Category Archives: Norwich streets

Vanishing Plains

15 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by in Norwich history, Norwich streets

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In two recent posts [1,2] I wrote about Norwich’s ‘plains’, a loan-word from the Dutch for the city’s open spaces that were largely established before the fashion for urban squares. Only five of the 15 Norwich plains identified by Richard Lane in his book, The Plains of Norwich [3] are recognised by a formal street sign, some of the others don’t appear on early maps and some of this final six may not seem to you like defined spaces at all.

St Margaret’s Plain on Westwick Street to the rear of St Margaret’s Church. From OS map 1884.

The 1884 Ordnance Survey map appears to show St Margarets Plain occupying much the same space as it does today, although Richard Lane [3] notes that Westwick Street ‘used to widen slightly at this point until pre-war demolition and German bombs altered the northern side completely.’ The demolished houses to the west of St Margarets churchyard are marked with the red star.

St Margaret’s Plain from Westwick Street, the church top right.

In general outline, a similar open space appears on King’s map of 1766 but I wonder if this northern end of the churchyard was lost to pedestrianisation.

St Margaret’s Plain on King’s Plan of 1766

St Margaret is purported to be the figure carved in the left hand spandrel above the porch.

The crossroads in the main shopping area, dominated by Marks and Spencer, and Debenhams, is St Stephens Plain. St Margarets Plain was treated kindly by history but St Stephens’ Plain has been pulled hither and yon by planners, trams and the Luftwaffe.

St Stephens St lower left; Rampant Horse St top left; Red Lion Street top; and Westlegate right. OS map 1884. Starred, The Rampant Horse Hotel, which gave name to the street.

Here is St Stephens Plain on Braun and Hogenberg’s map of 1581.

Circled, St Stephens Plain; starred, St Stephen’ Gates. St Stephens Street runs between the two. Yellow arrow marks site of The Boar’s Head. From Braun and Hogenberg 1581

When Queen Elizabeth I came to Norwich on one of her royal progresses she entered at St Stephens Gates. Here she was met by the Mayor and a demonstration of Norwich weaving featuring religious refugees from the Low Countries whose immigration had been supported by the queen. The area was badly damaged in the bombing of WWII. Some buildings survived but the opportunity was taken to demolish the entire south side of St Stephens Street – including The Boar’s Head –  in order to widen the road.

Old Boar Inn.jpg
At the corner of St Stephens and Surrey Streets, The Boar’s Head, a C15 thatched inn, was badly damaged by bombs in 1942. Its location is marked on the map above.

Red Lion Street, the road on the north side of St Stephens Plain, had already been widened at the very end of the nineteenth century in order to accommodate the new electric trams, whose city hub was in Orford Place. Built in 1900, the south side of Red Lion Street was comprised of buildings designed by Edward Boardman and Son or by George Skipper.

Red Lion Street, widened in 1899 for the electric trams. The women stand at the corner now occupied by Curls (later Debenhams) department store. Opposite, the child caryatids on Skipper’s Commercial Chambers are arrowed. ©Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk
The child caryatids (probably by Doulton Lambeth) supporting the balcony of George Skipper’s Commercial Chambers. He also designed the adjacent Barclays Bank in 1905

Looking down Westlegate towards St Stephens Plain we come to Marks and Spencer, a department store built for Buntings in 1912 by local architect AF Scott [4]. It was badly damaged in WWII but, probably due to its steel-framed construction, it survived and was rebuilt without its attic storey and corner cupola. Opposite is Debenhams department store and one wonders about the fate of purpose-built department stores now that the occupiers are in receivership.

St Stephens Plain from Westlegate. M&S to the left, Debenhams to the right

To see what the plain looked like at the end of the nineteenth century we rotate ourselves 90 degrees clockwise so that, below, we walk down St Stephens Street with Buntings (now Marks and Spencer) on our left. The red star marks The Peacock pub at 1 St Stephens Plain. The narrow street straight ahead is Red Lion Street before it was widened to take the new electric trams.

Pre-1899. Buntings/M&S is on the left (arrowed). A narrow Red Lion St is straight ahead and Westlegate is right. ©Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

The ‘Debenhams’ site was originally occupied by a collection of buildings that became the Curl brothers’ department store. As the 1884 OS map shows (above), the site once contained The Rampant Horse Inn, which gave name to the street.

Rampant Horse mosaic in the doorway of Debenhams – a reminder of the ancient inn

Curls was badly damaged in the 1942 air raids and was rebuilt from 1953 to 1956. In the 1960s the store was bought by Debenhams but still traded as ‘Curls’ until the 1970s. Below, we look across the building site to the south side of Red Lion Street designed by Boardman and Skipper in the early 1900s.

Rebuilding the corner of Red Lion and Rampant Horse streets. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

Walking westwards, Rampant Horse Street merges into Theatre Street, the site of Theatre Plain. An advertisement placed by Francis Noverre gives the address of his first annual ball as being in the Assembly Rooms on Playhouse Plain. Neither Playhouse Plain nor Theatre Plain seem to refer to the theatre immediately west of the Assembly House.

Theatre Street. The red arrow points to the Assembly House; the yellow arrow to the Theatre Royal

Millard and Manning’s map of 1830 shows Theatre Plain occupying the forecourt of the Assembly House.

Theatre Plain off Chapel Field Lane (now Theatre Street). Millard and Manning (1830).

Somewhat ironically for a city claiming to have plains instead of squares, White’s Directory of 1845 refers to the space as Theatre Square [3]. This may be because we were now in an age when squares – unlike the irregular medieval spaces where streets collided – had been made fashionable by the development of polite Georgian London.

The Assembly House

The Assembly House occupies a site established around 1250 as the College of St Mary-in-the-Fields. After the Dissolution, the church itself was demolished and in 1573 the remaining buildings converted by Sir Thomas Cornwallis into a town house, second only in size to the Duke of Norfolk’s Palace [3]. In 1609 the mansion was bought by the Hobart family who, in 1753, leased the building for public assemblies, for which purpose it was converted the following year by Thomas Ivory, the architect of Georgian Norwich. Rather than demolishing the old house, as once thought, it appears that he used a significant part – its central part and wings – in remodelling the ‘House of Assemblies’ [5].

The Assembly House by James Sillett 1828. ©Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

In contrast to the popular entertainment offered in some of the larger inns around the marketplace, the Assembly House was where the gentry could come for a game of cards, a glass of wine and sometimes dance the minuet in polite surroundings. However, in Assize Week ‘the double doors between ballroom, card-room and tea-room were opened up, and country dances danced along the lengths of all three rooms’ [6]. Some scorned country dances as half an hour of standing still as long lines of paired dancers took their turn to run the gauntlet. But imagine the fun of galumphing the whole 143 feet beneath candle-lit chandeliers.

St Paul’s Plain no longer exists; it could have been restored after being damaged in the Blitz but was marked for destruction by the City Engineer’s 1944 plan for the inner and outer ring roads. The church was founded in the twelfth century as a hospital for poor strangers. It was  also recorded in the sixteenth century being used as a bridewell (prison) before William Appleyard’s house took over that function in what is now Bridewell Alley [7].

St Paul’s church in 1937 ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

The octagonal top of the tower, rebuilt with white bricks around 1819, survived the incendiary bombs in 1942. Had it been been saved it would be the largest of the city’s five round towers (just as St Benedict’s tower stands alone) but it stood in the way of post-war improvement and the site was cleared in preparation for the St Crispin’s Road flyover and the Barrack Street roundabout.

The 1970 flyover (left) and the Barrack Street roundabout superimposed approximately upon the 1884 OS map. St Paul’s at the left edge of the roundabout was demolished, leaving St Paul’s Square. St James’ church (right) survives as the Norwich Puppet Theatre.

The site is now a small public garden and children’s play area. The evidence, though, for calling the space ‘St Paul’s Plain’ is slim. White’s Directory of 1845 describes it as ’the square called St Paul’s plain’ [3] and – surrounded by streets on four sides – it does look on Samuel King’s map of 1766 more like a square, albeit somewhat on the huh. ‘Square’ may work in this instance but is a poor definition of the other variously irregular open spaces we have seen. George Nobbs’ explanation comes closer: ‘In Norwich the term Plain is usually used to describe the area of a meeting of streets’ [8].

The playground in St Paul’s Square

In his short book on Norwich Plains, Richard Lane [3] generally found White’s Directory of 1845 to be a useful source of addresses as supplied by trade subscribers but he found no mention of St Benedict’s Plain. He wrote that one unnamed author mentioned it as the square where Pottergate, Willow Lane, Cow Hill and Ten Bell Lane met; ‘others’ defining it as the widening of Pottergate from Ten Bell Lane westwards. These two spaces are conjoined in the map below.

The general area of St Benedict’s Plain. Only the tower of St Benedict’s church (red star) survived the war. Ten Bell Lane is marked in yellow. The green star marks St Giles’ church standing high on Cow Hill. OS map 1899.

However, the National Archives records that the Norfolk and Norwich Eye Infirmary stood on St Benedict’s Plain from 1823-1854 [9]. And there is an early C20 watercolour entitled ‘St Benedict’s Plain’ by a local painter [10].

‘St Benedict’s Plain Norwich’ by Robert J Gedge, early C20. The artist looks eastwards down Pottergate with Cow Hill to the right ©somersetandwood.com

The Norfolk County Council’s Picture Norfolk site has a photograph labelled ‘St Benedict’s Plain/Pottergate’.

Photographer George Swain labelled this ‘St Benedict’s Plain/Pottergate’, 1937. The timber frame house does not survive and only the tower of St Benedict’s church, seen through the gap, remains. ©Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

This photograph looks down to the plain from the junction of Cow Hill and Willow Lane …

Looking northwards down Cow Hill. Pottergate runs left-right at the bottom of the hill

… while this shows where Pottergate widens to the west of Cow Hill.

Yellow-painted Kinghorn House, named after a local Baptist minister ca 1800.

The legitimacy of St George’s Plain is beyond question for it is enshrined in Pevsner [11]. It is a part of Colegate, on which the Late Medieval and Georgian houses of the rich wool merchants still stand. On the 1886 OS map the plain appears as a widening of the road between a block labelled ‘Boot and Shoe Manufactory’ and the churchyard of St George’s Colegate.

St George’s Plain ringed in red. St George’s Colegate, red star. The green arrow points down St George’s Street, over the river to the present-day Norwich University of the Arts. OS map 1886.

The ‘Boot and Shoe Manufactory’ was Howlett and White’s factory, once the country’s largest producer of footwear under one roof. Viewed from the west end of Colegate, the seven bays up to the tower were built by Edward Boardman in 1876; left of the tower is Boardman’s extension of 1894, making a facade of 200 feet [11]. In 1909 the company introduced the brand name Norvic and in 1935 the business itself was renamed the Norvic Shoe Company Ltd [12]. Norvic, short for Norvicensis, is the address adopted by each Bishop of Norwich but it can be traced back to a time before the Normans raised the cathedral. In the preceding Anglo-Scandinvian period, this defended trading settlement, or wic, on the north bank of the river was sufficiently stable to mint its own coins and to stamp them Norvic. Colegate is part of that north wic.

Howlett & White’s Norvic factory on St George’ Plain, facing St George’s Colegate. Below the factory tower, which separates two phases of expansion, is a carved brick canopy (red arrow)

That carved brick canopy, probably by Guntons of Costessey, contains an upright anchor not to be confused with the tilted anchor of Bullards Brewery across the river. The expansion of the factory absorbed two lanes that had led down to the riverside; the upright anchor commemorates Water Lane, marked on the OS map above.

On the north-east corner of this expanded area of Colegate, adjacent to St George’s churchyard, is a piece of street furniture that we’ve seen before – a public water fountain with a marble basin for people and troughs below for dogs [13].

ColegateFountain.jpg
Fountain sculpted by J Stanley of Norwich, installed in 1860

The red brick wall to the left of the fountain marks the junction between Muspole Street and St George’s Plain. A little way up Muspole Street, on the opposite side, is a pub whose various names relate to the wool that made Norwich wealthy: Crown and Woolpack (1740s); Wool Packet (1760s); Old Woolpack (2016) and The Gatherers (opened 2020). This was once the site of the town house of the Augustinian Priory of Our Lady of Walsingham, conveyed to John the Prior in 1298. The present building is Georgian with a nineteenth century pub front [14].

From the late nineteenth century, the employment provided by factory-based shoe-making took over from the more fragmented weaving industry that had sustained the city for centuries but by the early 1800s our textile trade was being outcompeted by the power mills of the north. Below, the two trades are represented by the pub and its association with wool, and by the saw-tooth roofline of the Norvic-Kiltie shoe factory that overlooks it. Howlett & White had bought the business from local shoe manufacturer SL Witton Ltd. [12], completing their domination of this part of Norwich-over- the-Water.

The Gatherers on Muspole Street with the Norvic-Kiltie factory to the rear. St George’s Plain is to the left.

St George Colegate (c1459) is a fine church with austere Georgian furnishings. It was one of the few things in the city that architectural commentator Ian Nairn could persuade himself to like. John Crome, co-founder of the Norwich School of Artists, is buried here.

IMG_1472.jpg

Postscript After this was published, a reader informed me that the space outside The Forum in the city centre is named Millennium Plain – a latter-day plain to add to University Plain and the three on the old Norfolk and Norwich Hospital site.

©Reggie Unthank 2020

Something for the Christmas stocking? ‘Colonel Unthank and the Golden Triangle’, which describes the development of south Norwich by the Unthank family, has been recently reprinted and can be ordered by mail by clicking these links: Jarrold’s Book Department (bookorders@jarrold.co.uk) and City Bookshop (citybookshopnorwich.co.uk).

Colonel Unthank AD.jpg

Sources

  1. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2020/09/15/the-plains-of-norwich/
  2. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2020/10/15/norwich-city-of-the-plains/
  3. Richard Lane (1999). The Plains of Norwich. The Larks Press, Dereham.
  4. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2020/08/15/twentieth-century-norwich-buildings/
  5. https://colonelunthanksnorwichdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/d9567-ahtbooklet.pdf
  6. Marc Girouard (1990). The English Town. Pub: Yale University Press.
  7. http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/mediaevalcitychurches.htm
  8. George Nobbs (1978). Norwich: City of Centuries. Pub: George Nobbs Publishing, Norwich.
  9. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/hospitalrecords/details.asp?id=472
  10. https://somersetandwood.com/robert-j-gedge-st-benedicts-plain-norwich-early-20th-century-watercolour-jn-601
  11. Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (1997). The Buildings of England: Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
  12. Frances and Michael Holmes (2013). The Story of the Norwich Boot and Shoe Trade. Pub: Norwich Heritage Projects.
  13. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/tag/street-furniture/
  14. http://www.norfolkpubs.co.uk/norwich/wnorwich/ncwpk1.htm

Parson Woodforde goes to market

15 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in Norwich buildings, Norwich history, Norwich maps, Norwich streets

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In 1775, Reverend James Woodforde came to Weston Longville, a small village north of Norwich, and remained as rector until his death in 1803. During this time he kept a diary of his life as a country parson but city-dwellers will find it intriguing for his forays into late eighteenth century Norwich.

“… we both agreed it was the finest City in England by far …”

On first visiting Norwich with a friend (1775)

I am following a fascinating booklet on Woodforde’s walks around Norwich by the Parson Woodforde Society [1]. Much has changed across the two hundred and forty five years between his time and ours: World War II bombing raids; the Industrial Revolution; slum clearance; and fitting a medieval city around the motor car. These things changed the city but what is striking is how much of Woodforde’s Norwich still glimmers through. We start at the Marketplace but there is so much to see that we won’t wander far.

The Market established by the Normans, which supplanted the Anglo-Scandinavian trading place in Tombland, has been the thriving hub of the city for almost a thousand years. Here it is in Cotman’s illustration of 1807, not long after Woodforde’s death.

Norwich Marketplace from the North by John Sell Cotman. Courtesy Abbot Hall Art Gallery

Looking back from the south end, Robert Dighton’s illustration (below) just manages to catch the medieval Guildhall (red arrow), obscured by the tall buildings to the rear of the marketplace. Centre left, the gap between the buildings is Dove Lane but note the absence of a major north exit from the far right corner. To the right of the market is a range of inns and from one of them the London coach is exiting at speed (yellow arrow).

Norwich Market by Robert Dighton 1799.

In acknowledgment of the stables behind the coaching inns, Blomefield’s map of 1741 names the lane to the rear as Backside of the Inns.

Blomefield’s map of Norwich 1741. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

But by 1766 Samuel King had dignified it as Back of the Inns – the name still used today. He also lists the inns along the east side.

Samuel King’s Plan of Norwich 1766

There were inns all around the marketplace but the ones on the east side are given as The Half Moon, The King’s Head, The Bear Inn and The Angel Inn. From The Angel, Parson Woodforde is known to have caught the coach, which he refers to as the ‘London Machine’ or ‘the machine’ [1].

A post chaise

In 1775, Woodforde’s journeyed from London to Norwich, by post chaise and four (horses): ‘109 miles, and the best of roads I have ever travelled.’ Arriving after ten o’clock at night he found the city gates shut (presumably St Stephen’s Gate), reminding us that the medieval defences were still largely intact at that time. In a telling metaphor for the changes inflicted upon a medieval city by the Victorian age, the stretch of city wall to the north of St Stephen’s Gate was to be used as hardcore for the new Prince of Wales Road. Built in the 1860s, this was intended as a grand approach to connect the new Thorpe railway station with the city centre. The advent of steam was to affect other routes to the city’s markets.

Small changes to the Marketplace accrued after Woodforde died. In 1840, when Queen Victoria married, the fifteenth century Angel Inn was patriotically renamed The Royal. In 1899 it would be demolished and replaced with a fashionable arcade designed by George Skipper [2]. Moulded in marble-like Carrara Ware by Doulton’s WJ Neatby, the figure above the Back of the Inns entrance commemorates the original Angel Inn. As the Royal Inn was disappearing (1896-7), Edward Boardman was building a new Royal Hotel on Agricultural Hall Plain, close to various livestock markets around the Castle, and closer to the railway station.

The Royal Arcade, 1899

The fronts of these inns were separated from the Norman Great Market by what appears on King’s Plan of 1766 as ‘Nether Row or Gentleman’s Walk’. ‘Nether’ refers to a lower row of market stalls arranged outside the inns but as early as 1681, Thomas Baskerville had written about ‘a fair walk before the prime inns and houses of the market-place…called gentlemen’s walk or walking place…kept clear for the purposes from the encumbrances of stalls, tradesman and their goods’. Evidently, the walkway outside the inns had become an acceptable place for members of an increasingly polite and enlightened society to promenade, separated from the hurly-burly of the market. An early photograph from 1854 shows The Walk as a paved boulevard set apart from the market by a line of posts [3].

Gentleman’s Walk and Market 1854 ©Norfolk County Council

Newman’s lithograph provides a sense of the fashionable shops along the east side of the marketplace – an early shopping parade.

Shops along Gentleman’s Walk from a print by J Newman 1850. Source: Norfolk Museums Collections NWHCM: 1929.90.5

Woodforde is known to have visited John Toll’s draper’s shop in the Marketplace. He paid seven shillings and sixpence for a pair of cotton stockings for his niece Anna Maria (Nancy) who was his housekeeper and companion [4]. At the shop of Mr Tandy (a ‘Chymist and a Druggist’) he spent three shillings on an ounce of ‘Rhubarb’, presumably tincture of rhubarb, taken for digestive complaints. For thruppence he also purchased Goulard’s Extract, used for inflammation of the skin, although this was later discontinued as it was found to cause lead poisoning.

Although Parson Woodforde drank coffee at The Angel he did not often stay there, preferring to lodge at The King’s Head. It was from here that the Norwich mail coach departed for Yarmouth [1]. And from 1802, two mail coaches left here daily for London, one via Ipswich and one via Newmarket [5].

Coach departing the King’s Head (From Dighton’s painting, see [5]. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service)

Below, Newman’s painting of 1850 shows key changes to the Marketplace as Woodforde would have known it.

Norwich Market, from the south. J Newman 1850. Red arrow = coach exit from the Royal Hotel (formerly the Angel Inn). Yellow arrow = Exchange Street. Note the gas lampposts. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Collections

In Woodforde’s time there was no wide street exiting the square at the north-east corner but, in 1832, Exchange Street was cut through, connecting the market to St Andrew’s Street then over the newly erected Duke’s Palace Bridge and on towards North Norfolk [6]. On the painting above, the purple arrow points to something that would have rocked Parson Woodforde’s world.

Davey Place, for pedestrians. The steps at the end are blocked by a wagon cutting across Back of the Inns. Courtesy Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

In 1812, Alderman Jonathan Davey – Baptist Radical of Eaton Hall –announced in a council meeting that he would put a hole in the king’s head. These apparently seditious words were taken sufficiently seriously for a guard to be placed upon his house but what he actually intended was to put a hole in Gentleman’s Walk. He bought the King’s Head Hotel at auction, demolished it and in place of Woodforde’s preferred coaching inn built a shop-lined thoroughfare that connected those attending the livestock markets around the Castle with the Marketplace [7]. Along with Exchange Street, Davey Place is one of the rare post-medieval streets of Norwich.

The ‘Davey Steps’ connecting Davey Place to Castle Meadow provided a barrier to animals, although the stairway was not insurmountable. In April 1823: “A man who sold sand about the streets of Norwich drove his cart and pair of horses up the flight of ten steps, leading from Davey Place to the Castle ditches. The horses did it with much ease and without receiving any injury, to the astonishment of the spectators” [8].

Running westward from the Guildhall, at the back of the market, was the fish market.

‘Fishmarket with St Peter Mancroft’ by GS Stevenson. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Collections

Here, Woodforde bought soles from Mr Beale, which were sometimes less than fresh [1]. In the days before refrigeration he would take home oysters from the market, although he could also buy them from ‘an old man of Reepham’ [4]. The insanitary Fish Market was replaced in 1860 by a Neoclassical building approximately where the Memorial Gardens are today. This building is at centre of the photograph below. To the right, the building with roof lucams is The Fishmonger’s Arms, a Youngs, Crawshay and Youngs house.

The Fish Market and buildings in St Peter Street, looking down to the Guildhall from the railings of St Peter Mancroft’s churchyard, ca 1890. Courtesy Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

All the old buildings at the back of the market were cleared as part of the construction of City Hall and the Memorial Gardens (1938).

The back of the Marketplace in 1938, looking from Gentleman’s Walk. The City Hall and the Memorial Gardens have just been constructed and buildings at the back of the market demolished. The white stone structure at centre is Lutyens’ war memorial, moved from the Guildhall. © georgeplunkett.co.uk

In 1914 the Fish Market was transferred out of the Victorian building and re-sited to Mountergate.

Marking a plaque commemorating the Fish Market. On the Rose Lane car park

As the Back of the Inns followed the curve of Castle Meadow it flowed into medieval London Lane. This route was narrow and far from ideal. The opening of Norwich (later, Norwich Thorpe) railway station in 1844 created demand for better access to and from the market and London Street was widened accordingly[6]. Most of the medieval buildings familiar to Woodforde were demolished. He would, though, have known this grand doorway from the house of John Bassingham, a goldsmith from Henry VIII’s time, now inserted into the Magistrate’s Entrance of the Guildhall [10].

BasshmGate.jpg

The premises of Edward Freeman were in Back of the Inns. We previously encountered this family of cabinet makers when looking at a framed medallion of Amelia Opie [11]. Freemans made high quality picture frames and furniture for country houses like Felbrigg and Blickling Halls but Woodforde’s requirements were more humble: he paid a guinea deposit for two mahogany chests of drawers and half a dozen ash kitchen chairs.

IMG_2012.jpg

Cockey Lane was at the Guildhall end of London Street, just around the corner from Back of the Inns, and this is where Woodforde visited his upholsterer, James Sudbury. In 1793, two of Sudbury’s workmen – Abraham Seely and Isaac Warren – are claimed to have carried a ‘large New Mohogany Cellarett’ and a sideboard ‘on the Men’s shoulders all the way’; that is, nine miles to Weston Longville [12]. For this Herculean feat Woodforde fed and watered the men and gave them a shilling tip but I can’t help wondering if Sudbury’s cart was hidden down the lane.

A George III mahogany cellarett used for storing and/or chilling wine. Photo: © antiques.co.uk

Kerrison’s Norwich Bank in the Back of the Inns was where Woodforde brought tithe money collected on behalf of his friend Henry Bathurst (later, Bishop of Norwich) who was then non-resident parson of a neighbouring parish [4]. Woodforde would exchange bills and cash for a banknote that he sent by post to his friend in Oxford. On one occasion he celebrated his good deed by dining at the King’s Head on a mutton chop and a bottle of wine. Five years after Woodforde’s death, Sir Roger Kerrison was to die in an apoplectic fit after which his bank failed, unable to pay the Government the money he had collected as Receiver-General [13].

Kerrison & Kerrison bank note of 1807. Photo: ©Spink

In 1793, Parson Woodforde banked £2-12s-0d, collected at Weston Longville for emigré French clergy. These refugees from the French Revolution joined a line of French Protestants who had been finding sanctuary here since the sixteenth century [14]. Just south of the Marketplace, in the smaller Haymarket (and Cheese Market), Woodforde had his watchspring repaired by master watch-maker Peter Amyot, a descendant of French Huguenots [1]. In his diary, Woodforde also mentions other descendants of immigrants: like James Rump, grocer and tallow chandler (whose name had been anglicised from Rumpf [14]); Elisha de Hague, attorney; and the influential Martineau family, underlining the contribution that newcomers made to this city’s commerce.

Watch movement c1770 by Peter Amyot of The Haymarket, Norwich. ©catawiki

©Reggie Unthank 2020

Sources

  1. ‘Walks Around James Woodforde’s Norwich’ (2008). Published by The Parson Woodforde Society https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk/. The booklet is still available from  editor@parsonwoodforde.org.
  2. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/03/12/the-art-nouveau-roots-of-skippers-royal-arcade/
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_Market
  4. https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.227134/2015.227134.The-Diary_djvu.txt
  5. http://www.norwich-pubs-breweries.co.uk/norwich_pubs_past/norwich_pubs_past.shtm#
  6. Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (1997). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
  7. https://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/views/derek-james/street-has-its-place-in-city-history-1-1520880
  8. In, Norfolk Annals, edited by Charles Mackie. Available online https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34439/34439-h/34439-h.htm
  9. Michael Loveday (2011). The Norwich Knowledge. Pub: Michael Loveday ISBN 978-0-9570883-0-6
  10. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2018/01/15/the-norwich-coat-of-arms/
  11. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2020/01/15/behind-mrs-opies-medallion/
  12. https://bifmo.history.ac.uk/entry/sudbury-james-sen-1743b-1814d
  13. Roger Ryan (2004) Banking and Insurance. In, ‘Norwich since 1550’. Eds Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
  14. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/08/15/going-dutch-the-norwich-strangers/

Thanks to Alan Theobald for introducing me to the booklet, ‘Walks Around James Woodforde’s Norwich’. Copies are available from editor@parsonwoodforde.org. I am grateful to Martin Brayne of the Parson Woodforde Society for his assistance. To learn more about Parson Woodforde and the society in which he lived, visit  https://www.parsonwoodforde.org.uk. I am grateful to Clare Everitt for permission to use images from the wonderful archive of local photographs: Picture Norfolk. Thanks, also, to Jonathan Plunkett for allowing access to his father’s photographs of Norwich and Norfolk: www.georgeplunkett.co.uk

Street Names #2

15 Friday Nov 2019

Posted by in Norwich buildings, Norwich history, Norwich streets

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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].

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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].

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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].

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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].

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

Binyon Gardens NR8

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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].

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‘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].

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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.

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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 several 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.

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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 landowners 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 Dunton Hall in Tydd St Mary, Lincolnshire and his wife Jane Southwell did not last and they separated in 1764. In 1790 Jane re-took the name of Southwell when she inherited from her brother Edward. Jane’s 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.Mausoleum.jpg

The Trafford Mausoleum, designed by Anthony Savin

The family lived in Wroxham Hall. 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 Hall was demolished in the 1960s. 

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Wroxham House (not Hall) 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.

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‘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 and Cecil Road. As for the origin of Lady Mary Road, Mary was a common name in Catholic families like the Traffords, except there was no Lady Mary. Local historian Andrea Smith suggested to me that Lady Mary Road might have been named after the daughter of builder/developer, Albert Frost. Consistent with this, Frost did name streets off Trafford Road after his children (Brian, Patricia, Christopher, Josephine) . 

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.

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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.

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Edith Willis of Southwell Lodge. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council

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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.

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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.

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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].

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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.

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

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

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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].

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The interior of Hathor, decorated in an Egyptian style designed by ET Boardman. ©2018 http://www.broadsnet.co.uk. Courtesy of Peter Cox.

© 2019 Reggie Unthank

Sources

  1. 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).
  2. Richard Harries, Paul Cattermole and Peter Mackintosh (1991). A History of Norwich School. Pub: Friends of Norwich School.
  3. HW Saunders (1932). A History of the Norwich Grammar School. Pub: Jarrold & Sons Ltd., Norwich.
  4. Edward Thomas (1912). George Borrow: the Man and his Books. From: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18588/18588-h/18588-h.htm
  5. https://www.georgeborrowtrust.org.uk/Georgeborrow.php
  6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Binyon
  7. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/09/15/the-norwich-school-of-painters/
  8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Helena_of_Waldeck_and_Pyrmont
  9. Norfolk Record Office  NROCAT N/EN 12/1/6223
  10. The Trafford Family in, EA Handbook (1808). Norfolk Millennium Library CTRA 048.
  11. 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
  12. https://ww1norfolk.co.uk/wwi-women-of-norfolk/test-page/suffragettes-suffragists/
  13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stuart_(scientist)
  14. James Stuart Reminiscences (1911). Privately printed by the Chiswick Press, London.
  15. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2018/10/15/the-norwich-way-of-death/
  16. Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (2002). The Buildings of England. Norfolk I: Norwich and the North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
  17. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2019/08/15/going-dutch-the-norwich-strangers/
  18. 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. Andrea Smith, local historian, provided useful background to the street names on the Trafford estate.