowe. There’s a little cafe located at the entrance to the pier, as well as small tourist information facility which is operated by the Harwich Society.

This is what the pier looked like at the end of the nineteenth century, but today the spur going off to the left is missing which is because it burnt down in July 1923. A fair number of sources give the date as 1927, but it was Friday 13th July 1923, perhaps there’s something in these omens. This section of the pier had been closed off during the First World War, although fishermen often jumped the barrier, but the planned repairs caused by a lack of maintenance were aborted when it caught fire.

There’s Felixstowe in the background.

The pier’s information sign and it mentions that it opened on 2 July 1853 and originally cost ha’penny to enter, hence the name.

Some of the artwork located, or perhaps temporarily dumped, on the bridge. It’s Esturiana and is a community artwork which is apparently a sign of local creativity. I can’t write that I’m particularly engaged by it as I’m struggling to understand the story it’s trying to tell, but everyone likes different things and at least they’ve put a sign up to explain to visitors who created it.

More recently, there was nearly another disaster when in August 2020 there was a fire which fortunately didn’t spread as the fire brigade were alerted promptly and they were able to quell the flames. There’s been some recent restoration work to stop bits of the pier falling down, so its future seems secure. These are really not ideal structures to have to look after, they are quickly damaged by the elements, but at least this pier has survived albeit not as much as there once was.

There’s more information about this rather charming little pier at https://www.harwich-society.co.uk/maritime-heritage-trail/hapenny-pier-visitors-centre/.

April 16, 2023
Harwich – Harwich Library

I’ve decided that I can establish a reasonable information about a town or city by the sort of library that it maintains. This one, located opposite the town’s JD Wetherspoon pub, is open five days a week including until 19:00 on one evening. For anyone who likes challenges, guess what this building used to be. The answer is further down the post.

It has tables, so that’s a win for me, and there’s also a relatively substantial local history collection. There was quite an argument going on between a visitor and the librarian, the former claiming they had paid a book fine and the latter stating very firmly that their system showed that they hadn’t. I was a little disappointed not to see the matter resolved, but there’s a limit to how long I’m prepared to wait in a library to see how a customer service issue unfolds. I like a bit of drama with my library visit, it adds something just that bit intangible.

There was some sort of recycling display in the corner to add a little something to the whole arrangement. As for the library, it seemed quiet and comfortable with plenty of books, I didn’t have much to complain about at all. Nothing overly inspiring, but it was open when I wanted to go in it, so that’s sufficient given the current national cutbacks.

There’s an interesting story that I can’t quite understand which is that the denizens of Harwich in 1903 rejected a £3,000 sum from Andrew Carnegie to build themselves a library. This philanthropist funded 3,000 libraries around the world and I haven’t come across an instance where his offer was rejected, although I’m sure it must have happened in numerous locations. The local newspaper commented that “Andrew Carnegie must sometimes feel sad at the inexplicable conduct of some unenlightened people” and that seems a fair summary of the situation. A local vote showed that 235 residents wanted a library and 536 didn’t. I assume that’s because Carnegie required the local ratepayers to take responsibility for the institution and the taxpayers didn’t want that hassle. The local newspapers show that for the next thirty years there was anger from residents writing to say they needed a public library and why wasn’t the council providing them one.

And, for the answer to my question earlier on, it was a bus station. Congratulations to anyone who guessed from the frontage of the building.

April 10, 2023
Harwich – Breakwater

I pondered, as this is the sort of thing I decide I need to think about, the problems that councils must have with signage such as this. They have to make it so that the breakwater is clearly out of bounds, but not so much that people have to walk around the signage and risk falling in getting onto it. This does seem a genuinely dangerous thing to walk on, there are photos of the waves pounding it from both sides.

Whilst I’m making reference to danger, I was interested to discover that a fair few sailing craft have hit this breakwater when the tide was high, which seems far from ideal (or sub-optimal as other Julian says). The port of Felixstowe is visible in the background of the photo above.

There’s more Felixstowe, which takes me back to when I walked 50 miles as part of the LDWA Shotley Peninsular walk.

And here’s some more sea photos….. What a treat for the end of a Easter Bank Holiday for both my readers.

Someone like Dave Morgan would decide that he’d go for the option on the left as there would be a nice walk to them……

April 10, 2023
Harwich – Cox’s Pond

An entire blog post about a pond, but if there had been more Good Beer Guide pubs in Harwich then I might have been otherwise distracted…. The ducks on this pond have had a challenging time over recent years, they went mysteriously missing in 2011 and had to be replaced with a new cluster of ducks.

I think it’s an interesting pond though and not just because of its duckhouse, a word perhaps forever synonymous now with the late Conservative MP Peter Viggers and his Parliamentary expenses. I was intrigued as it has some heritage to it, the pond was once part of the ditch that surrounded the medieval town of Harwich.

The location of the pond can’t be made out in this early eighteenth century drawing of the town, but it gives an indication of how the ditches were used to help defend Harwich.

April 9, 2023
North Walsham Pub Day – Hop In

The Hop In is the only Good Beer Guide listed pub in North Walsham and is a micro-pub that was formerly occupied by a taxi company. I’ve been hoping to come here for some time and it was the pub that Julian and I expected to enjoy the most in our day trip to the town, so we had left it to last.

This was the strongest real ale selection of the day, offering a combination of local breweries alongside some different national breweries to give a little more choice. They had some tempting chocolate bars and crisps on the bar, but I somehow managed to resist buying food that I didn’t really need.

It’s a small venue, just three tables downstairs and around five or so tables upstairs. I wasn’t able to get a photo of the interior as it was busy, but the environment is cosy, informal and extremely inviting for my needs at least. The service was outstanding, with the staff member being knowledgeable, engaging, personable and pro-active. It is absolute no surprise that this pub is doing so well given the welcome that customers are receiving. I was faffing about wondering whether I needed a chocolate bar, and the staff member mentioned that I also had the option of bringing in food from other venues, which is always a kind gesture.

I went for the Pit Stop from Prescott Brewery to start with, an example of my being able to try something new as the brewery is from Cheltenham and I hadn’t previously heard of it. The beer uses Citra hops which nearly always delights me, giving it a pleasant citrusy flavour and it was served in excellent condition.

I didn’t go for Boudicca on this visit, but if my new bar billiards team member friend Emma ever reads this I’d note I’d had one of her brewery’s beers the night before so I haven’t become disloyal to this fine brewery. This is instead a beer I’ve had plenty of times, the ever delightful Blackberry Porter from S&P Brewery. Well, I have to get my fruit intake somehow as it’s important to have a balance in life.

I had absolute no complaints about the Hop In, it’s a standout venue which absolutely deserves to be listed in the Good Beer Guide. Exceptional service, a well thought through selection of beers, an inviting atmosphere and the denizens of North Walsham should be delighted that they have this drinking option in the town. I was surprised and delighted, ready to return to the International Transportation Hub in the car park of North Walsham library.

April 8, 2023
North Walsham Pub Day – Orchard Gardens

Situated just a few minutes walk away from the town centre is this former Victorian townhouse, now the Orchard Gardens, which was the fifth pub visit on our day trip to North Walsham. It’s been a pub since the late nineteenth century and was a Watney Mann pub until Punch Taverns briefly took it over and nearly ruined it before it became free trade.

I admit that I had to Google this as I hadn’t heard of Walter Pardon, but my music knowledge is mostly limited to the Wurzels so that’s not entirely surprising.

For anyone interested, here’s one of his folk songs.

The pub was larger than I had realised and it had a cosy ambience to it, it seemed a generally comfortable environment.

There were three ales available, Greene King’s Abbot, Lacon’s Encore and Reedlighter from Woodfordes Brewery.

I’m not a cyclist so I don’t mind where bikes are shoved, but Julian is more into getting them back into use.

We sat, for the second time in a day, by the dart board and some festive tree arrangement in the corner.

This wasn’t under-poured, I had consumed a little before remembering to take the photo. I went for the Reedlighter from Woodfordes and it was well-kept and at the appropriate temperature but as a beer it was a little thin for me.

An Adnams Ale poster of their brewery set-up from nearly fifty years ago.

I was very tempted by this pizza arrangement, which I think is a pop-up set-up from a different vendor, but I was still more than full from my earlier pie at the King’s Arms. For what it’s worth, which I admit is very little, if I had been settled in for the evening I’m confident that I would have gone for the ‘Nduja pizza.

I liked this pub, it felt like a comfortable family venue which has numerous events going on which include live music. The opening hours aren’t as transparent as they could be, the opening times vary on different sites and the closing time is ‘late’ which I find an entirely unhelpful proposition for customers. But anyway, that slight complaint aside, I liked the set-up here with numerous different seating areas and also a pool table in a separate part of the venue. The service was polite and personable, the atmosphere was inviting and I liked their food offer so I’d suggest that combination is a win for the local community.

April 8, 2023
North Walsham Pub Day – Market Tavern

The Market Tavern on Market Street would have been our fourth pub of the day in North Walsham, but it’s unfortunately closed. The Auction House sign says that the “business is not affected” but the signage of the pub has come down and its future doesn’t look entirely promising. We were told in the Hop In that the landlord died which is why it closed, but hopefully it can re-open again in the future as a pub as the venue seems entirely viable financially.

April 8, 2023
North Walsham Pub Day – King’s Arms Hotel

Our second pub of the day had what I considered to be the most interesting building, the substantial structure of the Kings Arms Hotel. It was constructed in the seventeenth century, although was much modified in the following century, but that’s still plenty of heritage. The pub’s web-site claims that Horatio Nelson might have popped in for a drink which is not entirely fanciful as he was at Paston Grammar School which was located next door, although he left there when he was 12 so who knows….

There are plenty of pubs which were formerly hotels and keep that word in their name, not least the Bell Hotel in Norwich, which seems a little confusing to me. However, the King’s Arms still welcomes overnight visitors and the reviews for their accommodation seem broadly positive with all the guest rooms located on the first floor.

There were three real ales available, Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, the Ghostship from Adnams and Abbot from Greene King, with prices feeling around average. I’m somewhat out of date with my knowledge of shots as it’s a long time since I’ve run anything which sells them, but the Dead Man’s Fingers rum looked intriguing in their garish packaging. But Julian and I were sticking to the beers and didn’t want to get distracted with shots, a sign of our professionalism to our day trip.

We didn’t have a food plan for the day, so I asked if they were serving food and these menus were supplied. As they looked suitably interesting we decided to get food here.

The problem a large pub has is ensuring that it feels homely and that there doesn’t seem to be tumbleweed floating across the plains of the carpet. There were no such difficulties here, there were plenty of customers from all age groups with this being one of the more comfortable environments we found during the day. I went for the Landlord from Timothy Taylor’s Brewery and this tasted as expected, at the appropriate temperature and well kept.

Historic photos of the pub.

A little shrine of pub history, I liked it.

This sign was more confusing than it needed to be (or to me at least, I’m easily confused), but the ladies and gents were to the right.

The pie is listed on the menu as traditional British, which frightened me slightly, but I asked and was told that they had beef or chicken. I wasn’t entirely sure that this sounded entirely tempting, but I went with the chicken pie and had suitably low expectations of a sub-optimal experience. I needn’t have though, this was a perfectly good meal with the chicken pie being sizeable, the chips being firm on the exterior and fluffy inside alongside peas which retained some bite. But the star of this little show was the gravy which was served in a large quantity and had an onion taste to it which added positively to the whole arrangement. Although the chicken pie did seem to have been brought in, the meal was filling and tasty so I had no complaints. There was also a check back during the meal and I got the impression that the pub would have promptly fixed any problems. Julian went for the scampi and chips which was also served as a large portion, indeed so substantial that he was defeated towards the end, but he mentioned the quality of the food.

The pool table area of the pub, one of several separately defined areas of the venue.

I very much liked this venue, it had lots of character, the service was polite and the surroundings were comfortable. The food exceeded my expectations and I rather got the feeling that I was carrying on the tradition of generations of enjoying sustenance in this pub. And just perhaps I was sitting in the same place as Horatio Nelson, who knows….

April 8, 2023