There’s not much of Stepping Lane left that was here in this 1880s map and it’s now less than half of its previous length. A clumsy post-war rebuilding plan of the area meant that nearly all of the property here was demolished, Scoles Green is under a car park and Rouen Road ploughs right through the middle of the lane’s former route. I have no idea what the mention on the map of ‘site of Hendon’s City House’ is referring to.

The entrance to the lane from King Street, with the plot on the left-hand side once being the Steam Packet public house. George Plunkett, as usual, has a suitable photo here, taken looking back towards King Street. I like the quirky buildings which were once here, at least the older wall on one side has survived.

In March 1873, it was reported in the Norwich Mercury that:

“For auction, all those four cottages, in eight tenements, in Stepping Lane, with garden ground and use of yard, in the occupation of Robert Eagle, Widow North, Samuel Pyne, Widow Edwards, Widow Francis, Widow Southgate, Widow Sword and Widow Thompson, at rental amounting to £31 8s 4d per annum. This lot is leasehold from the Dean and Chapter of Norwich for a term of 40 years from the 7th December 1862.”

And that’s about as far as the lane goes now, running into a lane called Normans Buildings, a throwback to when that was a street with residential properties on. It’s not exactly somewhere to make a special visit to if I’m being honest.

This small lane off of Fishergate goes down to the River Wensum and it separates the Church of Saint Edmund from what is today an NHS building, but was once a large sawmill site.

There’s a rather nice view of Norwich Cathedral when looking down Hansard Lane. Before it was renamed in honour of local Norwich man Luke Hansard (of Parliamentary printing fame) in around 1890, this street was more simply known as Water Lane. Here’s an article about what was likely a murder near Water Lane that was reported in January 1824.

Linked to my Streets of Norwich – Goldsworths Buildings post…..

John kindly got in touch regarding Norwich Lower School, which is a little further down Bishopgate. This is relevant as pupils had to walk by the former Goldsworths Buildings to get to the football pitch near to the river.

There will be a longer interview in the new year on this, but John mentioned:

“The Lower School was built in the old fashioned style common to state schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with high windows and a pitched roof. Think of it as an elongated rectangle divided laterally into three classrooms. The room nearest Bishopgate was the 2 J classroom (Mr Christopher Smith, known by us as Smithy), then Form 2 (Mrs Edith Stephenson, the headmaster’s stepmother, who we referred to as Ma Stevo) and furthest back was Form 1 (Mrs Spruce, known irreverently as Fanny – we had no concept of the more slangy meaning of this word as it is often used nowadays, it was just a female name as used by Jane Austen for Fanny Price). We were turned out at break times on to the School Field. The loos were also outside and froze up in the cold spells which happened every winter in those days, accompanied by snow and ice. The whole setup would have failed a modern school buildings inspection and the place was demolished after the next Lower School was built in (I think) the mid 1960s.”

I hadn’t known much about the old Lower School, which was replaced in either the late 1970s or early 1980s with the current building. There was an arson attack in something like 1989 which caused significant damage, but the general structure of the building was restored, although extended.

Unfortunately, the late and great George Plunkett doesn’t have any photos of the school in its current or former incarnation, so I’ll go on the hunt elsewhere for those.

Part of my Streets of Norwich project…. [Updated in November 2023]

Albert Place is a small road located off of Telegraph Lane West, which is visible on the above map coming off of Albert Road, but the top section is no longer there and is underneath some more modern housing.

This is all that is left now, so there’s not much that I can write here.

But, there is a story about two former residents of this street, Mr. W. Scott and his wife, who both incurred head injuries from a major railway accident which took place on 10 September 1874. An express train running from London to Great Yarmouth hit a mail train from Great Yarmouth to Norwich at some speed near Thorpe Junction, given some communication confusion caused by a telegraph clerk. 25 people were killed, including both sets of drivers and firemen, with a further 75 being injured. The disaster led to the introduction Tyer’s Electric Train Tablet, a token based system which made it impossible for two trains to be on the same section of track.

And, as another story, John Abel advertised in the Norwich Mercury on 7 September 1896 the below:

“This is to give notice, that on and after this date I will not be responsible for any debts contracted by my wife, Charlotte Abel.

John Abel, Albert Place, Albert Road, St. Leonard’s Road, Norwich.”

I’m not entirely sure what happened there….

Baltic Wharf is a relatively new road, it follows the line of the trees on this map from around 1900. SD on maps from this period either means sun-dial or a single-drain, so that little tiny circle next to the S might be a sun-dial…. There was a Baltic Wharf in the nineteenth century, but that was located a little further down the river.

There’s not a great deal of historic interest on Baltic Wharf, which leads off Mountergate, with the exception of St. Faith’s House which is a listed building. It was built as a three-storey grand private residence in the eighteenth century, although it’s now used as offices.

There was a planning application put in on November 2018 to build seventeen dwellings around the building and to change the property itself by kicking the businesses out and putting five flats in. The road is next to the large St. Anne’s Quarter residential building development (I thought the word quarter was being phased out, it has been so over-used recently….) and so this was always likely inevitable.

I’m not entirely sure that there’s much of a street here, but there is a road name visible, so that’ll do for me.

That road name visible in the previous photo is located on the Red Lion pub, but I wonder if it originally more described that row of buildings above the pub on this map from 1900. These buildings have since been demolished and the site is now used as the pub’s car park.

Here’s the Red Lion, currently boarded up, although it was closed before the Covid-19 situation.

This road seems to me to still be Bishopgate on maps, so it seems that the modern-day Goldsworths Buildings road is really now just the Red Lion pub and its car park. The landlord of the pub between 1842 and 1845 was James Goldsworth jr, so I have this idea that he built the properties by the pub and named them after himself. I have no evidence of this, but it makes for a nice story, so I’m going with it.

Fishergate is one of the streets in Norwich which has retained its street line and its name over the last few centuries, connecting Whitefriars to Fye Bridge Street.

The Church of St. Edmund, a fifteenth century building which was modernised (and, just a little bit ruined in my view) in the Victorian period, although it was built on the site of an earlier church which was likely Saxon. The number of residential properties in the area fell during the later part of the nineteenth century and the church fell into disuse during the early twentieth century. It was later used as a store for Norwich Puppet Theatre, although it now appears to be back in use as a religious building.

One of the Viking Norwich signs, of which there are several in this area. The street has been known as both Fishgate and Fishergate, both with the same original meaning of ‘street of the fishermen’.

The building painted light blue in the above photo is interesting, it’s the former Duke of Marlborough pub. It was closed in 1969 having been a licensed premises since at least the beginning of the eighteenth century.

To the right of the Duke of Marlborough was the Rampant Horse pub, long since demolished. This was a casualty of the removal of licenses from properties at the beginning of the twentieth century, an act which closed thousands of pubs throughout the country. To the left of the Duke of Marlborough, now no longer accessible, was Thoroughfare Yard, although this is still accessible from another entrance point.

On the matter of pubs, there was once a Carpenters Arms located on Fishergate but the records suggest it was only there in the 1830s and it’s not clear exactly where it was. There was also the Golden Fleece which was a licensed premises between sometime in the 1830s and 1867.

Formerly the offices of J Bugg Ltd, boot and leather manufacturers.

This section at the end of Fishergate, where it meets Fye Bridge Street, has been turned into a small park. I’m not sure why nothing is now here, although some buildings on this section were badly damaged during the Second World War. This little park is on the right hand side of this 1933 photo from George Plunkett.

Swan Lane is located in central Norwich and was originally called Rakeytheslane, or Rackey Lane, as Robert de Rakheythe had a house along the street. It changed its name in the nineteenth century because this was the location of the Swan Tavern, and I think it’s a rather lovely idea to name streets after pubs.

Fortunately, given its width, this is a pedestrianised street. At one end is London Street, which was the first street to be pedestrianised in the country, but motor vehicles had already long since been banned from going down Swan Lane.

The city in 1830, and not much has changed with the street layout of Swan Lane in the last two hundred years. The Swan pub was at number 8 from around 1750 until the early 1860s, although there are no pubs at all along the street by 1870. And that, in Norwich, is a fairly rare state of affairs….

This sign about Jem Mace is on the side of Turtle Bay.

Changing street numbers can be a curse to trying to understand building history, but this might fit in, as in around 1870 the property at number 8 had been rebuilt. The new structure was a grand building, with 4 bays facing onto Bedford Street and 5 bays onto Swan Lane. This was used as a shop until only a few years ago, when it was converted from being the Fabric Warehouse into the Turtle Bay restaurant, which is the building on the right in the above photo.

The entrance to Swan Lane from London Street, with something I missed (hence why it’s not very clear in the photo either), which is the entrance to a courtyard at 2 Swan Lane, on the far left of the Dipples building. I only noticed it from the listed building record, as Dipples is a Grade II listed property, originally constructed in the early nineteenth century and the frontage of the shop is original (apparently not the right-hand side window).

The swan in the front of Dipple and Son. The history of this company is interesting in itself, their web-site mentions:

“Dipples itself is nearly 140 years old. The jewellery business was originally founded in 1878 in Woodford, Essex, by George Henry Dipple. George did not stay in Woodford for very long as by 1890 he is no longer registered as living in Woodford. Between 1888 and 1890 the business was relocated to Ipswich. The jewellery store made a final move to Norwich around 1894 and has been located in Swan Lane every since.”

Jolly Butchers Yard is located off of Oak Street and is named after the pub which stands to the left of the yard and which traded until 1989 when it was converted into offices the following year.

The yard is still there and there are residential properties within it, so this is one of the yards which retains some of its former character. It’s a shame that the pub is no longer trading as it had been a licensed premises since the beginning of the nineteenth century and was clearly packed with intrigue and adventure.

There’s a plaque which notes that Black Anna (her real name was Antoinette Hannent), the jazz and blues singer, lived here between 1935 and 1976 and she got the name as she only wore black clothing. She said about this habit (please note the clever wordplay there given what she said….), “I’ve had people ask what order I belong to, a bad one I tell them” and the below video clip features her saying this. The video was filmed in the Jolly Butchers in what was probably the early 1970s and it’s entirely evident what an amazing and inspirational landlady she must have been.

There was a news story published in the Yarmouth Independent in May 1936 which had the title “GREAT BIG ROW” which sounds very Archant…… It noted that Walter Douglas from 7 Jolly Butchers Yard had an argument with his wife Gertrude Douglas and they used foul language within the yard during this big row. Elizabeth Carrara was watching the dispute from her window on the rear of Ber Street and it was actually her who made a statement about the “great big row” as she called it. I rather fear that this was a matter of domestic abuse, but the court decided to fine them each five shillings for their abusive language.

Mountergate has also been referred to as the southern end of St. Faith’s Lane and the small section where it meets Prince of Wales Road is now better known as Eastbourne Place. The road name comes from the corruption of the parish name of St. Peter Parmentergate, which over time became Permountergate, and then Mountergate (and Mountergate Street).

Norwich City Council is very proud of its car parks and they put to one side perhaps too readily an English Heritage report asking them to reconsider building this. I’d rather that the council were proud of Norwich’s heritage and stopping knocking things down, but there we go. This is likely another one of those decisions that will be regretted in thirty years, although the building on the front part of this site was in fairness of no great historic loss.

As can be seen here, the car park beautifully blends into its environment.

There’s a road opposite the car park which leads to the Premier Inn and riverside walk.

On the left of this photo is a building which has been left empty since around 2005, whilst the beautiful car park still keeps going on the right.

The same neglected building from the front.

When certain Norwich City councillors were excitedly talking about their new car park, they were asked by some heritage bodies to moderate their plans to try and save the historic fishmarket site. The fishmarket buildings weren’t that appealing visually, but there was historic interest to them, even though they had only been constructed in 1914 when they moved from their previous site on St. Peter’s Street.

English Heritage said:

“The complete demolition of the fishmarket would result in the loss of this heritage interest and the buildings’ contribution to the historic environment. We would urge the council to consider alternative uses of part of the site that would allow retention of the fishmarket, but also alternative designs for the car park.”

So, there was potential for the council to change their plans slightly to build their car park, but to save some of the fishmarket site. What the council actually did was ignore all of that, but they did save the plaque which they’ve attached to their lovely new car park. So, when people come to have a look at the fishmarket site, which was of historic note albeit very run-down, they can now see where it was. Great.

There was a question asked of the council at the time about surely their own public transportation plans were failing if their only solution was to keep building car parks. I’m not sure they came up with an answer to that.

Anyway, there’s no point in being negative. One advantage in the council knocking down sites of interest is that there are fewer listed buildings for me to note.

This is one listed building that remains, a seventeenth-century former factory site which still has some character to it, even though there have been a couple of extensions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when it was used in the manufacture of boots and shoes. Behind it is St. Faith’s House, which fronts onto Baltic Wharf.

A more modern office building, and then the entrance to the new St. Anne’s Quarter building development. Somewhere along here was the site of the Orchard Tavern, which was the only pub located on Mountergate.

The pub was badly damaged during an air raid in 1940 and the owners, the Lacon Brewery, decided that they wouldn’t rebuild it.

Taking a look at the 1939 Register, St. Faith’s Tavern was located at 17 Mountergate and the landlord Fred Furze lived on the premises with his wife, Melinda. The pub closed in 1961 and it was once located at the corner of Mountergate and Synagogue Street.

Everything on the left has been lost to the St. Anne’s Quarter site (although much had already been lost to war damage), but the wall on the right-hand side has been retained.

And that wall leads to this gate, which led into where the Rose Lane iron-works are marked on the map. Now replaced by the Parmentergate Court housing project, at least this element has been kept as part of the site redevelopment. George Plunkett, who I’ve never known to be wrong on anything, wrote that the walls were from the Co-op shoe factory and were “retained as a baffle against traffic noise for Parmentergate Court”. Another source says they’re the old iron-work walls, and I have no idea which they are, unless both were at the site at the same, or different, times. On balance, I can’t imagine Plunkett was wrong though.

The road, which is pedestrianised at this point, then meets King Street and straight over is Stepping Lane. A century ago, there would have been a road on the left-hand side, which was where Synagogue Street once stood. Much of this was lost during air raids in the Second World War, with the synagogue the street was named after being badly damaged, and then moved to a new site on Earlham Road in 1948.