I’ve decided I’ll have to leave some stories of the last trip untold for the moment and it’s back to this week. This is slightly unfortunate for the chronological order, but I have long since accepted that this blog now operates less like a diary and more like a lightly confused archive with opinions.
I thought that I might as well walk to Norwich Airport as it isn’t that far. Here’s the delights of the riverside walk near Cow Tower.
And Cow Tower itself, which seems to have been locked again after a recent period of being left open. It was built between 1398 and 1399 and is one of the earliest purpose-built artillery blockhouses in England, designed to defend a strategic point in Norwich’s medieval defences by the River Wensum. That is a rather more dramatic original purpose than its current role of standing photogenically beside walkers, dog owners and people like me trying to get to an airport without paying for a bus or taxi. The name comes from Cowholme, the meadow that was once located here
This is St James Mill, built by the Norwich Yarn Company in the late 1830s as part of an attempt to revive Norwich’s textile industry. The company itself did not last long, because Victorian industrial optimism was not always matched by the accounts department, but the building survived and later became associated with Jarrold’s printing works. And, yes, it was too hot.
There’s a bit of a gap in this narrative here as I already posted the photos that I had taken of Anglia Square as I walked by.
This is the former King Edward VII pub on the Aylsham Road, now used as a mosque. I never visited this pub and I think it was something of a music venue towards the end, but it’s always sad to see a licensed premises closed. It first opened in 1903 and was a Morgans, then Bullards and then a Watney Mann pub which finally closed in 2014.
I had a little stop to cool down here.
A now closed Lloyds Bank.
The former Falcon pub which Lacons opened in 1926, later owned by Whitbread and Enterprise Inns. It was destroyed by the Co-op in 2014 when they turned it into a supermarket, but then after doing that damage, they ditched it in 2018. It looks now as if it’s being turned into a residential property.
This is a small remaining stretch of the old Norwich to Cromer road, rerouted when an airport was put down on its route.
The former Firs pub which was opened in 1933 by Bullards and was owned by a series of breweries including Watney Mann, Brent Walker, Chef & Brewer, Pubmaster and then Enterprise Inns. This was probably ultimately a viable pub, but it was snapped up by Tesco in 2011 and so that was the end of that. Fortunately, planning changes have made it harder for supermarket, and indeed McDonald’s, to do this.
And an hour after leaving, walking into the retail park next to Norwich Airport.