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Tag Archives: Norwich industry

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.3xDoors.jpg

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

RIBA15095 Doors.jpg

James Woodford’s bronze doors for the Royal Institute of British Architects at 66 Portland Place London1934 ©RIBApix

… 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.

Woodford image.jpg

James Woodford’s design for the left-hand side pair of doors. ©Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Service

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).

Chapelfield.jpg

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.

wincarnis.jpg

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

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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 industryPic 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.

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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.

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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.

B&P.jpg

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.

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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. Door2A.jpg

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.

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Delecta soda siphon Norwich ©picclick.co.uk

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

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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. Door2B.jpg

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.Door2C.jpg

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.

Barnards loom.jpg

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?

Boulton and Paul wire netting.jpg

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.Flagpost2.jpg

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].

arcades3.jpg

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]Roundel3B.jpg

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 DeathRoundel 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.

IMG_5369.jpg

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

Next month, the other nine roundels

©2019 Reggie Unthank

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

  1. Nikolaus Pevsner and Bill Wilson (1997). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
  2. Richard Cocke (photography by Sarah Cocke) (2103). Public Sculpture of Norfolk and Suffolk. Pub: Liverpool University Press.
  3. http://www.wisearchive.co.uk/story/the-silent-e-in-colemans/
  4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulton_%26_Paul_Ltd
  5. http://letslookagain.com/tag/a-j-caley-of-norwich/
  6. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/tag/barnard-bishop-and-barnards/
  7. Boulton and Paul (1947). The Leaf and the Tree: The Story of Boulton and Paul Ltd 1797-1947. Pub: Boulton and Paul.
  8. https://uccshes.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/medieval-treadwheels-artists-views-of-building-construction.pdf
  9. T.A. Heslop (1994). Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context. Pub: Centre of East Anglian Studies, UEA.
  10. Bryan Ayers (2004). The Urban Landscape. In, Medieval Norwich. Eds Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
  11. http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/stp.htm#Stpet
  12. Penelope Dunn (2004). Trade. In, Medieval Norwich. Eds Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
  13. Ursula Priestley (1990). The Fabric of Stuffs: the Norwich Textile Industry from 1565. Pub: Centre of East Anglian Studies, UEA.
  14. 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
  15. Elizabeth Rutledge (2004). Economic Life. In, Medieval Norwich. Eds Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
  16. http://www.chapelfieldsociety.org.uk/history-of-chapelfield/.

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The Bridges of Norwich 1: The blood red river

15 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

History of the River Wensum, Norwich industry, Norwich Red, Norwich textiles, River walk

The leg-of-mutton shape of ancient Norwich is defined by the city walls and by the River Wensum that runs across the city, providing a natural barrier on its eastern flank. To walk along the river is to retrace the fortunes of the city’s industrial past. I did this in two unequal stages, the first from New Mills to St James’ Mill.

New King 2.jpg

The city walls are in blue, the river Wensum in red. I walked Part 1 from New Mills (blue star) to Whitefriars’ Bridge (green star). Plan of Norwich 1776 by Daniel King. Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Service NWHCM: 1997.550.81:M. 

I started at the head of navigation by turning into New Mills Yard off Westwick Street. The water gauge in the colour photograph shows how the tidal waters have inundated the city over the years.

Gauge Duo1.jpg

Norwich flood levels 1570-1912. Right, Jonthan Plunkett in 1961 standing next to cast and carved flood level gauges (Courtesy www.georgeplunkett.co.uk)

The current building, erected 1897, straddles the river between the tidal waters to the east and the river to the west where the level is maintained by sluice gates.

Pumping station.jpg

The Compression House at New Mills, built by the council in 1897 to pump sewage to Trowse.

During the Industrial Revolution the Norwich textile industry was outpaced by mills in the North of England that had better access to coal and fast-flowing water for running the new steam-powered looms. However,  there was a sufficient head of water at New Mills to drive the compressed air system from 1897 to 1972, pumping sewage down to Trowse [1,2]; it also powered machinery in the Norwich Technical Institute (now Norwich University of the Arts) a few hundred yards downstream.

This pneumatic excursion replaced the original New Mills, built in 1710 for grinding corn and supplying the city with water. In turn, New Mills had replaced an older mill of 1410 [1].

New Mills 1880.jpg

New Mills in 1880 by A. Coldham. Courtesy Norfolk County Council

Continuing clockwise on the north bank of the river the next bridge, decorated with the City of Norwich coat of arms and dated 1804, is St Miles’ or Coslany Bridge [2]. It is the city’s first iron bridge built 25 years after the world’s first major iron bridge at Ironbridge, Shropshire.

IMG_8690 1.jpg

Coslany Bridge designed by James Frost. The cast iron sign to the far right marks the water level in August 1912.

St Miles Bridge in the 1912 flood …

St Miles Bridge.jpg

Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Standing on St Miles’ Bridge connects you with three of the industries that formerly sustained this city (while polluting its river). First, on the north bank, the present-day public housing in Barnard’s Yard is named for the Norfolk Iron Works of Barnard Bishop and Barnards [see 3 for a fuller story]. On the south side is Anchor Quay, now private housing, but once the home of Bullard and Sons’ Brewery that supplied the city’s countless drinkers (‘one pub for every day of the year‘) [see 4].

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The courtyard of the Anchor Quay Brewery in 1912. Courtesy of Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Bullards Sign.jpg

The Bullards sign can be glimpsed on the Westwick Street wall across the river

And third, the rose madder colour of the Anchor Quay development is a reminder of the dyeing industry that grew, hand in glove, with the city’s textile industry. The Maddermarket – where dye from dried madder roots was sold – was just a few hundred yards to the south (see [5] for a fascinating article on making madder dye).

Continuing along the north side of the river we can see across to the site of the old Duke’s Palace Ironworks off Duke Street, which was replaced in 1892 by the Norwich Electric Light Company whose buildings were designed by Edward Boardman and his son Edward Thomas Boardman. At one time, the river would have provided water for the steam engines but after the Thorpe Power Station was opened in 1920s the Duke Street site was used for offices and storage [6].

IMG_8557.jpg

Looking downriver from the St Miles’/Coslany Bridge, past the rose madder houses of Anchor Quay, we see the curved building containing the derelict offices of Eastern Electricity.

Sandwiched between the former brewery and the five-storeyed offices of the Norwich Corporation Electricity Department is a smaller building owned by the electricity board. In 2006, as part of the Eastinternational exhibition, artist Rory Macbeth used this as a canvas on which to paint the entire 40,000 words of Thomas More’s Utopia [7]. Due to be demolished in 2007, the structure still stands. IMG_8693.jpg

In 2006, another exhibition played imaginatively with the derelict riverside buildings. In the windows of the adjacent, curved office building a group of artists placed red film over the windows plus lettering that read: norwich red/water of the wensum/tin mordant/madder. This formulation for colouring fabric, reflected in the water, created the illusion that – once more – dyeing ‘made the river run red’ [8]. The reason for the red river comes a little downstream, for the story follows the course of the river.

2424.jpg

©Presence

This stretch of the river forms the river frontage of what was once the Duke of Norfolk’s palace.

1766 A New Plan Norwich by Samuel King 5.jpg

According to Samuel King’s 1766 map the Duke’s Palace (circled) on the south bank once occupied most of a block between Coslany Bridge (modern day Anchor Quay) and St George’s Bridge Street (St Andrew’s and Blackfriars’ Hall, named here New Hall and Dutch Church). Courtesy of the Norfolk Museums Service NWHCM: 1997.550.81:M.

The Dukes of Norfolk built two palaces on the site, in 1561 and 1672, but proximity to the river caused problems. According to Thomas Baskerville in 1681:

“In this passage where the city encloses both sides of the river, we roved under five or six bridges, and then landed at the Duke of Norfolk’s Palace, a sumptuous new-built house not yet finished within but seated in a dung-hole place, though it has cost the Duke already 30 thousand pounds in building, as the gentleman as shewed it told us, for it hath but little room for gardens, and is pent up on all sides both on this and the other side of the river, with tradesmen’s and dyers’ houses, who foul the water by their constant washing and cleaning their cloth, whereas had it been built adjoining to the afor said garden it had stood in a delicate place.” (Quoted in [9]).

Proximity to the water meant that the cellars were always wet, which affected the foundations [10]. The fate of the palace was sealed when the Mayor of Norwich, Thomas Havers, refused the duke permission to process into the city with his Company of Comedians: in 1711 the duke ordered the palace be pulled down [9, 10]. When the duke vacated his palace there was no road through his estate and across the  Wensum as there is today. The present – but not the first – bridge to bisect the ducal waterfront was built when Duke Street was widened in 1972 to take traffic out of the city onto the inner ring road [2].

Duke St.jpg

Duke’s Palace Bridge 1972. Regrettably, there is no continuous river walk around the city, either because developers have been allowed to build up to the river’s edge or, where there is a walkway, it is generally not possible to walk under the bridge, as here.

This utilitarian bridge of 1972 replaced the first and much more elegant cast-iron bridge of 1822, which would be lost were it not for the Norwich Society who bought and stored the bridge until it could be re-used at the entrance to the Castle Mall car park [11].

IMG_6753.jpg

The old Duke’s Palace Bridge (1822-1972) now at Castle Mall

Near the original site of this bridge we come to the dyeworks run by Michael Stark in the early C19, drawn below by his son James – the Norwich School artist. Stark Senior developed a way of staining the silk warp the exact same shade of red as the wool or worsted weft. This involved madder, a tin mordant and the fortuitously chalky waters of the Wensum, yielding a deep, true scarlet [12]. It seems safe to assume that it was the emptying of Stark’s dye vats that made the river run red.

James Stark.jpg

Michael Stark’s dyeworks adjacent to the Duke’s Palace Bridge. By James Stark 1887 [from 13]

I managed to preview the next bridge by walking along a gangway on a building at the rear of the Duke Street Car Park. St George’s/Blackfriars’ Bridge was built of Portland stone by Sir John Soane (1783-4) before he became Surveyor of the Bank of England [2].

IMG_8697.jpg

Soane’s bridge meets the south bank between the grey-painted Gunton and Havers building (1914) and the red brick Norwich Technical Institute (1899) – both now part of Norwich University of the Arts. 

There is, however, no direct route for the riverside walker who must take a detour left down Duke Street, right along Colegate then right again onto St George’s Street before meeting the bridge. This diversion takes you past Howlett and White’s Norvic shoe factory built by Edward Boardman in 1876 and 1895. Around the end of the C19 it was the largest shoe factory in the country, employing a fraction of the outworkers employed in the textile trade a century before [2]. Norvic.jpg

St George’s Bridge from the south bank …

IMG_8702.jpg

To the left, the former Gunton and Havers builders’ merchant (Havers is a relative of actor Nigel Havers); to the right, the stone portico of the former Norwich Technical Institute (1899). Both are now part of Norwich University of the Arts. Damien Hirst’s flayed and dissected man gives an unconscious nod to Norwich Red.

I continued via the north bank to Fye Bridge, its name perhaps derived from ‘fye‘, to clean the river [10]. The first recorded bridge-proper dates from 1153 but excavations in 1896 indicate this was predated by a wooden walkway that connected the south side to the Anglo-Scandinavian settlement in Norwich-over-the-Water [14]. The present bridge, whose double arches are based on downstream Bishop Bridge, was built in 1933. Just before the bridge is the residential development of Friars Quay, built on Jewson’s Victorian timber yard [15]. This 1970s housing has assimilated well despite Pevsner and Wilson’s deathless judgement, “It falls only just short of being memorable” [2].

IMG_8707.jpg

Fye Bridge from the west with Anchor Quay housing just visible to the left

Crossing Fye Bridge then looking back from Quayside on the south bank this photograph shows the reconstruction of the bridge in 1931. Allen & Page animal feed mill (now houses) can be seen on the left and ‘Jewson’ marks their timber yard beyond the bridge.

1931-08 Reconstruction crane at Quayside [B075] 1931-08-03.jpg

Reconstruction of Fye Bridge 1931. ©georgeplunkett.co.uk

Quayside today …

IMG_8720-1.jpg

Continuing eastward on the south bank: There was a wooden bridge at Whitefriars as far back as 1106 but what was known as St Martin’s Bridge was destroyed by the Earl of Warwick when he tried to deny Kett’s rebels access to the city in 1549. In 1591 this was replaced by a stone bridge that limped on until the City Engineer constructed the present Whitefriars Bridge (1924/5) [14].

WhitefriarsBridge.jpg

Old Whitefriars’ Bridge 1924, before its replacement. Courtesy Norfolk County Council at Picture Norfolk

Adjacent to the bridge is St James Mill, built by the Norwich Yarn Company (1836-9) in an attempt to revive the city’s textile industry. Ian Nairn – the acerbic architectural commentator – thought this ‘the noblest of all English Industrial Revolution Mills’ [2]. Until a few years ago the mill housed Jarrold’s Printing Works; the John Jarrold Printing Museum is in an adjacent building.IMG_8722.jpg

Willett & Nephew had 50 power looms on the third floor of the mill and are believed to have produced the shawl below. Members of the Yarn Company could now produce the famous ‘Norwich Red’ shawls on their power looms but, by the time the Company had begun production in 1839, factories in Yorkshire and Paisley were already mass-producing shawls in large factories, contributing to the market’s slow decline.

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A Norwich Red Shawl courtesy of Joy Evitt

© 2018 Reggie Unthank

Sources 

  1. http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/mid.htm#Newmi
  2. Pevsner, Nikolaus and Wilson, Bill (1962). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
  3. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2017/06/15/barnard-bishop-and-barnards/
  4. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2017/09/15/bullards-brewery/
  5. http://www.naturesrainbow.co.uk/category/madder/
  6. http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?MNF61834-Duke%27s-Palace-Ironworks-and-Norwich-Electric-Lighting-Company&Index=53786&RecordCount=56542&SessionID=071f84aa-3266-4621-85cc-d97a40c30c46
  7. http://www.racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=208
  8. http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?TNF1512-Norwich-Duke-Street-Dyeworks—Presence-(Archaeology-and-Art)
  9. http://hbsmrgateway2.esdm.co.uk/norfolk/DataFiles/Docs/AssocDoc6824.pdf
  10. Meeres, Frank. (2011). The Story of Norwich. Pub: Phillimore & Co.
  11. http://www.broadlandmemories.co.uk/riverwensumbridges.html
  12. http://www.tartansauthority.com/research/sources/willet-nephew-and-co/
  13. http://www.heritage.norfolk.gov.uk/record-details?TNF1521-Norwich-Duke%27s-Palace-Bridge—James-Stark-(Archaeology-and-Art)
  14. http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/riverbridges.htm and for the reconstruction of this bridge see  http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/fyebridgerebuilding.htm
  15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friars_Quay_(Norwich)

Thanks: to Joy Evitt and Jenny Daniels for background on Norwich shawls; to Clare Everitt for permission to use the Picture Norfolk images; to Paris Agar of Norwich Castle Museum for access to the maps; and to the Plunkett archive for their images.

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Barnard Bishop and Barnards

15 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Barnard Bishop and Barnards, Norfolk Iron Works, Norwich industry, Thomas Jeckyll

There is little now to suggest that Norwich had an industrial past but the parish of Coslany, around the River Wensum, was once home to iron works, shoe factories, an electricity generating works and a brewery – all providing employment after the slow decline of the city’s wool-weaving trade.

Barnards lady2.jpg

From the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, Barnard Bishop and Barnards’ Norfolk Iron Works was a major part of the industrial landscape of Norwich-over-the-water.

30129028230002 Barnards factory.jpg

Barnard, Bishop and Barnards’ Norfolk Iron Works. Courtesy Picture Norfolk (www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk)

Barnards red.jpg

Ordnance Survey 1908. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland (maps.nls.uk/index.html)

The son of a farmer, Charles Barnard (1804-1871) started making domestic and agricultural ironwork in Pottergate in 1842 [1]. Having lived on the land, Barnard was aware of the damage that wild animals could wreak on crops and began to experiment on a machine for weaving wire netting. Initially the netting was made on the machine below but later it was produced by a powered loom. Netting was to be remain a core activity well into the C20.

netting.JPG

Barnard’s loom for weaving wire netting at The Museum of Norwich

In 1846 Barnard went into partnership with John Bishop, then in 1859 Barnard’s sons Charles and Godfrey joined the business, becoming Barnard, Bishop and Barnards.

4 Bs.JPG

Barnard Bishop and Barnards’ ‘four Bs’ trade sign – the two smaller bees representing Charles Barnard’s sons. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

This ‘four Bs’ rebus marks the firm’s attachment to puns: their designer Thomas Jeckyll used his own two-butterfly signature from the time of his early collaborations with Barnard and Bishop. Jeckyll, incidentally, was a friend of Frederick Sandys who drew the portrait of Charles Barnard (unable to show): both inserted a rogue ‘y’ into their surname.

I have already written at length about Jeckyll [2-5] but it’s not possible to omit him entirely since it was his designs that brought Barnards national attention, elevating some pieces to high art. Two examples: first, the intricate wrought and cast-iron ‘Norwich’ gates that won the firm ecstatic praise at the 1862 International Exhibition;

Sandm gates.jpg

The Norwich gates, given to the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1863 as a wedding present by the citizens of Norwich and Norfolk. Now at Sandringham House, Norfolk. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

second, Jeckyll’s associations with a group of London artists – notably James Abbott McNeill Whistler – made him a key figure in the Anglo-Japanese Aesthetic Movement. Jeckyll used japonaise designs for Barnards’ fireplaces while his cast iron sunflower (to be seen on the gates of Heigham Park and Chapelfield Gardens) came to symbolise the Aesthetic Movement.

sunflower.jpg

Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

In 1871, Barnards moved their iron works to Calvert Street in the parish of St Michael-at-Coslany.

St Miles bridge.jpg

St Miles Works from the river. Courtesy The Museum of Norwich

The business contained a large foundry at one end while a new building housed the netting mill, for which steam was used to power the looms [1]. The factory was also known as St Michael’s Works; Miles is a diminutive of Michael and both are also applied to one of the city’s most beautiful churches, the elegant St Michael Coslany.

Barnards.jpg

Barnard Bishop and Barnards St Miles Works 1951. The works had several tall chimneys but the one shown here may belong to Bullard’s Anchor Quay Brewery on the other side of the river. ©2017 RIBApix

At the St Miles site the workforce of ca 400 produced an eclectic range of utilitarian objects. The drawing below lists: “a coke barrow, a garden arbour, trellis, wire netting, a garden seat, a chair, a pheasant feeder, a swing water barrow, a hose reel, a fire dog, a grate, a table, a roller & a sheep trough. ‘All made on the spot’“.

Barnards goods.jpg

Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

 

catalogue2.JPG

Still desirable. Garden chairs from Barnard Bishop and Barnards 1884 catalogue for their London showroom. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

Barnards catalogue.JPG

Barnards celebratory brochure  1844-1925. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich

The railways arrived in Norwich in the mid-C19 and Barnards provided much of the metal work for at least two of the city’s three stations. These ornate barriers at Norwich Thorpe station were made by Barnards and were designed by W. Neville Ashbee, the company architect for the Great Eastern Railway.

Norwich station.JPG

The wrought iron platform barriers at Norwich Thorpe station. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich.

The barriers have gone but the cast-iron canopy supports with the elegant spandrels can still be seen along the platforms.

Norwich Thorpe station.JPG

The station forecourt is still enclosed by fine examples of Victorian ironwork.

railings.jpg

Barnards also cast the columns and spandrels  for Norwich City station. This station near the St Crispin’s roundabout was the terminus of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway whose hub was at Melton Constable. It closed to passengers in 1959.

Norwich city station.JPG

 Norwich City station. Courtesy of The Museum of Norwich NWHCM 118.959.51

In 1882, a river bridge was built to provide access to the new City Station. St Crispin’s Bridge, which was manufactured by Barnards, became part of the ring road in 1970 taking traffic in clockwise direction.  A new bridge built parallel to it takes traffic in the opposite direction.

Barnards bridge.JPG

Charles Barnard died in 1871 but the firm lived on as Barnards Limited (from 1907).

Mr and Mrs Charles Barnard.jpg

Mr and Mrs Charles Barnard in later life. Image courtesy of Norfolk Record Office via http://www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk 

The managing director James Bower played a direct part in the running of the company, rebuilding and re-designing the wire netting machines. In 1921 they purchased part of the old Mousehold Aerodrome where, in the Second World War, they manufactured gun shells and parts for the Hurricane fighter. This attracted the attention of the Luftwaffe who bombed the site in July 1942, killing two people [6].

The Norwich engineering firm, Boulton and Paul, made aircraft (including the Overstrand and Sidestrand) but who knew that Barnards helped make planes? Barnards also made buses …

Barnards bus.jpg

Bus made by Barnards Ltd in Cathedral Close.  Image courtesy of Norfolk Record Office via http://www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk

 … and at their factory in Salhouse Road they produced steam traction engines.

steam roller.jpg

Image courtesy of Norfolk Record Office via http://www.picture.norfolk.gov.uk

 Barnards Ltd ceased trading in 1991. The Coslany site is now occupied by social housing – Barnards’ Yard.

Barnards2017.jpg

Barnards’ Ironworks now Barnards’ Yard social housing

Barnards yard sign.jpg

©2017 Reggie Unthank

Sources

  1. Williams, Nick (2013). Norwich, City of Industries (an excellent book on industrial Norwich).
  2. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2015/12/26/two-bs-or-not-tw…s-thomas-jeckyll/
  3. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/04/15/thomas-jeckyll-the-boileau-family/
  4. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/01/06/jeckyll-and-the-sunflower-motif/
  5. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/11/10/jeckyll-and-the-japanese-wave/
  6. http://www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/industrial-innovation/barnards.htm

Thanks to Hannah Henderson of The Museum of Norwich for kindly showing me the Barnards collection, and I also thank David Holgate-Carruthers for his help. Do visit the Museum of Norwich, which has a section devoted to Barnards and Jeckyll and gives a fascinating glimpse into Norwich as it once was. I am grateful to Clare Everitt of Picture Norfolk for allowing me to reproduce photographs. Clare manages (https://norfolk.spydus.co.uk/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/MSGTRN/PICNOR/HOME), which contains a searchable collection of 20,000 images of Norfolk life.

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