A few of my favourite buildings

15 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by reggie unthank in Decorative Arts, Norwich buildings, Norwich history

Tags

ely cathedral, favourite buildings, kings college cathedral, kings lynn custom house, norwich cathedral

This was going to be something quite different but in this fifth week of isolation I haven’t been able to take new photographs, the library and record office are closed, so I’m revisiting a few of my favourite buildings to remind us of life outside this bubble.

Possibly my favourite building, the Pantheon in Rome was completed around 126AD by the emperor Hadrian. The generous classical portico leads into a rotunda of staggering beauty. By reducing the weight of the roof the coffered (sunken) panels reduced the weight of the roof, helping it remain the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome for nearly 2000 years. On our visit, no-one seemed to mind when the rain came in.

Local pride compels me to mention that Norwich had its own Pantheon [1], although with a modest diameter of 74 feet it would have caused proportionately fewer jaws to drop.

The Pantheon in Ranelagh Gardens, just off the St Stephen’s roundabout, became the booking office of Norwich Victoria Station (1913). Courtesy Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Another stunner is the great dome of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, its diameter only marginally less than that of the Pantheon.

To construct what was, in AD 537, the largest building in the world, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I commissioned a geometer/engineer (Isodore of Miletus) and a mathematician (Anthemius of Tralles). Literally, their task was to square the circle: how to support the circular base of the dome on top of a square base? To make this transition they made innovative use of pendentives – curved triangular segments that allowed the weight of the dome to be spread over the four supporting pillars.

Image courtesy of Buzzie.com

Hagia Sophia at sunset

Another sunset. Approaching Ely from the south, one of the great sights of East Anglia emerges as you crest the brow of a hill and the ‘Ship of the Fens’ rises up.

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Ely Cathedral, with the octagonal Lantern at the central crossing. (The taller tower is at the West Front) ©Andrew Sharpe/Geoff Robinson

In 1322 the Norman tower at the central crossing collapsed and when it was realised that it was unfeasible to rebuild in stone the King’s Carpenter, William Hurley, was drafted in [2]. The 70 foot span was beyond the capacity of available timbers so, first, he erected an outer wooden octagon, which was painted to resemble the eight stone piers on which it stood. Then, at the centre of this platform, he constructed a lantern around a vertical octagon of eight timbers. Each a prodigious 63 feet long, these beams were obtained from Chicksands Priory in Bedfordshire [3].

The central light well, the lantern, is based on an outer octagon of wood painted to look like stone. Photo credit: David Ross and Britain Express

King’s College Chapel Cambridge – another East Anglian treasure – also gives joy. John Wastell built the beautiful fan-vaulting, giving the chapel the unified appearance of a building completed in a single campaign, but it was started by a Plantagenet (Henry VI) and completed by a Tudor (Henry VIII), with the Wars of the Roses in between (1446-1515).

The chapel has ‘the largest fan vault in the world’. (‘world’ meaning England, for fan vaulting was a native invention). The skin of the stone fans is surprisingly thin and their radiating ribs largely decorative. The main work of supporting the prodigious vault is performed by the transverse arches and tapering external buttresses topped with heavy stone finials to counteract the outward thrust [4]. This external support – no flying buttresses here – creates the illusion of internal lightness, a single space tented with a delicate lacework of something less than stone.

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The world’s largest fan vault, King’s College Chapel Cambridge. Creative Commons Licence BY-SA 4.0 by ‘Cc364’

King’s College Chapel. CC BY-SA 3.0 by Dmitry Tonkonog

Even closer to home is the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts on the UEA campus, a bike-ride away. Here there is no illusion, for the superstructure that supports this vast open space is in plain view. Fascinated by the fibres that wrap around plant cells I remember looking up to the SCVA’s tubes and struts, waiting (unproductively, as it happens) for architectural inspiration.

All these buildings offer solutions for enclosing and defining large spaces. This negative space is a fundamental element of architecture that Rachel Whiteread captured in her sculpture ‘House’ (1993). She made a concrete cast of the inside of the house in East London then demolished the skin brick by brick. Jonathan Jones of The Guardian said it was: ‘The solid trace of all the air that a room once contained.’

‘House’ by Rachel Whiteread, 1993. It was decided to demolish the sculpture the day she won the Turner Prize. Photo: Apollo Magazine

The first building to make an impression on me was Cardiff Castle, a Gothic fantasy built on the profits from Welsh steam coal.

The Clock Tower, circled with figures representing the planets

The designer William Burgess restored the castle for the Third Marquess of Bute at the height of the Gothic Revival. On his last visit (1881), Burges worked on the Arab Room with its fabulously intricate ceiling lined with gold leaf. ‘Billy’ Burges built this room in homage to the influence of Moorish art on medieval design. It is considered to be his masterpiece [5].

The Arab Room, Cardiff Castle.

If Rachel Whiteread were to cast the space inside this room it would resemble a Victorian jelly.

Victorian jelly mould. Credit: loveantiques.com

After the Muslims conquered Spain they used the site of a shared Muslim/Christian church to build and extend (C8-C10) the Grand Mosque in Cordoba. When Christian rule was reestablished a Renaissance cathedral was constructed in the middle of the Muslim complex.

The Mihrab Dome, Grand Mosque Cordoba. ©José Luiz Bernardes Ribiero/CC BY-SA 3.0

Perhaps the most inspiring aspect of the mosque is the enormous space punctuated by 856 columns rescued from Roman buildings. The innovative double arches allowed for a greater ceiling height above the relatively short columns.

Of the three buildings in the Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa, the one on the left fascinates me most.

The Baptistery, Duomo and Leaning Tower, Pisa

The Baptistery was begun by Duotisalvi in 1153 but wasn’t completed for over 200 years, allowing us to see the transition between the rounded Romanesque and the pointed Gothic.

The immense interior is surprisingly plain.

Photo: Tango7174. CC BY-SA 4.0

I last saw Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterpiece in 2012, before the disastrous fires of 2014 and 2018.

Glasgow School of Art, 1896. The compositional asymmetry of the Renfrew Street entrance, pictured here in 2012

Photo: Robert Perry/TPSL/Camera Press

Mackintosh’s unique buildings were filtered through a range of influences. For example, the parade of window frames on the north front are reminiscent of Elizabethan ‘prodigy houses’ with their runs of rectlinear windows …

Hardwick House, Derbyshire, 1590-7. Photo: chachu207. Creative Commons licence CC BY-SA 3.0

… while the sheer planes on the east and west elevations echo the high defensive walls of the Scottish Baronial Style [6].

Mackintosh made sketches of this baronial tower-house, Maybole Castle, Ayrshire. ©South Ayrshire Libraries

Mackintosh’s reputation was highest in Austria. When he and his wife Margaret Macdonald were invited to design a room for display at the 8th Secessionist Exhibition of 1900 [7] students paraded them through Vienna on a cart garlanded with flowers, and architect and designer Josef Hoffman– co-founder of the Wiener Werkstätte – described Mackintosh as the leader of the modern movement. This high point contrasted starkly with the latter part of his career when commissions declined and he descended into alcoholism.

The Secession Building designed by Josef Maria Olbrich, Vienna, 1898. Locals refer to the dome as the golden cabbage.

Back in Norfolk, King’s Lynn possesses ‘one of the finest late C17 buildings in provincial England’ [8]. The beautifully proportioned Customs House was commissioned by a local wine merchant, Sir John Turner MP, and designed by local architect, Henry Bell. It was built as a merchants’ exchange at a time when the town was one of the nation’s busiest ports and a hub for trade with Europe.

The Customs House, 1683

On the opposite side of the county, the ‘only one remarkable building’ of Great Yarmouth, (according to Pevsner and Wilson [9]) is Fastolff’s House. I have written about it previously [10] but it is a neglected gem, one of few buildings in the art nouveau style in this country, and I have been back a few times since.

Fastolff’s House, Great Yarmouth. Designed by RS Cockrill 1908

The building is made of red brick but what transforms it is the facade of white faience. Fastolff’s House is elevated by its applied decoration just as the exterior of Norwich’s Royal Arcade was transformed by WJ Neatby’s Carraraware tiles. Carraraware was developed in Doulton’s Lambeth factory by the head of their architectural department, Neatby, as a weatherproof facade resembling marble. It is not known who made the Yarmouth tiles but the panels of leaves and fruit are in the restrained form of art nouveau – as opposed to the sinuous variety favoured on the Continent – illustrated on the front cover of The Studio around the end of the nineteenth century.

Above, the art nouveau frieze in white faience (red rectangle) echoes, below, the cover design of The Studio from a dozen years earlier.

To lose one spire may be regarded as a misfortune but to lose two looks like carelessness. In 1362, the wooden spire of Norwich Cathedral was blown down in a gale; in 1463, its replacement was struck by lightning. The ferocity of the resulting fire destroyed the wooden roof of the nave and turned the Caen stone pillars pink. Bishop Walter Lyhart – whose rebus of a hart lying on water is dotted around the nave – replaced the roof with a lierne stone vault. Completed in 1472, the result was a remarkable 14-bay-long vault designed by Reginald Ely not long after he had finished working on King’s College Chapel. Between the main structural (tierceron) ribs that bridged opposite walls, Ely traced a decorative pattern of short lierne ribs and where the two intersected he placed 255 stone bosses depicting biblical scenes, from the Creation to Doomsday [11].

The lierne vault of the nave. Beneath it, the massive Norman piers had been turned a pinkish colour by the fire

Norwich Cathedral from the cloisters

Sources

https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/tag/norwich-pantheon/
John Harvey (1988). Cathedrals of England and Wales. Pub: Batsford
EC Wade and J Heyman (1985). The timber octagon of Ely Cathedral. Proc. Instn. Civ. Engrs, vol 8, part 1: 1421-1436.
https://www.architectural-review.com/the-romantic-and-pragmatic-history-of-the-fan-vault-has-lessons-for-contemporary-structures/8609423.article
Rosemary Hannah (2012). The Grand Designer: Third Marquess of Bute. Pub: Birlinn Ltd.
James Macaulay (1993). Glasgow School of Art: Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Pub: Phaidon Press Ltd.
Jackie Cooper (ed) (1984). Mackintosh Architecture. Academy Editions, London.
Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (1999). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 2: North-West and South. Pub: Yale University Press.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/03/25/art-nouveau-in-great-yarmouth/
Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (1999). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
Paul Hurst (2013). Norwich Cathedral Nave Bosses. Pub: Medieval Media, Norwich

The Norwich Banking Circle

15 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich Banking, Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Catton Hall Norwich, Earlham Hall, Gurneys Bank, Harveys Bank, Keswick Hall Norwich, Whitlingham Hall

From the C16 onwards, when an influx of religious refugees from the Low Countries swelled the population by up to third, Norwich became a crowded city and those who had grown rich on the worsted industry began to move out. By moving to their grand houses in the country the wealthy not only marked their new social status but also escaped the epidemics of cholera, smallpox and typhoid that swept the city. They left behind urban space that became colonised by the poor who lived in hundreds of speculative shanties. These insanitary ‘yards’ or ‘courts’, accessed down an alleyway, were a defining feature of this city that lasted until the slum clearances of the C20 [1].

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In the heart of the former textile industry, Burrell’s Yard, off Colegate, 1937. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

To see where the rich had fled I drew a circle around the city with a radius of a comfortable 30-minute carriage ride. In doing this I found I was merely following David Clarke who, in his third volume of The Country Houses of Norfolk, catalogued the mansions ringing Norwich, most of which are now being subsumed by the urban sprawl [2]. I had expected to see a greater diversity of trades but what we will see is a circle of wealth maintained by families who had become rich from weaving. ‘Master weavers’ managing dozens of looms made money directly from the woollen trade but the more successful made money by handling funds and extending credit to their fellow weavers. The most successful – like the Gurney and Harvey families – formed ‘country banks’ [3].

Old Catton was convenient for those who had business north of the river in Norwich-over-the-Water and what was once an agricultural village had, by the early C20, become ‘the best residential suburb adjoining Norwich’ [4]. This gentrification had begun in the mid-1700s when wool merchant Robert Rogers (Sheriff 1743, Mayor 1758) built Catton Place [4]. In 1816 this was to become the home of Samuel Bignold, son of the founder of Norwich Union.

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‘The Firs’, formerly Catton Place, in 1935. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

Probably the most important house in the village was Catton Hall, built on a rise that afforded a view of Norwich Cathedral now challenged by the Anglia Square development. The wealthy worsted weaver Jeremiah Ives, moved here from No.1 Colegate [5]. In the city he had lived within hailing distance of his relatives, the Harveys, and he joined them in Catton as a fellow landowner. Here is Ives, portrayed by an artist with the improbably apt name of Catton.

Portrait of Jeremiah Ives, Mayor of Norwich 1769, 1795, by Charles Catton. Presented by the yarn-makers of Norwich in gratitude for his opposition to an Act allowing the export of English wool [5].

It isn’t clear whether Ives purchased Catton Hall or whether it was inherited by his wife; either way, it was more than just ‘a house in the country’ for in 1778 Ives gave Humphry Repton his first paid commission to transform the surrounding 45 hectares into Catton Park [2,6].

‘Park Scene – View of Norwich – View in Catton Park’ by Humphry Repton (1752-1818). The cathedral spire can be seen between the trees. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Collections NWHCM : 1936.32.2

The Harveys had a considerable presence in Old Catton: Thomas Harvey built Catton House but there was also Robert Harvey at The Grange and Jeremiah Ives Harvey at Eastwood [4].

To the north of Norwich on Faden’s map of 1797 ©Andrew Macnair. The land of J Ives Esquire is underlined in yellow. Mr T Harvey’s house in parkland is starred while Mr R Harvey and Mr Harvey owned land to the east (underlined).

But the Harvey who built Catton House was the one who married Ann Twiss – daughter of an English merchant from Rotterdam – and whose collection of Dutch paintings had a formative influence on the co-founder of the Norwich Society of Artists, John Crome (see recent post [7]).

Catton House post-1945. Courtesy of the Old Catton Society

The Gurneys also had a presence in Catton: in 1854 Catton Hall was bought by the seriously rich John Henry Gurney Snr who had inherited the bulk of the fortune accumulated by Hudson Gurney (1775-1864) of Keswick Hall (see below). The Gurneys were Quaker weavers who, through an ‘extended cousinhood’ of alliances and partnerships, formed the country’s largest banking network outside London [3,8].

Financial intermediaries in the Norwich woollen trade, John and Henry Gurney established Gurney’s Norwich Bank in 1770. In 1778, Henry’s son Bartlett inherited the bank that he ran with the help of two cousins, Richard and Joseph Gurney. Their premises were in a former wine merchant’s whose cellars proved useful for housing the safes, protected by a mastiff and a blunderbuss. Gurneys Bank was near the red well on Redwell Plain, which was renamed Bank Plain.

Gurneys, Birkbeck, Barclay and Buxton Bank on Bank Plain Norwich in the 1920s, here re-badged as Barclays Bank. ©Barclays Group Archives. Astonishingly, the same ornate lamp-post on the left still stands in the same spot (see right).

In 1896 the bank became amalgamated under the Barclays name and the present grand banking hall was built on the site in 1927 [8]. In the C19, their London branch became ‘the world’s greatest bill-discounting house’, allowing a character in a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to sing, ‘I became as rich as the Gurneys‘. Nevertheless, in 1866 they went bust with £11,000,000 liabilities. Although this ruined several Gurneys the Norwich branch escaped significant damage [3,8].

The ‘new’ Barclays Bank built 1927, now housing ‘Open’ Youth Trust

Influenced by the Great Exhibition’s Crystal Palace, Gurney extended Catton Hall with a cast-iron Camellia House designed by local architect Edward Boardman and manufactured in Boulton & Paul’s Norwich factory. The fine cupola was removed in WWII to prevent enemy planes using it as a landmark on the way to RAF St Faith’s (now Norwich Airport) [2,4].

Catton Hall. The original cupola on the Camellia House is illustrated in the old postcard below, courtesy of the Old Catton Society.

John Henry Gurney Snr was married to Mary Jary who ran off with one of the grooms.

Courtesy of ‘Hethersett Heritage’ by the Hethersett Society

… and, to compound JH Gurney’s woes, the bank in which he was a major shareholder (Overend, Gurney & Co.) went bust in May 1866. This triggered ‘Black Friday’ in the City and led to him selling the Hall to his cousin, Samuel Gurney Buxton, a banker at Barclays [3,4]. In 1896, Gurneys Bank was to join 10 other private banks controlled by Quakers, to form Barclays Bank.

Mary Jary Gurney had come from Thickthorn Hall, a few miles south of Norwich at Hethersett. She had lived in this early C19 house that passed to Richard Hanbury Gurney when the owner defaulted on his mortgage. It stayed in the Gurney family until the 1930s when Alan Rees Colman, director of Colmans and second son of Russell Colman of Crown Point, bought the hall.

Thickthorn Hall. Courtesy of Cathie Piccolo

In addition to Catton and Thickthorn the wider Gurney family also had country houses ringing the city – at Colney, Earlham, Easton, Keswick Hall and Sprowston.

Clockwise from Catton Hall (Gurney) at 12 o’clock, banking families were associated with: Sprowston Hall (Gurney), Whitlingham Hall (Harvey), Crown Point (Harvey), Keswick Hall (Gurney), Eaton Hall (mistakenly labelled Easton Hall by Faden; Easton Lodge was briefly owned by a Gurney but is actually a few miles west), Earlham Hall (Gurney) and Colney Hall (Barclay). From Faden’s Map of 1797 ©Andrew Macnair.

The mid-C16 Sprowston Hall was acquired by the Gurneys in 1869 – bought by John Gurney, the eldest son of John Gurney of Earlham Hall (see below) [2]. Gurney employed Wymondham architect Thomas Jeckyll to re-design it in an Elizabethan Revival style. Jeckyll, however, could not resist inserting an of-the-moment gate in the Aesthetic Style that he helped champion.

Jeckyll’s ‘japonaise’ gate at Sprowston Manor. See previous post.

But if we’re following the money it’s impossible to avoid the gravitational pull of Keswick, south of Norwich. The worsted weaver Joseph Gurney came to Keswick Old Hall in 1747 but when the fabulously wealthy Hudson Gurney (who inherited brewing as well as banking money) took over the estate in 1811 he built a new Keswick Hall in the Regency style [2].

The ‘dashing smart’ Hudson Gurney in an etching by Mrs Dawson Turner from a painting by John Opie RA. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Collections NWHCM: 1832.39.1

Keswick Hall south front [6606] 1990-04-30.jpg

Keswick Hall, south front in 1990. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

When Hudson Gurney died in 1864 his estate passed to his nephew John Henry Gurney of Earlham who had been tainted by the collapse of Overend, Gurney & Co Ltd. Much later, Keswick Hall was to become the new home of trainee teachers who had been displaced from their training college in Norwich’s College Road when it was bombed in the Baedeker Raids of 1942.

The 1892 Diocesan training college for school mistresses on College Road, Norwich, was bombed in WWII and the students moved to Keswick Hall

Earlham Hall, just west of the city, is another Gurney residence now associated with education [2]. For over a century the house was rented from the Bacon family during which time it was occupied by the banker John Gurney (1749-1809) and his family. Not all of his 13 children survived but Samuel, Daniel and Joseph John lived on to become bankers. Joseph John Gurney was also a Quaker minister and, like his sister Elizabeth Fry (née Gurney), was active in social and prison reform.

Earlham Hall as it was in the early C19. Now, much changed, it houses the UEA Law School. Courtesy landscape.uea

The easternmost house I underlined on Faden’s map is Whitlingham Hall on the Crown Point Estate. The Hall was built for Sir Robert Harvey Harvey 1st Baronet by architect H E Coe, a pupil of Sir George Gilbert Scott. The local practice of Edward Boardman and Son supervised the building of this large Elizabethan-Revival mansion with its spectacular ornamental conservatory [9].

Whitlingham Hall, which superseded Crown Point Hall. ©Rightmove

Five years later, as one of the proprietors of what began as Hudson and Hatfield’s Bank, Harvey was to build the grand Corinthian-style Norwich Crown Bank; this was on Agricultural Hall Plain, within sight of Gurneys’ (later, Barclays) Bank on Bank Plain [10]. Unfortunately, Sir Robert had been speculating on the stock exchange and tried to disguise his heavy losses as debts owed by fictitious customers. When the scandal broke in 1870 Harvey shot himself. Somewhat ironically, in view of their own recent financial uncertainty, Gurneys Bank bought the goodwill of the Crown Bank in order to quell local panic [3]. The Crown Point Estate was sold to JJ Colman and in 1955 it became Whitlingham Hospital, now private apartments.

Norwich Crown Bank

The name ‘crown’ associated with this building is sometimes thought to be associated with its later use as the city’s Head Post Office (until 1969).

The name, however, traces back to Major John Money who built Crown Point Hall, which was torn down when Sir Robert Harvey built Whitlingham Hall [2]. Money served in the Army during the North American Campaign [2] where he was based at Fort Crown Point – “the greatest British military installation ever raised in North America.” [11]. You may remember Major Money from a previous post [12] that describes his perilous balloon flight of 1785 when he took off from Quantrell’s Pleasure Garden (near Sainsbury’s on Queens Road); he landed in the sea off Yarmouth from which he was rescued several hours later. 1024px-Major_Mony's_Perilous_Situation_When_he_fell_into_the_Sea_July,_23,_1785,_off_the_Coast_of_Yarmouth_NASM-745A8AFD32D22_001.jpg

Bonus track: The Harvey family portrait [13]

You know that dream where you meet all your ancestors in some celestial picnic spot; you know, grandparents, distant aunts and uncles and a posse of strangely familiar faces? Well, here it is, several blog posts rolled into one. There’s Robert Harvey who founded the family bank (#3 in the portrait). And there’s John Harvey (#5) from the Street Names post [14] who gave his name to Harvey Lane; he also appeared in the Norwich School of Painters post in Stannard’s painting, Thorpe Water Frolic [7]. There’s even Charles Harvey MP (#6) who took the surname of his uncle Savill Onley in order to secure an inheritance, as we saw in Street Names [14], together with his son Onley Savill Onley. (#7) And don’t forget that Onley became an Unthank name (hence, Onley Street) through marriage [15]. These are just some of the connections implicit in the portrait by Norwich School artist Joseph Clover – a friend of Amelia Opie’s husband John who we encountered in the previous post, Behind Mrs Opie’s Medallion [16].

The Harvey Family of Norwich, by Joseph Clover c 1821. Courtesy of Norwich Castle Museum and At Gallery NWHCM: 1985.435. 1= Robert Harvey ‘Father of the City’ (1679-1773); 2= Sir Robert Harvey Harvey; 3=Genl Sir Robert Harvey b.1785, founder of Harvey’s Bank; 4=Robert Harvey of Catton and St Clements ?1730-1816; 5= John Harvey of Thorpe Lodge 1775-1842; 6= Charles Harvey who took the name of Savill Onley 1756-1843; 7= Onley Savill Onley d.1890; 8= Roger Kerrison of Brooke House, Norfolk. Father-in-law of John Harvey (#5) and bank owner 1740-1808.

©Reggie Unthank 2020

Sources

Frances and Michael Holmes (2015). The Old Courts and Yards of Norwich. Pub: Norwich Heritage Projects.
David Clarke (2011). The Country Houses of Norfolk. Part Three: The City and Suburbs. Pub: Geo R Reeve Ltd, Wymondham.
Roger Ryan (2004). Banking and Insurance. In, ‘Norwich Since 1550’ by Carol Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
Old Catton Society (2010). Historic Houses of Old Catton. Pub: Catton Print, Norwich.
http://www.norwich-heritage.co.uk/monuments/Jeremiah%20Ives%201729%20-%201805/Jeremiah%20Ives%20younger%201729.shtm
http://www.cattonpark.com/about/park-history.html
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/09/15/the-norwich-school-of-painters/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurney%27s_Bank
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1001480
AD Bayne (1869). A Comprehensive History of Norwich. Pub: Jarrolds, Norwich. Now available online:https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44568/44568-h/44568-h.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Crown_Point
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/01/15/pleasure-gardens/
Andrew Moore and Charlotte Crawley (1992). Family and Friends: A Regional Survey of British Portraiture. Pub: London: HMSO and Norwich: Norfolk Museums Service.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/10/15/street-names/
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/01/30/colonel-unthank-and-the-golden-triangle/
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2020/01/15/behind-mrs-opies-medallion/

Thanks to David Clarke of City Bookshop, Norwich, for his advice; his Country Houses of Norfolk is the standard work. I am grateful to Dr Giorgia Bottinelli and Jo Warr of Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery for providing the information on the Harvey portrait. Thanks also to Ray Jones, archivist to the Old Catton Society for providing images and to Cathy Piccolo for information on, and the photo of, Thickthorn Hall.

Norwich: shaped by fire

15 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Norwich fires, Norwich libraries, Norwich thatched buildings

Fire has been a potent force in shaping where we live – a lick here, a conflagration there – especially when buildings were made of timber and thatch. In the period before the Conquest, near a low river crossing, a defended Anglo-Scandinavian settlement evolved on the north bank of the River Wensum. This was the North Wic whose name is recorded on coins minted there during the reign of the first English king, Athelstan (925-939). But in 1004 the Danish king, Sweyn Forkbeard, took vengeance for the death of his sister during the St Brice’s Day Massacre by burning the northern settlement [1].

“This year came Sweyne with his fleet to Norwich, plundering and burning the whole town.” (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles).

From the bronze doors of Norwich City Hall. James Woodford 1938

Two ‘lost’ churches on the north bank, in the Magdalen Street area of Norwich, had suffixes referring to fire: St Mary’s Unbrent (unburnt) and St Margaret’s in Combusto or, in Combusto Loco. The qualifier, ‘in combusto loco’, identifies them as survivors of a conflagration but by the Reformation both had disappeared. The local historian Blomefield [1] avoided blaming the Danes for this fire; instead he suggested it was ‘in the time of the Conqueror’, although it is hard to get a definitive answer. Whether the north wic was too devastated to be rebuilt as a regional capital or whether they preferred to be inside the protective loop of the Wensum, the Normans radically transformed the topography by re-settling Northwic on the south of the river. Here, they built their cathedral, castle and marketplace from which the new French Borough pushed westward.

Sr Mary Unbrent (red star) and St Margaret In Combusto (yellow) were in the part of Norwich-over-the-Water ravaged by fire. The new French Borough changed the city’s north-south axis by expanding westwards from the new Castle. Map: ‘How the city of Norwich grew into shape’ by Wm Hudson 1896. Courtesy Norfolk Museums NWHCM:1997.550.50:M

In August 1272 a quarrel erupted at the annual Tombland Fair over whether stall-holders should pay fees to the city or the priory. The prior’s armed men claimed that the old Anglo-Scandinavian marketplace outside the cathedral gates was under their jurisdiction, not the city’s, and in the ensuing fight a citizen was killed with a crossbow [1]. The belligerent prior, William de Brunham, fled to Yarmouth and returned with barges of armed men who ‘fell upon citizens with fire and sword’ [1]. While the priory men barred the monastery gates and fired crossbows at passing citizens, citizens on the tower of St George Tombland shot slings of fire that set the monastery ablaze, destroying much, including the library.

The tower of St George Tombland, in Princes Street, from which the townsmen hurled fire towards the cathedral spire.

Thirteen priory men were killed [2]. When he heard about this, King Henry III – who was attending his parliament at Bury St Edmunds – condemned 34 young townsmen to be drawn by horses around the city until dead. Others were hanged, drawn and quartered and their bodies burned, according to the old Anglo-Saxon penalty for arson. The woman who set fire to the gates was burned alive. Though the prior was acknowledged to have instigated the riot he got off lightly: he was committed to the bishop’s prison and the priory’s manors were seized by the Crown.

For burning the old Saxon church of St Ethelbert the king ordered the citizens to build the Ethelbert Gate (restored in the C19) to the cathedral precinct. While the presence of St George in the left-hand spandrel could be fulfilling a traditional protective (apotropaic) role it can’t help reminding us of the Tombland Riot.

A century and a half before the Great Fire of London, much of Norwich was to be devastated by its own Great Fires. First, in 1505, “was grete part of the cyte of Norwich brent” [1]. Two years later, two more fires consumed the city centre, helping to explain why so few timber-framed and thatched medieval buildings survived into the modern period [2]. The first of the 1507 fires started on Easter Tuesday and, over four days, 718 buildings burned: Norwich was ‘almost utterly defaced’ [1].

The 1507 fire map. Redrawn from ©BS Veriod 1986 [3]

The fire is said to have started at The Popinjay Inn on Tombland, home to the Popinjay or Papingay family (popinjay = parrot) [1, 4].

Tombland 29 site of Popinjay Inn [4659] 1962-03-28.jpg

Site of the Popinjay Inn 1962, Number 27 on the SE corner of Tombland. The corner building was demolished to make way for an unsympathetic modern structure now occupied by All-Bar-One. ©www.georgeplunkett.co.uk

On Ascension Day – the fourth of June 1507 – a second fire started in the house of a French surgeon in the Colegate area; it raged for two days and a night, destroying a further 360 houses. Stone-built churches survived but very few timber-framed and thatched houses did (the city’s remaining thatched buildings are shown at the end). Almost half the city’s houses were destroyed. In Elm Hill, the Britons Arms stood alone [2].

Britons Arms of 1347 [5] was originally a beguinage that housed lay sisters associated with St Peter Hungate (in the background). Now it is a coffee house and restaurant.

After the fires, Augustine Steward – sheriff, mayor and wealthy wool merchant, whose wonky house is around the corner in Tombland – rebuilt much of Elm Hill. This included Paston House, now home to the Strangers’ Club (see previous post [6]).

Paston House in Elm Hill, rebuilt by Augustine Steward after the 1507 fires. Blackfriars’ Hall is glimpsed at the end of the street.

Blackfriars’ Hall itself had been ravaged by fire in 1413 and was rebuilt over a 30 year period (1440-70) [7]. The family of Sir Thomas Erpingham – whose kneeling effigy still supervises entry through the cathedral’s Erpingham Gate – paid generously towards the restoration of the Blackfriars’ buildings while the Paston family paid for the hammer-beam roof in the nave now known as St Andrew’s Hall [6]. After the Reformation, Augustine Steward bought St Andrew’s Hall on behalf of the city and it comes down to us as ‘the most complete English friars’ church’ [7].

In 1509 the city authorities eventually decreed that all new buildings should have roofs of thaktyle (tile) and not thakke (thatch) [3,2]. Curiously, this ordinance was repealed in 1532, allowing houses to be roofed in ‘slatte, tyle or reeyd’ but sense prevailed and in 1570 Norfolk-reed thatch was again forbidden, changing the roofscape of Norwich at the stroke of a pen [3]. In The Netherlands and Flanders, thatch had already been banned in favour of pantiles that were now being imported all along the east coast of England and Scotland [8].

‘Pan’ is Dutch for ’tile’ but it also refers to the pan you put on the stove, so ‘roof tile’ in Dutch is ‘dakpan’.

Another survivor of the 1507 fires was the C14 Suckling House, named after the mayor of 1564. In 1923 it was bought by Ethel and Caroline Colman. They added Stuart Hall as a cinema (to the left) and presented a renovated Suckling House to the City of Norwich, “for the advancement of education … in its widest sense” [9]. Cinema City is now an arts cinema with bar and restaurant.

The pantiled great hall of Suckling House is at centre. Stuart Hall (left) was given to the city by the Colman sisters in memory of their sister Laura Elizabeth Stuart (see previous post).

Decades later, the city still hadn’t risen from the ashes. To hasten the resurrection an Act of Parliament in 1534 declared that if the properties were not rebuilt or at least enclosed within two years: ‘the chief lords of the fees (or ‘the mayor &c’) may enter upon them, and rebuild or enclose them in one year’s time’ [1]. In 1578, in readiness for the visit of Queen Elizabeth, the mayor repaired and beautified the streets although this didn’t stop the monarch from commenting on the number of derelict properties.

The city ordinance of 1570 that specified tiled roofs represented an important turning point for it also outlined steps to fight fires. For instance, every carrier and brewer had to be prepared to convey vessels of water until a fire had been extinguished.

For a fire alert the carriers and brewers were to be called by a peal of bells rung ‘auk’ or ‘auker’ [4]. ‘Auker’ is an elusive word (awkward?) but an inscription on the 7th bell at St Ives, Cambs provides an explanation: ” When backwards rung we tell of fire/Think how the world shall thus expire” [11]. That is, the call to action was a peal rung backwards.

There was also an inspection regime to ensure that church wardens and aldermen maintained sufficient buckets and tall ladders, or else be fined [4]. The thatched St Augustine’s church had to have six buckets and a ladder, while St Peter Mancroft was a 30-bucketer [10].

In 1577 the city had its first supply of pumped water, from New Mills, although it took until 1742 for the entire city to have access to water from cisterns. In 1720 a mechanism was installed that raised water into a cistern known as ‘The Tombland Waterhouse’ [3].

The Tombland Obelisk (and water fountain), erected in 1860 by JH Gurney on the site of the water cistern.

In 1668, just two years after the Great Fire of London, Norwich had its first fire engine, kept in St Andrew’s Hall; by 1750 the other city parishes had these manual appliances [3]. After the Great Fire, insurance companies sprang up as a hedge against financial loss but it wasn’t until 1797 that Thomas Bignold was to set up the ‘Norwich Union Society for the Insurance of Houses, Stock and Merchandise from Fire’, later the ‘Norwich Union Fire Insurance Company’.

Norwich Union fire mark of the early 1800s. Such plaques marked which houses were to be rescued by the company’s own fire brigade

At that time, the insurance companies’ own trained fire brigades probably offered better fire-fighting than the parish.

Note the fire engine and the Norwich City arms. Norwich Union header of the late 1700s. Courtesy: Aviva

The ‘fire timeline’ [3] for Norwich in the C19 presents a catalogue of fires in commercial premises: Hubbard’s the cabinet makers (1815); Neal’s coachmakers (1820); St James factory (later Jarrolds’ print works, 1846); the Steam Flour Mills (1855); Tilyard and Howlett’s Shoe Factory (1862); JJ Colman’s Carrow Works (1881) etc etc. In 1829, there was a major fire at Squire & Hills Vinegar Brewery on the Wensum – a large factory of 125,000 square feet (11,600 sq metres).

The Vinegar Works. Ordnance Survey map 1905/8

The presence of a gin distillery made for an explosive mixture and this was captured in a sketch by John Sell Cotman.

Fire at the Vinegar Works on the River Wensum by John Sell Cotman. Courtesy of The British Museum 1905,0520.2

Where Norwich goes, London follows: five years later JMW Turner had his own Vinegar Works.

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament by JMW Turner ca 1834-5. Tate Britain, Creative Commons

In 1835 Norwich City Council was allowed to levy a rate to pay for combatting fire, and in 1840 they formed their own fire brigade. Norwich Union’s fire brigade disbanded in 1858 and passed on their equipment to the city [3].

But large companies still maintained their own fire brigades. In 1876, by the time the City Fire Brigade arrived at a fire in Albion Mills (now apartments) in King Street, JJ Colman’s fire brigade were already in attendance. Later that year they were again first attenders when a large fire devastated Boulton & Paul’s factory, further upriver at Rose Lane [3].

Colman’s Carrow Works Fire Brigade at work on the Wensum. Jets of water from the steam engine could be used to propel the fire team along the river. Courtesy Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

A horse-drawn steam engine of ca 1881 used by Colman’s Carrow Works Fire Brigade until 1945. Now in The Museum of Norwich at The Bridewell

The city’s fire station had originally been in the medieval Guildhall but in September 1898 a new station was opened in Pottergate. It may have been financially favourable to convert council-owned property but it meant that horse-drawn (and later, motor) fire engines had to negotiate their way through narrow medieval lanes.

The 1898 fire station in a yard off Pottergate. The Old Norfolk and Norwich Library is marked with a star. Ordnance Survey map 1905/7

The new fire station yard was accessed through an archway.

Pottergate 12 to 16 fire station entrance [B504] 1933-03-26.jpg

The fire station sign marks the archway into the yard of 12-16 Pottergate. The firemen’s quarters were in a fine Georgian-fronted building opposite (No 17). The shop at the end of the street was a fish restaurant in 1933 and remains as such today – the Grosvenor Fish Bar. The near left side of the street was rebuilt after WWII. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

One month before the Pottergate station was opened, a fire broke out in the premises of Hurn the rope and sail maker in nearby Dove Street (see map above). The municipal fire brigade was assisted by brigades maintained by two of the city’s big four breweries (Bullards and Steward & Patteson) but they were unable to prevent the spread of fire to the warehouse of Chamberlin’s the drapers, which occupied most of the block, nor to the Norwich Public Library. (For the history of Norwich libraries, and their fires, see [12]).

The Norfolk and Norwich Public Library in 1955. It was rebuilt following the major fire of 1898 and was until recently The Library restaurant. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

In 1935 the fire station moved to Bethel Street, in purpose-built premises designed by Stanley Livock of London Street. Its style is akin to the ‘Post-Office Georgian’ employed on public buildings of the inter-war years. Its subdued decoration complements the Scandinavian-influenced City Hall, designed in 1931 but not completed until 1938.

1934-05 construction almost complete [0093] 1934-05-10.jpg

The new fire station in Bethel Street, six months before the official opening. The chimney pots to the left are in Lacey & Lincoln’s builders’ yard, once the Old Skating Rink, and now Country & Eastern. Far right are houses at the corner of Bethel and St Peter’s Street that were soon to be demolished to make way for the City Hall, opened in 1938. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

Other cities may have had separate fire brigades but in Norwich, the Chief Constable remained in charge of ‘police/firemen’ until the late 1940s [3]. This explains the presence of both police and fire helmets carved above the original entrance to the police station in Norwich City Hall.

A fireman’s and a policeman’s helmet mark the old entrance to the police station in City Hall (1938) before it was moved to the SW corner. Designer: H Wilson Parker.

In 1994, with a horrible symmetry that recalled the 1892 library fire, the new Central Library (1960-2) burned down, one hundred yards from the fire station [see 13].

St Peter Mancroft (far left) separated by a car park from the Central Library – a part of which is glimpsed extreme right. Circa 1969. Courtesy Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk.

Housed in The Forum the new Millennium Library (2001), designed by Sir Michael Hopkins, is claimed to be the most visited in the country. This building relates to St Peter Mancroft, across a piazza, far more successfully than its predecessor did across that cheerless car park.

The piazza forms a successful pedestrian space, shared between St Peter Mancroft and The Forum.

In 2013 the fire station became Sir Isaac Newton Sixth Form and the city was served by three stations, not in the historic centre but on the perimeter at Carrow, Sprowston and North Earlham.

Bonus track: the six remaining thatched buildings

Top row: Pykerell’s House C15, rebuilt after WWII, St Mary’s Plain; Thatched cottage C17, formerly the Hampshire Hog, St Swithin’s Alley off St Benedict’s Street; The Hermitage, 52-54 Bishopgate, dating from the C15. Bottom row: Britons Arms C14, Elm Hill; 2-4 Lion and Castle Yard, C17, Timberhill; Waring’s Lifestore, late C16, formerly The Barking Dickey (Braying Donkey) Inn, Westlegate. Read more about these thatched buildings on the web page by Evelyn Simak, assiduous photographer of Norwich and Norfolk [13].

A suggestion for the Christmas stocking: some copies of the fourth – and probably final – printing of the Unthank book remain. They can be bought from Jarrolds Book Department or the City Bookshop in Davey Place. (“An ideal companion for the fireside”. The Norwich Mardler).

Sources

Francis Blomefield (1806). An Essay Towards A Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3, the History of the City and County of Norwich, Part I. Originally published by W Miller, London. Online: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/.
Frank Meeres(2011). The Story of Norwich. Pub: Phillimore.
Bryan S Veriod (1986). A History of the Norwich City Fire Brigade. Pub: BS Veriod, Norwich
http://www.norfolkpubs.co.uk/norwich/pnorwich/ncpjy.htm
http://www.britonsarms.co.uk/history.html
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2017/12/15/the-pastons-in-norwich/
Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (1997). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1: Norwich and the North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
https://flemish.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2013/12/13/crowsteps-in-fife-the-flemish-connection-part-2/
Ethel M Colman and Helen C Colman (1961). Suckling House and Stuart Hall Norwich. Pub: Trustees of the Laura Elizabeth Stuart Memorial Trust, Suckling House.
http://www.staugustinesnorwich.org.uk/Church_3.html
Thomas North (1878). The Church Bells of Northamptonshire. Online: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433075903801&view=1up&seq=9
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2018/06/15/norwich-knowledge-libraries/
https://www.geograph.org.uk/article/Thatched-buildings-in-the-city-of-Norwich

Thanks: to Eva Kleiweg for correcting my Dutch for ‘pantile’; Jim Mearing for the booklet on Suckling House; Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk (https://www.norfolk.gov.uk/libraries-local-history-and-archives/photo-collections/picture-norfolk) and Jonathan Plunkett (https://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk) for permissions.

Street Names #2

15 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history, Norwich streets

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Edward Valpy, George Borrow, James Stuart MP, Laurence Binyon, Southwell Road, The Colman family, Trafford Road Norwich, Waldeck Road

Valpy Avenue NR3

The founders of the Norwich Society of Artists, John Crome and Robert Ladbrooke, both sent sons to Norwich Grammar School (now Norwich School, in the Cathedral Close). Crome’s son, John Berney Crome, was a distinguished pupil – a classicist – and in 1813 he became School Captain and delivered a Latin oration to the Mayor of Norwich on Guild Day [1].

From [2]

This was during the headship of Reverend Edward Valpy, author of a Latin text book, who oversaw a rapid rise in pupil numbers from four or five until ‘he got nearly 300‘ [1,3]. The unusual name ‘Valpy’ is said to trace back to a family named Vulpi who emigrated to Jersey from Lucca in the C16, ‘Vulpi’ deriving from the Italian word for fox [1].

In the absence of a portrait of Reverend Valpy, an Italian fox. Courtesy The Telegraph

George Borrow Road NR4

The novelist and traveller George Borrow (1803-1881) was also a student at Norwich Grammar School during Valpy’s headship. As a sixteen-year-old he would go to the Romani encampment on Mousehold Heath, visit fairs and Tombland Market with them and he even learned the Romani language. In recognition of his linguistic skills the gypsies called him Lav-engro, or Word Master. They also called him Cooro-mengro for his pugilistic skills learned from a fighter, John Thurtell, who was hanged for murder [4].

Portrait of George Borrow, 1843, by Henry Wyndham Phillips. Courtesy, National Portrait Gallery.

Perhaps as a result of his disaffection with school and immersion in Romani life, Borrow is said to have stained his face to darken it, prompting Reverend Valpy to ask, “Is that jaundice or only dirt, Borrow?”[4]. George Borrow’s fame derived from novels based on his wide travels through Europe. Evidently, Borrow was not a star pupil (no prize orations for him) yet he went on to gain a working knowledge of 100 languages, including a passion for Welsh [5]. Despite his rackety life, Borrow’s name is included on a school memorial naming Valpy’s pupils who made good [3].

An early photographic portrait of George Borrow by Henry Pulley, Norwich 1848. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Binyon Gardens NR8

Laurence Binyon by William Strang 1901

Binyon is a surprising name to be found in the luminous company of Shakespeare, Byron, Keats and Dryden on a late C20 estate in the Norwich suburb of Taverham. Laurence Binyon (1869-1943) wrote a poem about The Blitz during WWII, The Burning of the Leaves, but it is for the war (or, rather, peace) poem he wrote in World War I that he is best known: he wrote For the Fallen in response to the high number of casualties already apparent in 1914 [6]. For the Fallen was one of three of Binyon’s poems on which Edward Elgar based his choral work, The Spirit of England. The fourth stanza is read on Remembrance Sunday:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

But we previously came across Binyon – then unnamed – in September’s post on the Norwich School of Painters when he was cited as the Keeper of Prints at the British Museum who thought John Sell Cotman’s Yorkshire paintings, ‘the most perfect examples of pure watercolour ever made in Europe’ [7].

‘Castle in Yorkshire’ by John Sell Cotman. Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery NWHCM : 1951.235.138

Waldeck Road NR4

Unthank Road, like the rest of England, is divided in two: the city end, from Tesco Express to the ring road, and the posh end from the ring road down to Waitrose. Waldeck Road is off the second half, although it looks much like the terraces nearer the city. Robert Webb contacted me about the derivation of ‘Waldeck’ and between us we came up with an explanation. Pim Waldeck – a recent Dutch Ambassador to Great Britain, who visited Norwich – arrived a century too late to receive the accolade but the Germanic-sounding name does provide a clue. Princess Helena of Waldeck (a German principality) was married to Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, the youngest son of Queen Victoria [8].

Princess_Helena_at_her_wedding,_1882.png

Princess Helena on her wedding day in 1882. Courtesy of Wikipedia

Leopold inherited his mother’s gene for haemophilia and died of a fall two years after his marriage, ensuring that ‘Waldeck’, ‘Leopold’ and ‘Albany’ would linger in the minds of those distributing patriotic street-names. However, an 1898 edition of the Norfolk Chronicle contains a record of a council meeting in which over-zealous street-naming had to be corrected.

Norfolk Chronicle 28-5-1898

It appears that the road originally named Avenue Road was changed to Waldeck Road because it clashed with Avenue Road off Park Lane. The names of Albany Road and Leopold Road also appear in this piece, clearly grouping the street names with Queen Victoria’s unfortunate son and his wife. Royalty provided a favourite riff for naming streets: another of Queen Victoria’s sons (Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught who was stationed in Norwich with his regiment, the 7th Hussars) was commemorated in Connaught Road, off Dereham Road, next door to Helena Road named after his German sister-in-law.

An interesting postscript is that Harry Barnes, who developed most of Waldeck Road, lived in Brunswick Road [9] named after the German Duchy. Barnes applied to build his own house on Brunswick Road in 1906, not long before WWI when the Royal Family changed its own name from Saxe-Coburg Gotha to Windsor.

Trafford Road NR1 (and 5 others)

Next time The Canaries play Manchester United at Old Trafford, remember the connection with a Norwich street name, based on the estate developed by the Trafford family.

Spotted in the window of Bowhill & Elliott in London Street, Canary Yellow co-respondent shoes – a must for all Norwich City supporters (called The Canaries after the birds kept in the windows by immigrant Dutch weavers).

The Trafford family can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon royalty and are said to have taken their name from the village of Trafford, now part of Greater Manchester [10]. The great Norwich historian, Walter Rye [11], suggests that the real name of the family is Boehm after a male Boehm married a female Trafford in the C17. In the C18, however, the marriage of Sir Clement Boehm Trafford of Swaffham and his wife Anne was dissolved by an Act of Parliament. Anne reverted to her maiden name of Southwell, their son Sigismund adopted the name of Trafford Southwell and it is he who bought the estate at Wroxham where the family still live. Sigismund died in 1827 and his splendid Gothic Revival mausoleum can be seen in the churchyard of St Mary’s Wroxham.

The Trafford Mausoleum, designed by Anthony Savin

The family lived in Wroxham House. It was erected in 1781 re-using stairs from the Great Tower at Caister Castle, built by Sir John Fastolf, the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Falstaff [11]. Wroxham House was demolished in the 1960s.

Wroxham House ca 1890. Courtesy Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

The Trafford family owned land in the parish of Lakenham, to the east of Ipswich Road. In the mid-1890s the surveyor George Fitt drew up plans on behalf of Edward Southwell Trafford for laying out roads on the Trafford building estate. In 1919 his son, Major William Joseph Trafford, continued development by extending Trafford and Eleanor Roads.

‘The Trafford Building Estate’ of Edward Southwell Trafford with the suggested road layout of 1893, updated (red) in 1906. Newmarket Rd (dotted black line); Ipswich Rd (dotted yellow); Cecil Rd (dotted blue). The star marks Southwell Lodge. Courtesy Norfolk Record Office N/EN/24/62

Edward Southwell Trafford and his wife the Honourable Eleanor Mary Petre had 12 children, one of whom was Cecil Edward Trafford; another was Sigismund who married Lady Elizabeth Constance Mary Bertie, known as Betty; another was Eleanor Mary Josephine Southwell Trafford. And there, in addition to Trafford Road, we have Southwell Road, Sigismund Road, Lady Betty Road, Lady Mary Road and Cecil Road.

A diversion around Southwell Lodge

On the map above, Southwell Lodge appears at the corner of Ipswich and Cecil Roads, now subsumed under City College.

Demolition of Southwell Lodge (date unknown). This was to give way to City College’s Southwell Building, itself demolished in 1972 to make way for student accommodation, also known as Southwell Lodge. Photo George Swain, courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk.

Southwell Lodge became the home of John Willis JP. In 1870 he married Mary Esther Colman whose brother was Jeremiah James Colman, manufacturer of English mustard, philanthropist and the man whose art collection forms the basis of the Norwich School galleries in the Castle Museum.

In the next generation the Colman women were active in campaigning for women to get the vote: in 1909 John Willis’ daughter Edith was Honorary Secretary of the Norwich Women’s Suffrage Society while her cousin Laura Elizabeth – JJ Colman’s eldest daughter – was President [12]. And as Mayor of Norwich, JJ Colman’s second daughter, Ethel Mary, became the first woman to hold such a post in this country.

Edith Willis of Southwell Lodge. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council

Campaigners for female emancipation on Prince of Wales Road

Stuart Road NR1

The Colmans were an influential family whose presence is still strong around the city (despite the recent closure of their mustard factory, Carrow Works). Laura Colman married James Stuart (1843-1913) whose name is commemorated in a row of workers’ cottages a few hundred yards from Carrow Works.

Between Carrow Hill (green) and King Street (blue) lie the cul-de-sacs, Stuart Road (underlined in red) and Alan Road (purple). Colman’s Carrow Works are starred. OS map of Norwich 1905/1907. Courtesy National Library of Scotland

Stuart was the first Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics (now Engineering) at Cambridge. His support of extension courses for adults, especially women, did not find favour with the university and he left to become Liberal MP for Hackney and then Hoxton in London. But when his father-in-law died in 1898 Stuart became a director of Colman’s. Like JJ Colman, Stuart was an enlightened employer; in addition to adult education he supported female suffrage and established a pension scheme for Colman’s employees.

James Stuart MP drawn by Harold Wright for Vanity Fair 1899

James Stuart and Laura Colman married at the Princes’ Street Congregational Chapel designed by one of its deacons, the Norwich architect Edward Boardman. It was in this Nonconformist chapel that Boardman’s son, Edward Thomas Boardman (also an architect) was to marry Laura’s sister, Florence Esther Colman [14].

The marriage of Edward Thomas Boardman to Florence Esther Colman in 1898. Courtesy of ludhamarchive.org.uk

The Colman family burial plot is in The Rosary, the country’s first non-denominational cemetery [15]. In 1915, the Colman family commissioned Boardman and Son architects to design the Stuart Court apartments on Recorder Road in remembrance of Stuart. James Stuart had been concerned about the quality of housing for the elderly and this, according to Pevsner and Wilson [16], explains the almshouse feel of the apartments. They thought the Dutch-style gables slightly outdated but although late in terms of Arts & Crafts style (e.g., the ‘Pont Street Dutch’ of the 1880s) these features are entirely consistent with the Dutch gables brought to this city from the C16 onwards by religious refugees from the Low Countries [17]. See examples in nearby Cathedral Close.

Stuart Court almshouses in Recorder Road. They were built around reinforced concrete, one of the first such examples in the city.

The initials EMC and HCC recognise Ethel Mary and Helen Caroline Colman’s initiative in this project

Opening of the James Stuart Garden (1922) on Recorder Road was delayed by the Great War

Alan Road NR1

JJ Colman’s wife Caroline was born a Cozens-Hardy and she passed these names on to their son Alan. Sadly, Alan Cozens-Hardy Colman (1867-1897) was to die young on a Nile boat near Luxor while convalescing from TB. Eight years on, Ethel and Helen Colman arranged for Daniel Hall of Reedham, on the Norfolk Broads, to build the pleasure wherry ‘Hathor’ in memory of the boat on which their brother had died. It is still available for hire [18].

Sources

The Graphic. January 21, 1922 No. 272 vol CV. The Dynasty of Dominies/The Valpys by One of Them (available in the Norfolk Heritage Centre, Norwich).
Richard Harries, Paul Cattermole and Peter Mackintosh (1991). A History of Norwich School. Pub: Friends of Norwich School.
HW Saunders (1932). A History of the Norwich Grammar School. Pub: Jarrold & Sons Ltd., Norwich.
Edward Thomas (1912). George Borrow: the Man and his Books. From: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18588/18588-h/18588-h.htm
https://www.georgeborrowtrust.org.uk/Georgeborrow.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Binyon
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/09/15/the-norwich-school-of-painters/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Helena_of_Waldeck_and_Pyrmont
Norfolk Record Office NROCAT N/EN 12/1/6223
The Trafford Family in, EA Handbook (1808). Norfolk Millennium Library CTRA 048.
http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?MNF8068-Site-and-remains-of-Wroxham-Hall&Index=7550&RecordCount=56881&SessionID=7f476775-83b1-42ed-acd3-903e5e32df18
https://ww1norfolk.co.uk/wwi-women-of-norfolk/test-page/suffragettes-suffragists/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stuart_(scientist)
James Stuart Reminiscences (1911). Privately printed by the Chiswick Press, London.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2018/10/15/the-norwich-way-of-death/
Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (2002). The Buildings of England. Norfolk I: Norwich and the North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/08/15/going-dutch-the-norwich-strangers/
https://www.wherryyachtcharter.org/hathor.php

Thanks

I am grateful to Robert Webb for providing information on Waldeck Road. For permissions, I thank Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk, Nigel Pope of the Ludham Community Archive Group and Peter Cox of Broadsnet.

Street names

15 Tuesday Oct 2019

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Norwich street names

In a city as old as Norwich some of the more interesting glimpses into its past are to be found in the historically significant names given to streets.

Hotblack Road NR2 (off Dereham Road)

The uncommon name, Hotblack, which conjures up images for me of road-laying, tar, and snooker on the telly, commemorates the family of John Hotblack who was a boot and shoe manufacturer in the C19 when Norwich was still one of the country’s major shoe producers. Hotblack’s factory was in Mountergate, off Rose Lane, not far from the large Co-op shoe factory.

At top, one of the very few weavers’ windows remaining in the city

The Hotblack family lived next door in St Faith’s House.

Mountergate St Faith's House [1168] 1936-07-27.jpg

St Faith’s House in Mountergate 1936, home to the Hotblacks around the 1890s ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

John Hotblack’s son, Major-General Frederick Elliott ‘Boots’ Hotblack was decorated six times in the First World War and mentioned in despatches five times. ‘Boots’ was in charge of the Reconnaissance Department of the Tank Corps and had laid a trail of tape for the tanks to follow the next day. However, the trail was obscured by overnight snow so, under fire, he walked across the battlefield, showing the tanks the way [1]. Since Hotblack Road is given on the 1907 OS map it would appear that the street was named for the shoe-making family rather than the war-hero son.

‘Boots’ by Sir William Orpen 1917. Courtesy of the Imperial War Museum

Lyhart Road NR4

In 1463, lightning struck the central tower of Norwich Cathedral, setting fire to the roof in the crossing, causing the spire to crash down into the nave. In the 1470s the Bishop of Norwich, Walter Lyhart, replaced the wooden roof with a vaulted roof of stone, using some of his own money to employ stonemason Reginald Ely, who had worked on King’s College Chapel, Cambridge [2]. Lyhart’s contribution is commemorated in his rebus of a hart lying on wa(l)ter.

Another lying hart can be seen amongst the wonderful collection of roof bosses in the cloisters. The cloisters were damaged in the riots of 1272 and the restoration, which was halted by the Black Death, stretched over the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. lyhart cloisters.jpeg

Bishop Lyhart also oversaw the installation in the nave of 255 stone bosses that mark the intersection of short lierne ribs with the main ribs of the vault. The bosses represent biblical scenes, from the Creation to the Last Judgement. A favourite of mine is the overthrow of the Pharaoh in the Red Sea; it shows the Pharaoh’s chariot – looking more like a farm cart – in a literally red sea.

There was a time when Lyhart’s rebus could be seen in the tower screen at Yaxley, Suffolk [3]. In the same screen was another piece of stained glass depicting the head of a bishop. Could this have been Walter Lyhart himself?

From ref [3]. 1932

Lound Road NR4

Major figures of the Norwich School of Painters (see previous post [4]) are well represented on road signs – for example, Cotman Road NR1, Crome Road NR3, Ladbrooke Place NR1 – but each time I travel clockwise around the ring road I am reminded of a less-well-known artist, Thomas Lound.

Early collodion positive of Thomas Lound 1850s

Lound (1802-1861) was a painter and etcher of local landscape but instead of scrabbling for a living, as many members of the Norwich Society of Artists did, he worked as a manager in the family brewing business and actually died with money in the bank. He was employed by the brewery of Tompson, Stackhouse & Co on King Street [5]. In 1844, Tompson’s was sold to the Morgan brothers, one of whom, Walter, drowned in a brewery vat [6]. Morgan’s was one of the ‘Big Four’ Norwich breweries in the first half of the C20.

Lound was taught by John Sell Cotman, whose influence can be seen in Lound’s paintings, though he probably followed more in the footsteps of Thirtle, whose work he collected avidly [7].

1850-view-from-old-barge-yard-by-thomas-lound-c-1850.jpg

View from Old Barge Yard by Thomas Lound (1850) shows the back of what is now called Dragon Hall, near his home in King Street. The open door (centre) is part of the original C14 doorway within the larger C15 ‘blind’ door-surround installed by Robert Toppes when the building was used as his wool-trading hall.

In 1839, six years after the demise of the Norwich Society of Artists, Lound became co-founding President of the Norwich Art Union [8] that – if it was anything like the Art Union of London – used subscriptions to buy works of art to be distributed amongst members by lottery. Lound was also involved in the Norwich School of Design (1846), a predecessor of the Norwich Technical Institute (1899) on St George’s Street, which is now part of the Norwich University of the Arts (NUA). In its first year the Art Union held an exhibition in its gallery at The Bazaar on the corner of Bridewell Alley and St Andrew’s Street [8].

The Great Hall of the Polytechnic Institution, The Bazaar, Norwich. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

(Added 5/10/2019) The Classical façade of The Bazaar is highlighted on this mid-Victorian photograph.

St Andrew’s Street with The Bazaar, arrowed. The tombstones are in the churchyard of St Andrew’s. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk.

The Bazaar is long gone but by one of those pleasing circularities its former site on the corner of Bridewell Alley and St Andrew’s Street is now occupied by NUA’s East Gallery.

East Gallery, site of former Royal Bazaar. Courtesy of NUA

Thomas Lound was also on the committee of the Norwich Photographic Society. In 1856 he exhibited five of his own photographs including one of Norwich Fish Market [8].

The Fish Market, Norwich by Thomas Lound, reissued as a postcard by AE Coe Opticians and Photographers. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Bathhurst Road NR2

Bathurst Road at the city end of Unthank Road was built on the Heigham Lodge Estate that once belonged to Timothy Steward of Steward & Patteson’s Brewery. In 1877 architect Edward Boardman divided Steward’s former land into lots for sale. Three roads were laid around the estate, one of which – temporarily named Grove Street North – was renamed Bathurst Road after Bishop of Norwich, Henry Bathurst (1744-1837).

Bathurst Road (red) runs parallel to Unthank Road (yellow). Ordnance Survey 1883

As described in Colonel Unthank and the Golden Triangle [9], Heigham Lodge was mistakenly thought to have been the home of William Unthank, who had bought 60 or so acres in Heigham to establish the Unthank Estate. William Unthank and Bishop Bathurst both died in 1837.

Memorial statue to Bishop Bathurst in north transept of Norwich Cathedral

After the Reformation, Dissenters were banned by the Church of England from burial in their parish church. But in 1821, Bathhurst licensed Norwich’s Rosary Cemetery as the first non-denominational burial ground in the country (see [10] for The Norwich Way of Death). This chimes with the Henry Bathurst’s reputation as the only liberal bishop in the House of Lords and as someone who supported Catholic Emancipation.

Since their Oxford days, Henry Bathurst had been friends with Parson James Woodforde (1740-1803) of Weston Longville, about seven miles north-west of Norwich. When Bathurst was non-resident Rector of nearby Great Witchingham, Woodforde would collect surprisingly large tithes on his behalf. In his absorbing Diary of a Country Parson, Woodforde wrote:

About noon took a ride to Norwich … and dined, supped and slept at the King’s Head. As soon as I got to Norwich I went to Kerrison’s Bank and there recd. for cash etc a Note of £137 (about £8,000 today) which I immediately inclosed in a letter to Dr Bathurst, Oxford. I walked to the Post Office, and put the letter into the Post which sets for London this evening at 10 o’clock. I then went to the King’s Head and eat a Mutton Chop and before I had quite dined Mr Hall came to me, and we smoked a pipe and drank a Bottle of Wine [11].

Harvey Lane NR7

… named after Colonel John Harvey (1755-1842) who moved from the city centre to Thorpe, a few miles east of the city [12]. Harvey came from a long line of wealthy Norwich textile merchants who had turned to banking: he himself was a leading partner of Harvey & Hudson’s Bank. Like nine of his relatives, Harvey became Mayor of Norwich (1792) but in his mayoral portrait he chose to be portrayed as colonel of the local militia.

Colonel John Harvey 1792, painted by John Opie RA, fashionable portrait artist and husband of Norwich abolitionist, Amelia Opie. Presented by the Norwich Light-Horse Volunteers. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Collections NWHCM: Civic Portrait 33

We encountered Colonel Harvey last month in the large oil painting he commissioned from Joseph Stannard: ‘Thorpe Water Frolic, Afternoon’ (1825) [4]. Harvey instigated The Frolic in 1821, largely as a sporting event for the gentry, but opened it up to the working population two years later when city weavers were given a day’s holiday. 10,000 are said to have attended: polite society on the Thorpe side, workers on the opposite bank [12]. Last time, I focussed in on Stannard on the right bank, peering across to the gentry but here we see Harvey peering back from the left.

A fragment of ‘Thorpe Water Frolic, Afternoon’ by Joseph Stannard, showing the white-haired colonel in his Venetian gondola. Courtesy Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery

Harvey did not live on the riverside in Old Thorpe Hall – only parts of which remain – but at Thorpe Lodge, a five-bayed house that he built on the other side of the highway, re-routing the Yarmouth Road in the process [12]. In the 1930s the central third storey was removed and the east wing demolished; it now houses the Broadland District Council.

Thorpe St Andrew Thorpe Lodge [5423] 1974-09-14.jpg

Thorpe Lodge 1974 ©georgeplunkett.co.uk. In the 1930s the curved east wing was removed along with the third storey of the central bay.

Colonel Harvey is thought to have brought old doors from family properties in Norwich to install in the garden wall of Thorpe Lodge [12]. Two plaques – one dedicated to Robert Harvey (1696-1773) the other to Thomas Harvey (1710-1772) – mark fine Georgian houses in Colegate, in the heart of the Norwich weaving quarter, but the Tudor door below comes from neither of these. The garden-wall doors at Thorpe seem to have disappeared in the 1970s but, fortunately, Arnold Kent photographed this door at Thorpe Lodge in 1948 [13]. The flat-arched Tudor oak door came from Mayor George Cocke’s home (1613) at Bacon’s House in Colegate.

Photographed in the garden wall of Thorpe Lodge 1948, a Tudor door from the home of Mayor George Cocke (1613) at Bacon’s House, Colegate. The left-hand spandrel contains the Grocers’ arms, the right contains Cocke’s initials as part of his merchant mark. From [13].

Towards the end of the C18 a downturn in the Norwich textile trade brought increasing unemployment [14]. But business took an upturn when Harvey started making highly patterned silk ‘fillover’ shawls that could now be woven-in instead of having to be filled-in/embroidered by hand. These expensive items (12-20 guineas each) were the height of fashion and a counterpane shawl, twelve feet square and woven on Harvey’s looms, was presented to George III and his wife Queen Charlotte [14].

In 1792 the Royal Mint was unable to obtain sufficient silver for coinage. Harvey responded by minting Norwich trade tokens from base metal, their value no doubt backed by the Harvey & Hudson bank. This can be seen as a philanthropic way of keeping the city’s trade flowing although the loom on the reverse of the coin would also have served to advertise Colonel Harvey’s role in the local economy during his mayoral year [15].

The reverse of a Harvey token shows a hand-loom, the obverse shows the Norwich City coat of arms, the rim is impressed with Harvey’s name. Norfolk Museums Collection NWHCM : 2006.79.1

Onley Street NR2

The Harveys were related to the Unthanks but to understand the origins of this street name we have to untwist the limbs of the Harvey family tree.

Colonel Harvey’s brother Charles (1757-1843) dropped the surname Harvey when he inherited Stisted Hall in Essex from his uncle, the Reverend Onley. The Reverend had himself adopted his wife’s family name, Savill, making him a Savill-Onley. Double-barrelled names were often adopted to preserve a family name that would otherwise have died out due to lack of male heirs or, in the case of Reverend Savill-Onley, ‘in appreciation of the fortune (£33,000) his wife had brought with her’ [16].

Charles Harvey, MP for Norwich, later Savill-Onley. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Collections THEHM:DS.25

When Charles Savill-Onley died his son adopted the name of Onley Savill-Onley [17].

Onley Savill-Onley Esq 1795-1890. From [16].

Onley Savill-Onley had a daughter, Judith Sarah, and it is she who connects us with the Unthanks by marrying Colonel Clement William Joseph Unthank of Intwood Hall [9]. Their eldest son was Clement William Onley Unthank (1874-1900). Sadly, when only in his twenties, he died of a polo accident while serving in India.

Clement William Onley Unthank ca 1900. From [9].

When Colonel CWJ Unthank and his wife moved to her family house at Intwood Hall, CWJ started selling off the Unthank estate in what is now Norwich’s Golden Triangle. Over the years the estate was developed from Trinity Street down to Mount Pleasant and, in memory of their son, one of the later side-roads off Unthank Road was named Onley Street [9].

To be continued …

©Reggie Unthank 2019

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

‘An excellent Christmas-stocking filler’. The book Colonel Unthank and the Golden Triangle, which contains more about the Unthank family and describes the development of the the streets either side of Unthank Road, is still available from: Jarrolds’ Book Department (https://www.jarrold.co.uk/departments/books); or City Bookshop in Davey Place (http://www.citybookshopnorwich.co.uk/); or direct from me via the contact form (https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/contact/).

Sources

https://www.edp24.co.uk/features/norfolk-war-hero-who-was-too-brave-1-4801801
Paul Hurst (2013). Norwich Cathedral Nave Bosses. Pub: Medieval Media, Norwich.
Christopher Woodforde (1932). The Medieval Glass in Yaxley Church. Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History vol XXI pt 2.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/09/15/the-norwich-school-of-painters/
https://suffolkartists.co.uk/index.cgi?choice=painter&pid=4128
https://www.norridge.me.uk/pubs/names_/brewers/morgan.htm
Josephine Walpole (1997). Art and Artists of the Norwich School. Pub: Antique Collectors’ Club.
http://www.earlynorfolkphotographs.co.uk/Norwich%20Photographic%20Societies/Norwich_Photographic_Societies.html
Clive Lloyd (2017). Colonel Unthank and the Golden Triangle. ISBN 978-1-5272-1576-4
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2018/10/15/the-norwich-way-of-death/
https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.227134/2015.227134.The-Diary_djvu.txt
Trevor Nuthall (2014). Thorpe St Andrew: A Revised History. Pub: Trevor Nuthall ISBN 978-0-9543359-1-5.
Arnold Kent and Andrew Stephenson (1948). Norwich Inheritance. Pub: Jarrolds and Sons Ltd.
Walter R Rudd (1923). The Norfolk and Norwich Silk Industry. Norfolk Archaeology vol XXI, pp245-282.
Katy Barrett. Eighteenth Century ‘Hand-Loom’ Token. Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum. https://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-token.html
Reverend A J Nixseaman (1972). The Intwood Story. Printed in Norwich by RR Robertson.
https://www.jjhc.info/harveyjohn1842

Thanks. I am grateful to Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk, Ken Skipper of Cork Brick Gallery Bungay and the George Plunkett archive (www.georgeplunkett.co.uk).

Catherine Maude Nichols

15 Wednesday May 2019

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

catherine maude nichols, Norfolk and Norwich Art Circle, Norwich School of Artists, The Woodpecker Club

I first came across Catherine Maude Nichols in a book published in 1910 called ‘Citizens of No Mean City’, a Jarrolds trade book containing over 360 potted biographies with accompanying photographs of ‘Norwich Citizens of To-day’ [1], some of whom probably paid for advertising their business on the facing page. I was attracted by the fact that Kate Nichols was one of only three women … and by the flamboyant hat. CM Nichols.jpg

Although she herself was not a major figure her artistic life is fascinating for spanning the last days of Crome and Cotman’s Norwich School of Artists and the emergence of English Impressionism.

From [1]

Kate was born in 1847 behind this fine Georgian doorway at 32 Surrey Street, Norwich, where she was looked after by a nanny and a nurse.

Surrey St 32 Regency Georgian doorway [0468] 1935-04-19.jpg

The Regency doorway at 32 Surrey Street ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

This was on the opposite side of the street to the tall terrace, built in 1761 by Thomas Ivory (Assembly House, Octagon Chapel), where Sir James Edward Smith of Linnean Society fame lived from 1796 to 1828 [see previous blog post 2]. Unfortunately, this fashionable Georgian street was bombed in WWII and the even-numbered houses on the east side no longer exist. Fortunately, George Plunkett recorded No 32 in 1935.

Surrey St 30 to 34 [1028] 1936-06-14AA.jpg

30-34 Surrey Street 1935. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

Kate Nichols’ father was born into a wealthy Norfolk farming and landowning family who lived at Alpington Hall, a few miles south of Norwich [3].

Alpington Hall. ©Evelyn Simak. Creative Commons

Her father, William Peter Nichols, was related to the Musketts. Regular readers may recall that when Colonel C. W. Unthank married Mary Anne Muskett and moved into her family home at Intwood Hall, a few miles south of the city, he started selling off his own land on which much of Norwich’s present-day Golden Triangle was built [4].

Kate’s father trained in London as a surgeon and returned to Norwich in the 1820s. In the 1850s he was appointed one of the four surgeons at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital where he specialised in removing bladder stones – something once common in Norfolk.

The north-east wing of N&N Hospital, built by Thomas Ivory’s son William in the 1770s. Most of Ivory’s hospital was rebuilt by Edward Boardman 1879-1884 [5].

At various times William Peter Nichols was to be mayor and local magistrate as well as surgeon to the police, to the prison and to the Bethel Hospital. The latter was opened in 1713 by Mary Chapman as an asylum for the curable mentally ill and may well have been the first purpose-built asylum in the country. In 1836 Nichols bought Heigham House as a ‘private lunatic asylum’ for ladies and gentlemen. We previously encountered this mansion at the junction of Old Palace Road and Heigham Street when trying to discover which of several Heigham Houses/Halls was home to the Unthank family [6]. This mental asylum was in competition with the genteel Heigham Retreat whose tree-lined avenue is commemorated by Avenue Road.

Etching of Heigham Retreat by Henry Ninham ©Norfolk Record Office MC279/6. Avenue Junior School now occupies part of this site.

Nichols and two other doctors bought out Heigham Retreat but closed it in 1859 after it was involved in scandal. In 1852 a curate from Hethersett, Reverend Edmund Holmes, was accused of raping a young girl but, because of his family’s standing in the county, Holmes was promptly admitted to The Retreat by Dr Nichols in order to evade arrest. Nichols then appointed Holmes as chaplain to the asylum [7] and boasted that he had rescued one of his class from the clutches of the law [3].

In 1870, Sir Robert John Harvey, senior partner in Norwich Crown Bank on Agricultural Hall Plain, shot himself after bankrupting the business. Hard to believe but in a letter to the Eastern Daily Press dated 1960 the correspondent recalls tales of a suicide being buried with a stake through the heart at a crossroads in Heigham [8]. Although such roadside burial was repealed in 1823 those who committed self-murder whilst still in control of their faculties could only be buried in cemeteries between 9pm and midnight, and without ceremony. William Nichols was the Harvey family’s doctor and it was his diagnosis of hereditary ‘excitement’ (i.e., whilst the balance of his mind was temporarily disturbed) that allowed Sir Robert a Christian burial.

Norwich Crown Bank on Agricultural Hall Plain. After the Harvey affair the goodwill and building were bought by Gurneys Bank, the forerunner of Barclays.

It was into this wealthy and politically involved family that Kate was born. And when, in Dr Nichols’ mayoral year (1866), the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Norwich together with the Queen of Denmark it was Kate who presented the princess a book of Norwich photographs on behalf of the women of the city [7].

The royal party at the music festival held at St Andrew’s Hall in aid of the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital ©Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

That evening Kate accompanied her parents to a ball held at Costessey Hall where the royal party stayed for three days with the Jerninghams in their never-completed Gothic fantasy.

Costessey Hall. A C19 Neo-Gothic fantasy made of Gunton Bros ‘fancy bricks’ from the nearby Costessey Brickworks [9].

Costessey Hall was made of ‘Cossey’ brick, baked from Jerningham clay by the Gunton family who went on to supply decorative and carved bricks that can still be seen around the city [see previous post 9].

Guntons’ Tudorbethan chimneys on a house in Chapelfield North

There seems to have been something Walter Mitty-like about Kate Nichols. She was to describe herself as a spinster with no close relatives but in so doing she ignored two brothers, three nieces, two nephews and a dozen cousins [3]. She would also tell others that she was a self-taught artist despite: having a drawing mistress at school; studying with David Hall McEwan, a member of the Royal Society of Watercolour Artists; and at age 27 studying for two terms at the Norwich School of Art where she probably learned etching and won a prize in the Advanced Division. Indeed, the Head of the NSA stated that Kate Nichols and George Skipper were the two best students during his 25-year tenure [3].

Not recorded as such but this is an excellent likeness of George Skipper, Norwich’s flamboyant architect, sitting on top of his Commercial Chambers in Red Lion Street [see 10].

There was an artistic strand in the Nichols family for her four aunts had been taught at Alpington Hall by co-founder of the Norwich School of Artists, John Crome, some of whose landscape paintings hung in Kate’s home in Surrey Street [3].

Almost always described as ‘etchings’ most of Kate’s output was actually dry point engraving. Unlike etching, which involves ‘eating’ into a copper plate with acid, dry point engraving involves incising lines directly onto a copper sheet with a sharp tool; this raises a ‘burr’ that – when inked – is pressed onto paper to create an impression. Because printing produces a mirror image the original scene should be drawn in reverse but for some reason Kate did not do this for ‘Tombland’.

Left: Tombland Alley with the house of Augustine Steward, which was used by Royalist troops during Kett’s Rebellion of 1549. Right: ‘Tombland’ drypoint by CM Nichols courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Kate’s first dry point engraving for which there is a record, ‘College’, was made in 1875 when she was 28. There was something about this linear technique that suited Kate’s fondness for landscape for she seems to have been less accomplished with the rounded forms of the human body [3].

‘College’ (which appears to be St John’s Cambridge) 1875. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Collections NWHCM : 1969.557.63

Here we see the gardens of the Bethel Hospital, where her father was surgeon.

Dry point and oil painting of the Bethel Hospital. Undated but after 1882. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Collections. NWHCM : 1940.75.19 and NWHCM : 1940.75.8

Kate Nichols was single and adventurous, dropping in – apparently – on artists she admired, such as Lord Leighton and John Everett Millais [3]. She travelled alone to France and from 1876-8 visited Barbizon, south of Paris, to join others painting there. This was a generation after the original founders of the Barbizon school, such as Corot and Millet, had painted landscape from nature in the manner of East Anglian John Constable. Future Impressionists like Monet, Renoir and Sisley also went to Barbizon and although Kate may not have met them she at least mixed with ‘hundreds of artists’ who were also paying their dues [3]. In 1879, she stayed in Newlyn – the Cornish counterpart to Barbizon – and this time she was not too late to catch the wave: now she was amongst painters out of whom the ‘Newlyn Group’ of artists would emerge with their impressionistic style.

Old Houses, Cornwall 18979 ©The Trustees of the British Museum

Back home, Kate was to draw from the countryside around Norwich as well as the urban landscape of the city itself. She exhibited widely and between 1877-1908 some of her engravings were shown at the Royal Academy. The first was of Ber Street, Norwich, which illustrates animals being driven towards the livestock market around the castle.

Ber Street 1878 ©Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Kate was influenced by the Norwich School painters whose work had hung in her family home [3]. In 1907 she was to produce a folder of prints entitled ‘After Crome’.

Left: ‘The Poringland Oak’ (1880-1820) by John Crome. The Tate, Creative Commons Licence. Right: ‘Poringland Oak (After Old Crome)’ by CM Nichols. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Oil painting ‘Old Norwich River’ by CM Nichols (her drypoint of this scene is labelled ‘Widdow’s Ferry’. Could this be Pull’s Ferry since Pull married Widow Sandling and took over Sandling’s Ferry?). Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Collections NWHCM 1952:125

She was obviously fond of the area around Cow Hill.

Left: Drypoint of Cow Hill 1883, exhibited at The Royal Academy and reproduced in The Studio; courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk. This looks up to great St Giles with the morning sun spilling down from Willow Lane.

The houses in Willow Lane, off Cow Hill, are largely as Kate must have seen them, though not all of the houses on Cow Hill survive.

Left: Willow Lane by CM Nichols. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

She drew George Borrow’s House half way up the hill between Pottergate and Willow Lane.

Left: The C17 George Borrow’s House, Willow Lane by CM Nichols. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk. Right: the house today, viewed through a modern archway.

George Borrow (1803-1881) was a larger-than-life character: a boxer, a spinner of tales, a gipsy traveller and a linguist who taught himself Old Norse and Welsh. He was born in Dereham but his family lived for a while in Norwich where George was taught at Norwich Grammar School alongside Kate’s father and uncle [3]. In 1913 Kate was to provide engravings of the interior of the Borrow house for a souvenir booklet produced a decade late for Borrow’s centenary.

The George Borrow centenary souvenir booklet with cover by Alfred Munnings, who painted scenes of gypsy life. Courtesy of [11].

The Society (later the Royal Society) of Painter-Etchers was formed in 1880; two years later Kate submitted a diploma piece, Scotch Firs, for which she was elected the first female fellow.

Scotch Firs 1882. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Collections NWHCM : 1965.82.1

In 1882 Kate was baptised into the Catholic faith, causing a rift with her family. In 1891 she is recorded as living a few doors away at 12 Surrey Street and by 1900 she had ventured further along the road to Carlton Terrace.

Surrey St 47 to 79 Carlton Terrace [6461] 1987-05-19.jpg

Carlton Terrace at the south end of Surrey Street. George Plunkett’s photograph was taken in 1987, eight years after Edward Skipper and Associates restored the 1881 terrace for Broadland Housing Association. Kate Nichols lived at the far end. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

Before St John’s Catholic Church (later Cathedral) was completed in 1910 Kate worshipped at the Old St John’s Chapel (1794), which is now the Maddermarket Theatre.

Left: Off St John’s Alley, The Old St John’s Catholic Chapel pre-1900 (from [12]). Right: Converted to the Tudor style Maddermarket Theatre in 1921.

For the frontispiece of a book celebrating Catholicism in Norwich Kate painted the new Catholic church from Chapelfield North [12].

Frontispiece of ‘A Great Gothic Fane’ by CM Nichols. From [12].

In this book Kate appears on a photographic plate of notable Catholic women.

Kate age 66. From [12].

Kate Nichols’ closest friend was the wealthy Mary Radford Pym who lived in an exotic Tudor Revival house in Chapelfield (once home to my dental practice).

St Mary’s Croft (1881) in Chapelfield North

Mrs Pym was philanthropic. She funded the clocktower in Sheringham and gave land on Earlham Road to be used as a park. She also gave money to the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital for a nurses’ home; this funded Pym House on the corner of Unthank and Christchurch Roads [3].

Pym House, purchased in 1927. A plaque records that this was for the use of the Jenny Lind Children’s Hospital on the opposite side of Unthank Road, now the site of the Colman Hospital and prior to this the Priscilla Bacon Lodge.

In 1889, Mrs Radford Pym arranged for her good friend Kate to be installed as President of the newly-founded Woodpecker Art Club, a title she held until her death 34 years later. The Woodpeckers – who included Alfred Munnings among their members – were so named because they chipped away at wooden engraving blocks, unlike Kate who inscribed metal. In addition to outings the club held an annual meeting upstairs in ‘Princes’ high-class confectioners in Castle Street, owned by Margaret Pillow a friend of Mrs Pym.

From [1]

Kate died in 1923 and in her memory Mrs Pym arranged for a portrait, painted 20 years earlier by neighbour Edward Elliot, to be bought and donated to the Castle Museum. It was presented by Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, who succeeded Kate as President of The Woodpeckers (Frederick was son of the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Maharaja Sir Duleep Singh, a favourite of Queen Victoria who lived in exile at Elveden Hall, near Thetford).

Miss Nichols by Edward Elliot. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Collections NWHCM : 1923.75. This captures Kate around the late 1890s when overblown leg-of-mutton sleeves were fashionable.

In 1927 the Woodpeckers merged with the Norwich Art Circle (est. 1885), which continues as the Norfolk and Norwich Art Circle[13].

The colophon of Jarrolds of Norwich who printed Kate Nichols’ later drypoints

Sources

Citizens of No Mean City (1910). Pub: Jarrold, Norwich.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2017/01/15/when-norwich-was-the-centre-of-the-world/
Pamela Inder and Marion Aldis (2015). ‘A Forgotten Norwich Artist: Catherine Maude Nichols’. Pub: Poppyland Publishing, Cromer.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2017/07/15/the-end-of-the-unthank-mystery/
Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (1997). The Buildings of England: Norfolk I.Norwich and North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2017/04/15/colonel-unthank-rides-again/
http://www.hellenicaworld.com/UK/Literature/CharlesMackie/en/NorfolkAnnals2.html
Letter by CC Lanchester to the Eastern Daily Press 20.9.1960.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/05/05/fancy-bricks/
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2017/02/15/the-flamboyant-mr-skipper/
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21538/21538-h/21538-h.htm
A Great Gothic Fane: The Catholic Church of St John the Baptist, Norwich (1913). Pub: WT Pike and Co., Brighton.
https://www.nnartcircle.com/about.html

Thanks

I have relied for background on ‘A Forgotten Norwich Artist: Catherine Maude Nichols’ by Pamela Inder and Marion Aldis – a model of local historical research (and still available). I also thank Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk for permission to reproduce photographs (try the site: https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/MSGTRN/PICNOR/HOME). Thanks, too, to Jonathan Plunkett for allowing access to his father’s invaluable collection of Norwich photographs: http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Website/.

City Hall Doors # 2

15 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

James Woodford, Norwich City Hall doors, Public art

The Normans left Norwich a magnificently tangible legacy of Castle and Cathedral but traces of their Scandinavian cousins – the Vikings – are harder to find.

Roundel 4A: The Vikings

For the first roundel in this ‘second half’ of his plaques on the City Hall doors (1936-8), James Woodford acknowledged the significance of the Viking invasion to the development of proto-Norwich. The Great Heathen Army first invaded East Anglia in 865AD but there is little physical evidence that Scandinavians settled in Norwich until the C10 [1]. Then, there is evidence of an Anglo-Scandinavian settlement – a North wic on the northern side of the Wensum, centred along modern-day Magdalen Street, defended by a looping, 13-foot-deep ditch and probably topped by bank and fence. This may have been constructed in response to Anglo-Saxon pressure from Edward the Elder of Wessex who overcame the East Anglian Danelaw in 9 I 7.

Anglo-Scandinavian Norwich outlined in red. Dotted lines mark the known defensive ditch. Blue triangle = St Clement Colegate; yellow diamond = Tombland marketplace. Map courtesy of Norfolk Museums Service, redrawn from Philip Judge’s map in [1].

This protected settlement was sufficiently important and stable in the C10 to have its own mint making Anglo-Saxon ‘Nordwic’ coins.

Æthelstan, Anglo-Saxon King of Wessex. Penny minted in Nordwic ca 930AD. © CNG 2019

Scandinavian influence can be detected in the naming of churches: St Clement – the patron saint of sailors – was much favoured by the Scandinavians and his churches occur at rivers or portals as here, at St Clement’s on the corner of Fye Bridge Street and Colegate. Norwich also had two churches named after St Olave or Olaf, the Norwegian king canonised in 1030.

St Clement’s Fye Bridge/Colegate, perhaps pre-Conquest, now mostly C15/16

The Anglo-Scandinavian settlement was not confined to the northern bank for it extended southwards to form a double burh joined across the river by a wooden causeway where Fye Bridge now stands [1]. A few hundred yards south of the river was the marketplace in Tombland, from the Danish word täm for open space and it is from their word ‘gata’ meaning street that we have inherited Finkelgate, Fishergate, Pottergate, Colegate, Mountergate etc. What may have caused Nordwic to abscond to the south bank was the raid in 1004 when Sweyn Forkbeard – whose sister Gunhilde had been amongst the hundreds of Vikings killed in the so-called St Brice’s Day Massacre – laid waste to Norwich. When the French descendants of the Vikings – the Christianised Normans – arrived a few decades later they established their presence on the south side with their cathedral of stone and a castle overlooking a re-sited marketplace.

Roundel 4B: Textiles and agriculture

The middle roundels 3B and 4B on the central pair of doors

On roundel 4B Woodford presents us with much the same layout he used on the facing roundel (3B, see previous post): the wool comb could be a mirror image of the comb on the left-hand roundel, there is another yarn winder and, again, a stand – this time a candle holder seemingly warming a tool clamped above (anyone?). Again, an object at the bottom breaks the weaving sequence but here it is not specifically related to Norwich industry but to Norfolk in general. The wheels on this plough reduce friction so that one ox could draw it through the light Norfolk soil and as such the image refers to Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leicester (1754-1842), who was first to have harnessed rather than yoked oxen. From his Holkham estate on the North Norfolk coast Coke is credited with sparking the British Agricultural Revolution [2].

The Leicester Monument (1845) at Holkham Hall, in memory of the 1st Earl. Between the wheeled plough and the ox are sheep, referring to the ‘English Leicester’ – an improved breed promoted by Lord Leicester. © racns [3]

Roundel 4C: Kett’s Rebellion

Here hangs Robert Kett from the walls of Norwich Castle.

The success of the Norwich weaving trade, and the rising price of wool, led to rich landlords enclosing common land in order to graze their own sheep. In 1549 Robert Kett, a tanner from Wymondham, sided with those uprooting hedges and fences. Under his leadership the uprising swelled to about 15,000 ‘rebels’ encamped on Mousehold Heath. Kett’s men defeated forces led by the Marquess of Northampton but were finally overcome at the Battle of Dussindale. Robert Kett was hanged from a gibbet erected on the battlements of Norwich Castle and “left hanging, in remembrance of his villany, till his body being consumed, at last fell down”. His brother was left hanging by chains from the steeple at Wymondham [4]. The C18 historian Francis Blomefield wrote that Kett’s army contained the ‘scum of Norwich’ but, of course, one man’s rebel is another man’s freedom fighter and a plaque on the castle walls expresses a more enlightened view:

In 1549 AD Robert Kett yeoman farmer of Wymondham was executed by hanging in this castle after the defeat of the Norfolk Rebellion of which he was the leader.
In 1949 AD – four hundred years later – this memorial was placed here by the citizens of Norwich in reparation and honour to a notable and courageous leader in the long struggle of the common people of England to escape from a servile life into the freedom of just conditions.

Roundel 5A: Chocolate and crackers

We know this represents Caley’s, rather than other confectioners, because of the combination of chocolate-making and Christmas crackers that we see arranged around the perimeter of this roundel. Twelve years before James Woodford drew this design Caley’s installed 44 chocolate-piping machines [5] so the worker is piping chocolate in their Fleur-de-Lys Factory in Chapelfield.

Registration of Caley’s trade mark ‘The Prentices Christmas in the Snow’ (1899). Note ‘Ye Sign of ye Fleur de Lys’. Courtesy Norfolk Record Office BR266/119/2

Between the 1864 and the 1883 editions of Kelly’s Directory, chemist and druggist Albert Jarman Caley – ‘manufacturer of aerated & mineral waters, & ginger ale’ – had moved from London Street to Chapelfield (1883), presumably to take advantage of a nearby deep well with the purest water in the city [7]. His sodas were bottled in an old factory in Chapelfield that had made cloth for glove-making but this was just the beginning of Caley’s expansion.

Caley’s Fleur de Lys works 1928 now the site of Chapelfield shopping mall. Chapelfield Gardens are to left and, below, is the triangle of The Crescent where Alfred Caley lived

In order to provide year-round employment for his summer workforce, Caley started to make drinking chocolate in 1883 and three years later began to make chocolate confectionery using milk from a farm in nearby Whitlingham [6]. In 1932 Caley’s was sold to Mackintosh’s, the toffee-makers from Halifax, who modernised the factory and produced new lines, like the chocolate-toffee combos ‘Rolo’ and ‘Quality Street’ assortment. The factory was rebuilt after being badly damaged in the 1942 Baedeker Raids. In 1969 the business was acquired by Rowntree’s and then by Nestlé (1988) who sold the site to be redeveloped as intu Chapelfield shopping mall (2005). Have I mentioned the aroma of chocolate over the city, usually – it seemed – on Sunday mornings?

This stone roller once used for grinding cocoa beans is now used as a seat at the Chapelfield Road entrance to the intu Chapelfield mall where Caley’s once stood

In 1899 the Caley’s fancy box department expanded into making Christmas crackers – some of the boxes decorated by a young Alfred Munnings who had recently graduated from the Norwich School of Art. Tom Smith, inventor of the Christmas cracker [8], opened his factory on Salhouse Road in 1953, too late to be considered an influence on Woodford’s roundel.

Caley’s Christmas cracker boxes ca 1900. Some, such as the first two, bear Munnings’ signature. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Collections

Roundel 5B: Livestock markets

Norwich was the trading centre for a major agricultural county and, since at least the time of James II, livestock was brought to the Castle Ditches or Dykes for sale [9]. The ‘Market for Horses Cows Sheep & Swine’ is clearly marked on King’s C18 map. Also marked are Old Horse Fair, Haymarket, Hog Hill (Orford Hill near the Bell Hotel), Horse Market (now Rampant Horse Street) and the Old Swine Market on All Saints’ Green – all contributing to a sense of the city as a hub for the county’s agriculture.

Samuel King’s New Plan of Norwich 1766. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Service

After the coming of the railways, cattle would be driven from Norwich Thorpe Station, up the new, wide Prince of Wales Road to various sites around the castle commemorated in the street names: Cattlemarket Street, Market Avenue, Farmer’s Avenue.

Cattle Market view NE from Market Avenue [4541] 1960-03-12.jpg

Norwich Cattlemarket from Market Avenue, 1960. This is to the rear of the Agricultural Hall with the cathedral spire just visible, right of centre. Courtesy of http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk

Here we see the Cattlemarket in 1877. Today, this is the site for the garden and glazed roof of subterranean Castle Mall. In 1960 the Cattlemarket was taken out of town to Hall Road.

Sheep sale at the Cattlemarket at a time when the castle was Norwich Prison. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Roundel 5C: Shoe-making

The City Hall stands on the site of a former Start-rite shoe factory and it is shoe-making that is celebrated in this roundel.

Preparing soles

By the 1840s the city’s textile trade was in decline but the same pattern of work – production by outworkers controlled by garret-masters – was inherited by the city’s rapidly expanding boot and shoe manufacturing trade. Soon, this piecemeal form of production was overtaken by large-scale manufacture in factories. Numerous small businesses became consolidated into the Big Five companies that dominated Norwich’s boot and shoe trade: Edwards & Holmes; Howlett & White (later the Norvic Shoe Co.); Haldinstein’s (later the Bally Shoe Co.); James Southall (later Start-rite); and H. Sexton & Sons (later Sexton, Son & Everard). About the time that Woodford was designing this roundel the Norwich boot and shoe trade was employing about 10,000 workers, although none of the major factories are operating now [10, 6].

The former Norvic Shoe Co at the corner of St George’s Street and Colegate was once the biggest shoe factory in the country

Roundel 6A: Soldering mustard tins

Here, the worker is soldering tins with what appears to be a pool of molten lead; a soldering iron is highlighted on the left. He would have been working on a production line at Colman’s of Carrow, famous worldwide for producing mustard. This company’s yellow tins of mustard powder were emblematic of the city and it is a great sadness that the factory will close in 2019 after over 150 years at the old Carrow Abbey site. Roundel 6A.jpg

Roundel 6B: More livestock

Roundel 6B.jpg

This image is paired with the ‘livestock’ roundel on the facing door (5B above).

The Hill at Norwich on Market Day, by Frederick Bacon Barnwell (1871). Looking down Cattlemarket Street at the ‘back’ of the Castle, separating into Market Avenue to the left and, to the right, down Rose Lane to a distant Thorpe Hamlet

Roundel 6C: Silk weaving

6C Silk weaving.jpg

This plaque almost certainly refers to the firm of Francis Hinde & Hardy who employed several hundred people in St Mary’s Works on Oak Street [6].

Silk weaving at Hinde’s St Mary’s Mill at Oak Street. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

In the 1550s and 60s Dutch and Belgians Protestants fleeing from religious persecution settled in Norwich, eventually comprising a third of the city’s population. These ‘Strangers’ revived our flagging textile trade and helped develop New Draperies that included silk. Even in the C19, when the textile trade was in serious decline, Norwich silk shawls and ‘Mourning Crape’ kept business alive [11]. In the 1920s Hindes expanded, taking over other Norwich silk weavers and building a silk-weaving mill at Mile Cross; they also owned another silk mill at Oulton Broad. In the 1920s and 30s Hindes were experimenting with nylon and an artificial silk (Rayon) so the roundel may depict the weaving of artificial yarn [12]. Later, Hindes’ produced parachute fabric in WWII.

1949 advertisement. Courtesy [13]

In 1964 Hindes was bought by the giant Courtaulds; the factory closed in 1982, ending 700 years of textile manufacture in the city [6].

The 19^throundel

For the final – the 18th – roundel, Woodford chose to illustrate silk weaving but his designs indicate that his original intention was to show tubes being filled with toothpaste [3]. I did read that the toothpaste was ‘Odells’ but it turns out to have been ‘Odol’ by Cranbux Ltd of 103 Westwick Street – a firm owned by Coleman & Co Ltd [14]. Remember Coleman’s (with an ‘e’), the wine-bottling company from Westwick Street that we saw on roundel 1A?

When Norwich had its own toothpaste. ‘Odol’ marketed by Cranbux, owned by Coleman & Co Ltd, Norwich. Photo courtesy of atlasrepropaperwork.com [14]

We have to ask whether these roundels gave a fair reflection of the city. Well, it’s rather puzzling why Woodford even considered the filling of toothpaste tubes when he could have chosen the famous home-grown insurance business, Norwich Union (now Aviva). Woodford’s vision was decidedly backward-looking but who in 1936 anticipated the war and could imagine what post-war life would be like in a post-industrial Britain? Now, Norwich is a city of literature and science, amongst many other things, but it would take a brave person to commission another set of roundels to fix this moment in time.

(That was to have been my ending but, serendipitously, I came across someone who did have the courage to predict the city’s future. In 1935 an Art Master at CNS School, Walter Watling, drew ‘Norwich in AD 2035’. In his prophetic dream he was introduced to someone over the “televisophone” who “promised to send along the glasses and in another minute they arrived by the pneumatic tube delivery service [15].” Quite a good stab at the smartphone and Amazon, no?)

‘Norwich in AD 2035’ by WT Watling [15, 16].

Sources

Brian Ayers (2004). The Urban Landscape. In, Medieval Norwich (Eds Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Coke,_1st_Earl_of_Leicester_(seventh_creation)
http://racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=6
Francis Blomefield (1806). ‘The City of Norwich’ Ch 25, online at: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/vol3/pp220-265
Norfolk Record Office BR266/93.
Nick Williams (2013). Norwich: City of Industries. Pub: Norwich Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust.
Barry Pardue (2005). Norwich Streets. Pub: Tempus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cracker
http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/markets.htm
Frances and Michael Holmes (2013). The Story of the Norwich Boot and Shoe Trade. Pub: Norwich Heritage Projects.
Gillian Holman (2015). Made in East Anglia: A History of the Region’s Textile & Menswear Industries. Pub: The Pasold Research Fund http://www.pasold.co.uk/download/%7BA14AC35B-4095-46E1-BBB9-F54A05D5DA92%7D/made-in-east-anglia
Communication from Cathy Terry, Senior Curator at Strangers’ Hall Museum, Norwich.
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Francis_Hinde_and_Sons
https://www.atlas-repropaperwork.com/odol-toothpaste/#comment-22921
Walter T Watling (1935). ‘Norwich AD 2035: A Prophetic Fantasy’. In, The Norwich Annual 1935.
https://www.edp24.co.uk/features/remembering-scatty-an-art-master-with-a-future-vision-1-5894702

Thanks: to Cathy Terry of the Strangers’ Hall Museum for information on silk weaving; Cathy acknowledges the research of Thelma and Alan Morris. I am grateful, as ever, to Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk for permission to reproduce images. I also thank Derek James of the Eastern Daily Press for kindly sending me the Watling illustration. See his article on Walter Watling in [16].

City Hall Doors # 1

15 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Boulton & Paul, Norwich City Hall doors, Norwich industry

The northern mill towns that had put Norwich’s centuries-old textile industries out of business celebrated their new prosperity in a Victorian campaign of civic building that passed our city by. In the 1930s, by the time Norwich got around to replacing the medieval Guildhall, the city had reinvented itself as a centre of light industry that could advertise its modernity, not with Town Hall Gothic or Georgian Classical, but with the clean lines of Scandinavian Art Deco. This made Norwich City Hall “the foremost English public building of between the wars” [1] – the figurative roundels on its bronze doors providing a snapshot of Norwich in this inter-war period.

In 1934, James Woodford had designed magnificent bronze doors for the Royal Institute of British Architects headquarters in London …

… and was subsequently commissioned to design three pairs of bronze entrance doors for Norwich City Hall [2]. Unveiled in October 1938 the 18 roundels – three per door – paid homage to history, trade and industry.

Roundel 1A.Bottling wine *[The three pairs of doors are numbered 1-6 and the three roundels on each door are labelled A-C, downwards].

Pic A.jpg

Incidentally, all 18 of Woodford’s designs are repeated – albeit in a simplified form and without the Art Deco influence – around the top floor of Chapelfield Mall (2005).

Coleman & Co Ltd – not to be confused with Colman’s of mustard fame, who took them over in 1968 – bottled wine that arrived in tankers from various European countries. The factory on Westwick Street/Barn Road occupied a large area centred around Toys R Us (but even this landmark closed in 2018) [3]. Another first for Norwich: Coleman’s were the first company in the UK to make wine-in-a-box. From the 1880s Colemans also made Wincarnis, the name describing a mixture of fortified wine and carne, meat, from a time when this pick-me-up contained beef stock.

From, The Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell

Coronation Westwick St Wincarnis works [1623] 1937-05-13.jpg

The Wincarnis Works in Westwick Street 1937, destroyed by the Luftwaffe in an incendiary attack 1942 ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

Wine being bottled and labelled by hand, not by a man in a cap as in the roundel, but by female workers at Coleman & Co Ltd. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk.

Roundel 1B illustrates building the base of the City Hall using blocks of stone with rusticated (set-back) edges. Incidentally, when buying a suit (a rare occurrence) in London the shop assistant told me that his grandfather, a master mason, travelled to Norwich each week to help build the City Hall. Pic B.jpg

Roundel 1C. The city’s aeronautical industry Pic C.jpg

This roundel celebrates one of our largest industries of the time, mainly based around Boulton and Paul’s engineering works on Riverside where they made aeroplane parts. B&P were used to making prefabricated structures like sheds and bungalows; in 1915 this led them being awarded government contracts to build planes [4]. The roundel also acknowledges another Norwich firm, formed by Henry Trevor and his step-son John Page. Trevor, Page & Co. had made furniture since the 1850s and in WWI were contracted by the government to make wooden propellers.

Staff of Trevor, Page & Co (registered at Upper King Street) with two wooden propellers. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Trevor is perhaps best known locally for his transformation in the 1850s of a disused quarry on Earlham Road into the wonderful Plantation Garden.

Henry Trevor’s Plantation Garden on Earlham Road https://www.plantationgarden.co.uk/

The planes were assembled and tested by Boulton & Paul on Mousehold Heath, which became Norwich Municipal Aerodrome in 1933. 30129032936909Boulton&PaulHangar.jpg

One of Boulton and Paul’s hangars on Mousehold Heath. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk.

The Municipal Aerodrome was opened in 1933 by the Prince of Wales who inspected a flight of B&P’s medium bomber, the Sidestrand – a twin engined biplane.

The Sidestrand. Picture: Ian Burt

Towards the end of WWI, the Sopwith Camel became the country’s most successful fighter (and 50 years later Snoopy’s biplane of choice). Boulton & Paul are said to have made more Sopwith Camels than any other company. Here is the production team with what may well have been one of their last Camels.

Courtesy Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

In 1936, at about the time that Woodward was designing the City Hall doors, Boulton and Paul’s aeroplane division moved to Wolverhampton [4] leaving the old aerodrome to become the Heartsease housing estate. In 1971 the old RAF Bomber Command airfield at Horsham St Faith was redeveloped as Norwich Airport.

Roundel 2A: the filling of soda siphons.

Each of the big four Norwich breweries (Bullards, Youngs Crawshay & Youngs, Morgans, and Steward & Patteson) marketed their own soda siphons. In addition, Caley’s produced table waters from 1862, which were its main product until they began manufacturing drinking and eating chocolate some 20 years later [5]. Caley’s Fleur-de-Lys works in Chapelfield, which was destroyed in the Baedeker raids of 1942, was rebuilt only to be demolished in 2004 to make way for the intu Chapelfield shopping mall. For a few years, from 1958, Caley’s marketed their table waters under the Delecta brand.

The Mineral Water Works (red star) was situated inside what is now the Theatre Street entrance to Chapelfield Mall.

Red star = Caley’s Mineral Water Works; Blue star = Assembly House (formerly the Girls’ High School; Yellow star = St Stephen’s Church. The red line = the walk through St Stephen’s Churchyard. 1885 OS map hosted by norwich-yards.co.uk courtesy of georgeplunkett.co.uk

Roundel 2B. The brewing industry.

Although Norwich is famed for having so many medieval churches, this number (‘one for each week of the year’) was dwarfed in the late C19 by 655 licenced houses, far more than the well-rehearsed ‘and one for each day of the year’ [2]. Most of these were eventually brought under the umbrella of the big four Norwich breweries; all, of course, now gone: Bullards on Anchor Quay [2]; Morgans at the Old King Street Brewery – the site now being redeveloped for housing as St Anne’s Quarter; Steward and Patteson’s Pockthorpe Brewery on Barrack Street; and Youngs Crawshay and Youngs on the Wensum Lodge Adult Education site, King Street. Walking down historic King Street today you would never realise it was once home to two large breweries.

Roundel 2C: Making wire netting.

In 1844 Charles Barnard invented a machine for making wire netting based on weaving looms that would still have been a common sight and sound around the city. His Norfolk Iron Works [see previous post 6] was on the north side of the river, opposite Bullards’ Anchor Quay Brewery.

Charles Barnard’s wire netting loom in The Museum of Norwich at The Bridewell.

Barnards wire netting.jpg

The advertisement underlines the point that Barnards were the originators of wire netting and warns against being misled by other brands. Who might they be?

In 1903, Boulton & Paul stocked over 700 miles of wire netting

Across the city, Boulton and Paul were also making wire netting. In WWII – a few years after Woodford designed his roundels – B&P were producing the ‘Summerfeld’ wire-netting track, used as temporary runways for aircraft [7].

Roundel 3A: Building the Castle. Door3A–Altv.jpg

If we had to guess the location of this scene from the scant clothing and hair styles alone we would be excused for placing these men somewhere between the Nile and the Tigris rather than cold old Norwich. This would at least be consistent with Woodford’s Assyrian designs for the two flagpole bases [2] in the Memorial Gardens opposite City Hall where figures ‘walk like an Egyptian’: torso twisted, face in profile.

The roundel illustrates blocks of stone being hoisted up to a building with rounded Norman arches. However, something more efficient than the cranked windlass illustrated here would have been needed to lift large stone blocks (although the treadwheel only seems to have appeared in the mid-C13 [8]). Whatever … it is stone that is being celebrated here for there is none in this desert of flint and chalk, and to raise both castle and cathedral the Norman conquerors imported their own stone at great expense from Caen in Normandy. Norwich Castle was ‘architecturally the most ambitious secular building in western Europe’ [9] and, as the only royal castle in Norfolk and Suffolk, this assertion of Norman power made Norwich the regional capital [10].

Blind arcading on Norwich Castle, which was re-faced with Bath stone in the 1830s

On the roundel we can just make out that the space beneath the rounded arch, which frames the left-hand worker, is filled in with blocks of stone. Such blind arcading is a common decorative element in Norman architecture but the fact that a utilitarian building like the castle has external decoration at all is “remarkable”. As Pevsner and Wilson wrote, “France e.g. has nothing to compare with Norwich” [1]. Hurrah!

Roundel 3B: ‘Historical implements’ [11]

The wool comb on the right is for carding wool; that is, disentangling it and drawing it into parallel fibres ready for spinning the thread. A denser comb with shorter nails would be needed to produce finer yarn used for worsted. Worsted is a smooth cloth without a nap that was particular to Norwich and the surrounding villages (e.g., Worstead); the manufacture of worsted was probably the city’s major industry throughout the late middle ages [12]. The whirligig in the centre is an ‘umbrella swift’ for winding yarn – either silk or wool [13]. The stand on the left holds two yarn winders on which the thread is spooled ready for weaving. The simplicity of these implements emphasises the pre-industrial nature of the early textile business, often conducted in small workshops and attics by family groups [13].

I was surprised that the final object, seen at the bottom of the roundel, was a cobbler’s bench [2] because, surely, Woodford wouldn’t interrupt his textile cycle by including a different trade? Well, there it is at The Bridewell Museum, a turnshoe maker’s bench. shoemaker's bench1.jpg

Roundel 3C: The Black Death Roundel 3C.jpg

According to the historian Francis Blomefield the bubonic plague first arrived in Norwich on January 1st 1348 [14] but it was to return intermittently over the next three centuries. In the years preceding the first outbreak the city’s numbers were swelled hugely by the arrival of land-starved peasants coming in from the country to seek work [15]. The Black Death reduced this jam-packed population by about a third to a half and wasn’t to return to its original level until the late C17 [15]. Bodies were buried in communal pits in the Cathedral Close and the churchyard of nearby St George Tombland; in the Great Plague of 1665-6 Chapelfield was used as a mass grave [16]. High and low were struck down alike.

The last British example of the Dance of Death in stained glass. St Andrews, Norwich ca 1510.

Next month, the other nine roundels

Contains Photographs of the Unthanks and material not included in the blog. From Jarrolds Book Department or online (click here) and the City Bookshop, Davey Place, Norwich (or click here).

Sources

Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (1997). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
Richard Cocke (photography by Sarah Cocke) (2103). Public Sculpture of Norfolk and Suffolk. Pub: Liverpool University Press.
http://www.wisearchive.co.uk/story/the-silent-e-in-colemans/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_%26_Paul_Ltd
http://letslookagain.com/tag/a-j-caley-of-norwich/
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/tag/barnard-bishop-and-barnards/
Boulton and Paul (1947). The Leaf and the Tree: The Story of Boulton and Paul Ltd 1797-1947. Pub: Boulton and Paul.
https://uccshes.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/medieval-treadwheels-artists-views-of-building-construction.pdf
T.A. Heslop (1994). Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context. Pub: Centre of East Anglian Studies, UEA.
Bryan Ayers (2004). The Urban Landscape. In, Medieval Norwich. Eds Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/stp.htm#Stpet
Penelope Dunn (2004). Trade. In, Medieval Norwich. Eds Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
Ursula Priestley (1990). The Fabric of Stuffs: the Norwich Textile Industry from 1565. Pub: Centre of East Anglian Studies, UEA.
Francis Blomefield’s history of the City of Norwich (1806) available online at: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/vol3/pp79-101
Elizabeth Rutledge (2004). Economic Life. In, Medieval Norwich. Eds Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
http://www.chapelfieldsociety.org.uk/history-of-chapelfield/.

Late Extra: The Norwich Pantheon

01 Friday Feb 2019

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history, Norwich maps

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Norwich Pantheon, Norwich pleasure gardens, Norwich Victoria Station, Quantrell's Gardens, RanelaghGardens, Victoria Gardens

Once, I stayed in a hotel next to the Pantheon in Rome. Constructed some 2000 years ago it is a breath-taking example of the Roman genius for engineering – its circular rotunda spanned by the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. Surely, anything bearing that name in Norwich could only be a much-diluted version of the Roman Pantheon so what was ours really like? Two weeks after my previous post [1] I received fascinating correspondence that I show here in order to set the historical record straight. First, a brief recap.

The portico of the Roman Pantheon with the rotunda behind

The dome was coffered with diminishing panels to lighten the weight. The central oculus is open to the weather. Built ca 100AD

In my previous post on Norwich Pleasure Gardens I mentioned London’s Pantheon – an impressive structure that prompted the building of our provincial version. The 1000-seat Norwich Pantheon was erected in New Spring Gardens – later called Vauxhall Gardens – on the riverside, off King Street.

800px-Pantheon_painting,_probably_by_William_Hodges_with_figures_by_Zoffany_edited.jpg

The clues to Norwich’s own Pantheon are few and start with Hochstetter’s map of 1789.

Hochstetter’s plan of 1789, courtesy of Norfolk Record Office

This map clearly shows that the Norwich Pantheon on Riverside was originally octagonal, as does Cole’s map of 1807.

Cole’s plan of 1807 with The Pantheon at centre. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service

However, Cole is thought to have based his map on Hochstetter’s earlier survey [see 2] and in 1807 he wrongly drew The Pantheon in this riverside location from which it had been absent for about a decade. In the 1790s Samuel Neech had bought the defunct Vauxhall gardens, including its Pantheon, and used the building materials to construct a new rotunda (for which he retained the old name of The Pantheon) in his own Ranelagh Gardens. This rival garden – situated just off the present-day St Stephens roundabout – now had a building that is said to have accommodated 2,000 persons [3]. (These pleasure gardens had various owners who gave them different names but for simplicity’s sake I will call them ‘Ranelagh/Victoria Gardens’ here.)

In 1849 the Ranelagh/Victoria Gardens were bought by the Eastern Union Railway Company who repurposed the existing buildings [3]. Fortunately, Norwich Victoria Station survived well into the C20 so photographs exist.

The booking office of Norwich Victoria Station 1913. Courtesy Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

I ended the previous post by asking if we could be looking at The Norwich Pantheon, a ghost from over two centuries ago.

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It was at this stage that Bill Smith – a railway enthusiast who had come to Victoria Station from a different angle – asked if there was evidence that the above building was the fabled Pantheon. The booking office in the photograph approximates to a circular form rather than the distinct octagon shown in Hochstetter’s map. Might it therefore be a different building, such as the ‘amphitheatre’ that a previous owner is said to have constructed eight years before The Pantheon appeared on the site [3]? Unfortunately, Hochstetter’s plan shows no large buildings on the Ranelagh/Victoria site.

Ranelagh Gardens from Anthony Hochstetter’s Plan of 1789. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Service

But, using the excellent Norfolk Map Explorer (http://www.historic-maps.norfolk.gov.uk/), Bill had downloaded the 1842 tithe map that does show a building on the Ranelagh/Victoria Gardens plot. It is hard to make out whether the building is circular or octagonal.

However, the 1830 map by WS Millard and J Manning gives a clearer view. Ignoring the flaps fore and aft the main building appears as an octagon, or is that a rectangle with rounded corners? Those rounded corners turn out to be useful.

From the 1830 Plan of Norwich by WS Millard and J Manning. Courtesy Norfolk County Council

By the time Ranelagh/Victoria Gardens had become Victoria Station the main garden building, now wider, was situated between the two platforms. Here, Bill has placed the rotunda on a 1905 OS map.

OS map, redrawing courtesy of Bill Smith.

On a more detailed map of 1880 Bill was able to scale the rotunda to fit two circular segments of the building (the ’rounded corners’) and, using the 56½-inch gauge of the railway tracks as a standard, to calculate the rotunda’s diameter at around 74 feet.

The rotunda sized by Bill Smith to fit the rounded corners.

The panelled conical ceiling with its roof light therefore sits on what is almost certainly a circular rotunda, not an octagonal one. Samuel Neech may have recycled material from the old Norwich Pantheon for his own building but it seems quite clear that he didn’t stick to the original’s octagonal floor plan. Bill’s evidence strongly indicates that The Pantheon was the large circular building so an ‘amphitheatre’ has to be something else. Indeed, Fawcett supports the idea of two separate buildings when he describes the layout after the Eastern Union Railway Company took over the gardens in 1849: “Station platforms were laid on either side of the Pantheon … The Amphitheatre became a ticket office and luggage room.” The amphitheatre would therefore be the rectangular building behind, and extending either side of, the entrance portico.

Norwich Victoria Station in the early 1900s. Behind the entrance portico is situated the Amphitheatre. The roof light of the Pantheon (arrowed) peeps out to the rear. Wikipedia, Creative Commons

Below, this aerial photograph from 1935 provides interesting insight into the layout of the station inherited from the Ranelagh/Victoria Gardens. First, to the left, is the entrance off St Stephens Road as shown in the photograph above. Next, perpendicular to this, comes the Amphitheatre with a pitched roof; this is followed by the rotunda/Pantheon; followed by a smaller building with a pitched roof; then a glimpse of the triangular garden illustrated in the larger scale map (two images above).

1935 aerial map, ringed by Bill Smith to show the Pantheon at Norwich Victoria Station. From Flickr user ‘mira66’ [4], Creative Commons Licence CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In 1946, just after the war, the buildings in the station complex were roofless, providing an accidental glimpse into the internal layout, illustrating the large rotunda/Pantheon at centre.

Update: After posting this article, Grant Young recommended another 1946 aerial photograph from ‘Britain from Above’, which shows the roofless station complex in greater detail [5].

The red star indicates the postwar Victoria Station on the site now occupied by Marsh Insurance. Below, the enlargement clearly shows the circular section of The Pantheon. ©Historic England/Britain from Above EAW001999

Bill then outlined the main compartments as far as possible.

The plan drawn by Bill Smith

With this plan in mind it is now possible to walk ourselves through the rooms of the Ranelagh/Victoria Gardens as described in 1849 [3]:

“Two sides of the spacious area which presented itself on passing the entrance, to the west and the north were occupied with “boxes”, or “arbours”, where parties could sit, and enjoy their refreshments, or sip their wines, while they listened to the instrumental or vocal music … On the South, was a large room … used as a “Nine-pin-room”. It opened into a spacious and excellent bowling green. To the eastward, and nearly in the centre, of the grounds, stood a building, called ‘The Pantheon’. Over the entrance was an orchestra; and on each side of the entrance-passage were rooms, from the windows of which refreshments were supplied. The passage led to a spacious and lofty saloon, often converted into a ballroom; beyond this was an arena, which was, in the Assize-weeks, used as a Concert-room; at other times it was occasionally used as a circus … and anon a theatre … Beyond the Pantheon, the grounds were tastefully laid out, and several walks for promenading were constructed … The palmy days of these gardens is now fading fast … but there was a time, when they were the resort of our fashionable aristocracy; and the public breakfasts … were amongst the most gay and pleasant assemblages, that it was ever our good fortune to encounter.”

The illustration below gives a sense of these Gardens when they were ‘the resort of our fashionable aristocracy’. [Added 7th March 2019].

Victoria Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens.jpg

Sources

https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/01/15/pleasure-gardens/
Raymond Frostick (2011). The Printed Maps of Norfolk: a Carto-bibliography. Pub: Raymond Frostick.
Trevor Fawcett (1972). The Norwich Pleasure Gardens In, Norfolk Archaeology vol 35, Pt 3, pp382-399.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/21804434@N02/6652825845/in/photostream/
https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW001999

Thanks. The idea for this supplementary post was prompted by Bill Smith’s key insights into Victoria Station and the buildings it had inherited from the Ranelagh/Victoria Gardens. Bill worked out where the Pantheon fitted into the station’s building plan and calculated its size; I am grateful to him for letting me reproduce his ideas. I also thank Grant Young for suggesting the final aerial view and Rosemary Dixon of the Archant Archives for the final print of Victoria Gardens.

Pleasure Gardens

15 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

My Lord's Gardens, Pablo Fanque, Pleasure gardens, Quantrell's Gardens, Ranelagh Gardens Norwich, The Wilderness Norwich, Vauxhall Gardens Norwich

For over 200 years, Norwich’s pleasure gardens provided public recreation, from bowls and leisurely walks in the C17th to Pablo Fanque’s Fair in the C19th.

Pablo Fanque and steed from The Illustrated London News

I ended the previous post with a passing mention of My Lord’s Gardens, a relic of the Dukes of Norfolk. Here it is, on Samuel King’s map of 1776, some 100 years after the gardener and diarist John Evelyn designed it for Henry Howard who – now that the dukedom had been restored by Charles II – was keen to re-establish his family’s presence in Norwich. This was to be the first of several pleasure gardens in Norwich.

Between King Street and the bend in the river opposite the modern-day railway station were My Lord’s Gardens (outlined in red, the name underlined in green) and Spring Gardens (blue). From, A New Plan of the City of Norwich, by Samuel King 1766. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

The Sixth Duke rebuilt his family’s frequently-flooded riverside palace near the present-day Duke St Car Park [see previous post] and, to compensate for its lack of recreational space, Evelyn was to lay out a garden on the other side of the city. Around 1663 the duke paid £600 for a plot on the site once occupied by the Austin Friars. This plot off King Street was to become the first pleasure garden outside London. Throughout the 1700s Norwich was one of a handful of cities, like Bath and Tunbridge Wells, where the rising ‘middling rank’ could enjoy provincial imitations of London’s fashionable pleasure gardens [1].

Dr Edward Browne (son of philosopher Thomas Browne) said My Lord’s Garden contained: “a place for walking and recreations, having made already walkes round and crosse it, forty foot in breadth. If the quadrangle left bee spatious enough hee intends the first of them for a fishpond, the second for a bowling green, the third for a wildernesse, and the forth for Garden.”

In 1681 Thomas Baskerville arrived at the garden by boat and ascended ‘some handsome stairs’ to be served ‘good liquors and fruits’ by the gardener. He saw a fair garden with a good bowling-green and many fine walks. We have no image of the garden in those early days and must glean what we can from later maps. Looking west towards King Street from the Thorpe side, this prospect of 1741 shows the area in the bend of the river occupied by My Lord’s Garden. The major feature is the formal parterre of what appear to be low hedges and shrubs in a ‘Union Jack’ pattern separated by densely-planted trees from the houses behind (King St). However, the map’s key reveals the barely visible ‘9‘ at the centre of the parterre to be Spring Gardens rather than My Lord’s Garden. Could the Bucks have been mistaken for none of the other maps show the smaller competitor occupying so much of the riverside leading up to King Street [1]? S&N Buck 1741Clipped2.jpg

Samuel and Nathaniel Buck’s 1741 prospect of Norwich from the south-east. King Street runs left-right behind the garden. NWHCM:1922.125.4:M

Perhaps the gentlefolk surveying the city from high on the east bank would have been the sort of clientele attracted to My Lord’s Garden in the C18. S&N Buck Folk.jpg

Fifty years later, well after the Dukes of Norfolk had retreated to Arundel in Sussex, the portion of My Lord’s Garden closest to Howard House (red star) appears as a cluster of rectangular gardens with a large lawn. The bowling green was still around in 1770 [1], so might the rest of the now-public garden also adhere to the original plan or had it become kitchen gardens?

My Lord’s Gardens (red) in 1789. Red star marks Howard House now being restored on King Street. Spring Gardens in blue, with the octagonal Pantheon marked with a blue star. Anthony Hochstetter’s map courtesy of Norfolk Record Office.

In 1772 the owner of My Lord’s Garden tried to outflank his newer competitors by building an artificial cascade modelled on the one at London’s Vauxhall, for public gardens now featured performance. There, water cascaded down to turn a watermill; the sound of rushing water was made by ‘mechanics’ turning a wheel to which tin panels were attached, making a noise that was sufficiently realistic to impress Charles Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus [2]. Norwich claimed a better cascade with the addition of swans while the sun and moon were made to move across the sky.

Vauxhall Gardens - from the Microcosm of London vol3.jpg

Vauxhall Gardens, from The Microcosm of London (1808-10). Courtesy [2].

The only remaining vestige of My Lord’s Garden may be the wall on King Street, which George Plunkett [3] suggested to be the original boundary wall of the Austin Friars.

Howard House. Left: http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk 1934; right, 2018. The gateway has been walled in but the same pattern of tumbled-in stone remains in the flint wall to the left.

In 1739, John Moore designed the neighbouring New Spring Gardens as a place where ladies and gentlemen could promenade or take a pleasure boat and enjoy wines and cider, cakes and ale.

Map of Spring Garden(s) by City Surveyor WS Millard, early 1800s. The inlet was the East Creek that defined a boundary. Courtesy Norfolk Record Office

Moore named his garden after London’s New Spring Gardens [1], which were mentioned by Samuel Pepys and later – when renamed Vauxhall – visited by Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair. Following suit, Norwich Spring Gardens were renamed Vauxhall Gardens in the late C18. Initially, Moore’s was a ‘rural garden’ where people could stroll through “a very curious Transparent Arch built in the Gothick taste”, no doubt aping London’s Vauxhall. But in 1768, in response to competitors, Moore’s widow began illuminating the garden and entertaining guests with music and fireworks. Around 1776 the gardens were acquired by performer and scene painter James Bunn, which gives an idea of the increasing theatricality now expected of public pleasure gardens: what had started as a fashionable stroll had now become commodified entertainment. Bunn responded by building an octagonal 1000-seater Pantheon, named after the building on London’s Oxford Street [1].

Bunn’s octagonal Pantheon in New Spring Gardens, from Hochstetter’s map of 1789.

The Oxford Street Pantheon, designed by James Wyatt, was demolished as late as 1937 and is now the site of Marks and Spencer [4].

800px-Pantheon_painting,_probably_by_William_Hodges_with_figures_by_Zoffany_edited.jpg

The Pantheon, Oxford Street, London. Probably by Wm Hodges with added figures by Zoffany. The coffering (recessed panels) in the roof copy those in the Roman Pantheon. Wikimedia Commons

Situated on the hill between Bracondale and King Street, high above present-day Carrow Bridge, The Wilderness became the city’s third public garden – leased to Samuel Bruister in 1748, [1]. His wrestling matches would have attracted a less genteel clientele but in a few years – during Assize Week when circuit judges came to town – The Wilderness had raised its sights, competing with New Spring Gardens with public breakfasts and music. In practical terms a ‘wilderness’ suited the hilly terrain but was also more in tune with ideas of naturalistic landscape expounded by Capability Brown. However, when part of The Wilderness was re-opened as Richmond Hill Gardens ca 1812 it was primarily as a venue for fireworks [5].

The Wilderness Public Gardens were just inside the city walls on the east side of Bracondale, on the hill above King Street. There was a gravelled Long Walk beneath the city walls, up to the Black Tower and the Wilderness Tower. Norwich 1789. ©The Historic Towns Trust

The Walk under the wall on top of Carrow Hill (entrance at top of Carrow Hill). The Black Tower in the distance

Wilderness Tower and Black Tower [2190] 1938-03-21.jpg

Between present-day Sainsbury’s on Queen’s Road and the St Stephens roundabout the fourth pleasure garden was to become the city’s most popular.

Quantrell’s Gardens (later Victoria Gardens) on Hochstetter’s map of 1789. The circle marks present-day St Stephens roundabout, the star marks the old Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.

Widow Smith’s Rural Gardens started ca 1763 as a nursery garden [1] but when she began to illuminate the grounds on Guild Days and to sell cider and nog, she set two men at the gate to keep out disagreeable persons; she also employed William Quantrell as engineer for her firework shows and before long he owned Quantrell’s Gardens. Competition was intense: My Lord’s Garden had installed complex machinery to represent land and sea battles; The Wilderness had a “grand Piece of Machinery … to run 680 Yards upon a Line”; but Quantrell had Signor Pedralio’s “Globe 21 feet in Circumference which will turn round its Axis, and fall into four parts, and will discover Vulcan inside, who will be attended by his Cyclops … Vulcan’s (pyrotechnic) Cave and Forge and the Eruption of Mount Aetna.” When Spring Gardens poached Signor Pedralio, Quantrell’s riposte was to get Signor Antonio Batalus to “Fly across the Garden with Fire from different Parts of the Body [1].” Who wouldn’t pay good money to see that?

After the first manned balloon flight was made in France in 1783, England experienced Balloon Mania. The following year Bunn’s balloon floated quite happily inside his Norwich Pantheon, but when taken outside was quickly lost in a shower of hail.

Patheon_Lunardi's_Balloon.jpg

Vincento Lunardi’s balloon in the London Pantheon. Wikimedia Commons

In 1785, Quantrell won this contest by hosting a balloon ascent by Norwich man James Decker with a 13-year-old girl as passenger. The balloon was damaged in a squall, Miss Weller was left behind but Decker ascended and came down safely near Loddon [1]. In his diary, Parson Woodforde mentions that the balloon passed over him as he stood on Brecondale (sic) Hill.

Courtesy Norfolk County Council, at Picture Norfolk

And it was from Quantrell’s that Major John Money made his famous balloon flight in 1785. In trying to raise funds for the nearby Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, the major took off only to be carried away by an ‘improper current’. He descended into the sea off Yarmouth in which he was immersed for seven hours before rescue [see earlier post 6].

1024px-Major_Mony's_Perilous_Situation_When_he_fell_into_the_Sea_July,_23,_1785,_off_the_Coast_of_Yarmouth_NASM-745A8AFD32D22_001.jpg

Proto-windsurfer Major John Money, off the coast of Yarmouth.

At the end of the C18 Quantrell’s Gardens came into the hands of Samuel Neech who renamed it Ranelagh Gardens, after the pleasure gardens in Chelsea. From Canaletto’s painting of the London resort it is hard to believe that its Norwich counterpart was anything like as ambitious.

the-interior-of-the-rotunda-ranelagh-gardens.jpg!Large.jpg

The interior of the Rotunda, Ranelagh Gardens, London. c1751 Canaletto.

Confusingly, the advertisement below places the Norwich Pantheon in Ranelagh and not at the Vauxhall/Spring Gardens but this was because Neech had bought The Pantheon from the defunct Norwich Vauxhall and erected it on his own site, to add to his Amphitheatre.

Courtesy Norfolk County Council, at Picture Norfolk

Just before Ranelagh Gardens closed it had contained a circus operated by William Darby of Ber Street, known as Pablo Fanque, whose circus was celebrated in The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper album – ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’ [7]. Rather wonderfully, his name is commemorated in the new Pablo Fanque House on All Saints Green, providing student accommodation.

Pablo Fanque House in All Saints Green, opposite John Lewis. Portrait of equestrian and circus owner William Darby aka Pablo Fanque

In 1849, Ranelagh Gardens (Royal Victoria Gardens since 1842) were closed and sold to the Eastern Union Railway Company who built platforms either side of The Pantheon.

Top left, Quantrell’s Gardens 1789; Centre, OS map of Victoria Station 1905; Lower right, Marsh Insurance Ltd C21. The St Stephens roundabout (red circle) with Queen’s Road to the right. Latter two images reproduced by permission of the National Library of Scotland

The Booking Office of Norwich Victoria Station 1913. Could this be The Norwich Pantheon? Courtesy Norfolk County Council, at Picture Norfolk

Other smaller pleasure gardens grew up around Norwich in the C19: some as tea gardens, some attached to public houses; e.g., The Mussel Tea Gardens in Telegraph Lane, Thorpe; The Greyhound Gardens on the east side of Ber Street; The West End Retreat, Heigham; The Gibraltar Gardens, Heigham Street – all providing breathing space from the crowded city, [8]. Prussia Gardens at Harford Bridge was a popular venue where, in 1815, balloons were still in fashion: a Mr Steward took off but only ‘skimmed and skimmed and skimmed and skimmed’, to stop 500 yards away. In WWI some soldiers removed the pub sign bearing the King of Prussia’s head, prompting the patriotic change of name to the King George. It is now the Marsh Harrier.

The Marsh Harrier PH, the site of Bensley’s Rural Gardens at the King of Prussia. Was it Glen Miller who took over the piano one night during WWII? [9].

A clue to the demise of public pleasure gardens in general can be found in the demise of Norwich’s Ranelagh/Victoria Gardens, literally subsumed beneath the railway that led to the rise of seaside resorts and changed the public’s perception of leisure.

Now in its fourth printing, available from Jarrolds Book Department or online (click here) and the City Bookshop, Davey Place, Norwich (or click here).

Sources

Trevor Fawcett (1972). The Norwich Pleasure Gardens. Norfolk Archaeology vol XXXV, part III pp382-399. (The well-researched standard text).
https://www.regencyhistory.net/2015/10/the-cascade-at-vauxhall-gardens.html (An excellent blog post about The Cascade at London’s Vauxhall Gardens by Rachel Knowles).
http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/kin.htm#Kings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_London
Sarah Jane Downing (1988). The English Pleasure Garden 1660-1860. Shire Publications.
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/12/01/entertainment-victorian-style/
http://www.100greatblackbritons.com/bios/Pablo_Fanque.htm
Walter Wicks (1925). Inns and Taverns of Old Norwich, With Notes on Pleasure Gardens. Pub: Page Bros (Norwich).
http://www.norfolkpubs.co.uk/norwich/knorwich/nckge2.htm

Thanks to Jill Napier (née Quantrell) for suggesting this post about her ancestor. I am grateful to Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk for permission to use images.

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Pleasure Gardens

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