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.
I didn’t get around at the time to writing about the Mercure Cardiff North hotel where we stayed for my birthday weekend in Cardiff in November. This is an Accor branded hotel and I had booked some time in advance, with the rates being very reasonable.
Firstly, there’s something unusual about their online reviews on Google as nearly every single one mentions a staff member by name. This isn’t usual on Google and doesn’t really help people get a fair understanding of what is happening here. If I read through the verified visits on Accor’s website, the situation is more as I would expect and staff members are rarely named, so that feels more reliable.
Instead of using my normal metric of Google Reviews, I’m going to use the Accor aggregated score, which shows that this hotel has a rating of 3.9 which is towards the lower end of the scale for the chain.
In fairness, the hotel was managing perfectly well at the accommodation element that was offered here. Liam and I had a twin room which was clean, at the appropriate temperature and everything worked as expected. There were no noise issues, either from inside or outside the hotel, so that all felt positive. The interior felt generally modern and so I suspect that there has been a refurbishment here recently.
I think my main negative about this hotel is I don’t know why they’re trying to be part of Accor. The hotel was playing fast and loose with the loyalty scheme offered by Accor and didn’t offer most of the benefits.
The situation with the welcome drink was downright awkward as the member of bar staff said that it was one drink a room. This isn’t right, this has never been right and it’s really not something I want to debate as it’s hard not to sound entitled about the matter. But holding Liam’s drink hostage whilst the staff members blamed each other is entirely sub-optimal. The reception desk resolved the matter, but the concept of the welcome drink was rather lost at this point.
It was partly a shame that the bar service was borderline rude as the drinks selection wasn’t unreasonable and although they’d made no effort getting local drinks in, at least they had a couple of options such as this Singha.
We had breakfast included in our room rates and on the first day it was poor, the second day it was better. it might not be relevant to me personally, but I like that they’re trying to do a gluten free area, but it could perhaps be a little more, er, exciting.
To be fair, I suspect guests would have worked out the labelling error here.
The hot food options, although this isn’t perhaps the best way to keep the food hot. As with the drinks at the bar, there was no effort to source food locally which is a shame as numerous Accor hotels are keen to do at least something.
The first day’s breakfast options were broadly dreadful. The bacon was dripping with grease, the cold cuts were of a very low quality, the cheese was already sweating in the displays and the whole arrangement looked sub-optimal.
I do agree with Richard’s comment that it’s a shame that there isn’t any fresh bread available here. But, to be fair to the hotel, this isn’t as common in the UK as it is on the European mainland.
They actually had fried eggs on the second day and the presentation of the food was much better. That bacon isn’t cooked anywhere as much as I’d like it, but I accept that’s a personal preference. The egg was cooked to my tastes and everything tasted as expected.
Overall, I thought that the stay was fine as the room was clean, the team members were generally friendly and there were no noise issues. Certainly breakfast could have been better on the first day, but we got there just as service started and it’s easy to be critical. My main comment about the hotel is that they should perhaps either embrace (or at least accept) the rules that Accor set them, or just go independent and be free of those guardrails.
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.
I led a walk, which was well attended which is rather nice, yesterday about the historic parish of St. George at Tombland, so expect a few posts now following my research about that.
I noted in a post in 2021 that it was really positive that this parish boundary marker had survived a move to a new building. However, it appears that it might have disappeared and the people that I’ve asked have no idea where it has gone. Dating from 1834, the marker is no longer visible following work undertaken on Princes House Residences.
The building with the parish boundary marker now missing…..
This is how Tombland Alley looks today, an alley that runs behind St. George Tombland and comes out opposite the Erpingham Gate. The areas of raised ground is where the burials took place and they were once more contained than they are now with railings, some evident in the photo taken by the late great George Plunkett in 1936.
This image is from Percy Stimpson (1880-1948) and so would date to around the 1920 or 1930 period. The iron railings that were removed during the Second World War for scrap iron are still visible, and I think interestingly, so are numerous gravestones. It’s not quite clear to me when these might have been removed, but it appears to have been around the 1950s or 1960s.
This post is more about the history of the Louis Marchesi pub, but here’s a photo of a beer that I’ve had at the pub whilst on an ale trail…..
The pub has for most of its licensed life been known as the Waggon and Horses, with the adjoining road still having that name. It became a licensed premises at some point in the early 1780s and became a pub owned by the brewery Steward, Patteson & Steward. The timber frontage is not original, that came at the beginning of the early twentieth century in an attempt to make it look Tudor with a similar thing happening to the Maid’s Head located over the road.
It wasn’t though built to be a licensed premises, there was a fifteenth century residential property here and the undercroft of that building is still present. Although the Tudor frontage and the roof might be twentieth century, the timber frame of the structure is also fifteenth century, although much changed over the centuries.
Although Tombland, which the pub faces onto, might not have changed much, the adjoining Waggon and Horses Lane has a different character today. To the disappointment of the sanitary committee, a second slaughter house licence was granted to a property owner in the late 1880s.
It later became a pub operated by Watney Mann in the 1960s and in 1975 it was renamed as the Louis Marchesi. Erminio William Louis Marchesi (1898-1968) was a local Norwich man who founded the Round Table, designed to be a younger version of the Rotary Club. The late great George Plunkett doesn’t have an older photo of the pub, but he has one from 1989.
Going back to some previous licencees, Daniel Fiddymont was the landlord between 1822 and 1830, but there was a tragedy in 1829 when his wife died. That meant that he was left running a pub with five young children, it’s perhaps not a surprise that he remained at the venue for only a few more months.
There was another tragedy in July 1831, when the new landlord Henry Morris died at the age of 46, leaving a wife and ten children. His widow looked after the pub for a few months until it no doubt became unsustainable and the brewery advertised for a new landlord. Henry had been a brewer for the Steward, Patteson & Steward brewery for over twenty years. Every morning at 06:00 he served purl, which was a warm ale served often mixed with gin and milk, with soups available for lunch.
Taking over in October 1831, John Bushell advertised in the Norwich Mercury that he had taken on the inn, which suggests that it did provide accommodation of some sorts. He noted that he had London porter and fine ales on draught, alongside a similar bottled selection. He remained the landlord of the pub until his death in 1839.
In 1851, the pub was once again advertised to let and in the newspaper the brewery mentioned that it was “doing a good trade and has accommodation for fifty horses” and there remains a large yard at the back of the venue today.
Probably to the annoyance of the landlord, in 1925 the pub was refused a renewal of their Saturday afternoon licence as the police said that they had found that it had been “badly conducted” when they visited. The pub’s representative complained and the magistrate suggested that they seek legal advice, which must have felt sub-optimal to the venue at the time. This meant that they lost their ability to open between 15:00 and 17:30 which were compulsory closing periods at the time.
More recently, in 2004 the pub became more of a cafe bar arrangement and took the name ‘Take Five’ which felt sub-optimal from a historical perspective, but since 2017 it has now once again become a pub and retaken the Louis Marchesi name.
Today, the pub offers around four real ales and from my experience they’re usually from local breweries. The undercroft and private room upstairs can both be booked for private events, but I don’t think that they’re routinely open for the public. I do prefer when pubs keep their original names, but at least it has the Louis Marchesi one back now….
I’m getting a bit niche now, so this is my last post about the Castle for a few days….. I posted about these stone inscriptions a few days ago.
I’ve just found this image drawn by Cornelius Jansson Walter Winter (1817-1891) in 1888. The castle ceased to be the city’s prison in 1887 and this image would have been done as part of the work for the new castle museum.
What I’m impressed by is that nearly 150 years later, the stonework is still in nearly the same condition as it was then. Although, there’s one exception and that’s in the top photo there’s a chunk of ironwork on the right hand side of the image and part of the stone above appears to have been removed. I should probably not be too worried about the removal of a piece of stone, but I’m intrigued.
The layout of the Castle Keep now, with the floor added back in, is pretty much exactly as they had it in this leaflet. This leaflet is slightly less useful as it was as lots has changed, but I think it’s a useful reminder of seeing it as it was.
This is a memorial brass which was on the tomb to John Stalon, a tanner in Norwich, who died on 10 October 1463.
“Orate p aia johis stalon quoda civis norwici barkere qui obiit x die mens october A dm m cccc lxiii ciu Aie ppicient dei”
The museum notes reads the above, which they translate as:
“Pray for the soul of John Stalon, formerly a citizen of Norwich, a tanner, who died on the tenth day of the month of October in the year of our Lord 1463, on whose soul may God look with favour.”
It was formerly in St. Swithin’s Church, which is now redundant. I haven’t written much about this church before, but it’s one of many on St. Benedict’s Street and it was already falling into disrepair in the Victorian period, so its future was never very secure although it did have a new and brief lease of life in the early twentieth century as a church. The Victorians took the tower down before it collapsed of its own accord and here’s what it looked like in the 1880s.
The church is now used by Norwich Arts Centre who mention on their website:
“Happily secure in its new 14th century flint building the venue went from strength to strength pulling in the best new music, comedy and performance names on the scene. Amongst those who have appeared are Nirvana, Oasis, Muse, Coldplay, Kasabian and The Manic Street Preachers during the 80’s and 90’s.”
That’s quite a collection of artists as even I’ve heard of them…. Back to the memorial brass, which came into the collections of Norfolk Museums Service in 1963, handily exactly 500 years after John Stalon’s death. Quite where this memorial brass was over the centuries I don’t know, although it was quite possibly at the church where it avoided being pinched.
I’ve been to Norwich Castle Museum again and that means I need to correct something…. I mentioned in my post about the well in the castle that it’s now covered and kids (or anyone else for that matter) can’t throw coins down it.
It has transpired that it is still possible to access the well by going to a lower floor, although they don’t seem to encourage anyone to throw things in it, but I think that’s more than understandable. There are though some coins at the bottom, but I decided not to try and take a zoomed in photo of them for fear of dropping my phone. It’s a long way down there and I’m neither sure that my phone would survive the fall, nor that the museum staff would give its retrieval the same priority as I would.
The stonework in the well and there’s an automatic winch thing now, something the medieval workers would have likely quite enjoyed rather than doing all that winding by hand.
