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~ History, Decorative Arts, Buildings

COLONEL UNTHANK'S NORWICH

Tag Archives: Public art

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 Vikingsvikings.jpg

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.

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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. 

Coins2.jpg

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.IMG_0357.jpg

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

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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].

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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. IMG_0270.jpg

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

IMG_0272.jpg

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.

Caley's TM2.jpg

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 Lined latest.001.jpeg

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?

Round thing.jpg

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.

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

 

Roundel 5B: Livestock marketsAnimals.jpg

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.

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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.

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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.

Shoemaking.jpg

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].

Norvic.jpg

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.jpeg

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].

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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.

Im1949BIF-Hinde.jpg

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 19th roundel 

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?

Odol1.jpg

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?)

Norwich2035 copy.jpg

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

©2019 Reggie Unthank

Sources

  1. Brian Ayers (2004). The Urban Landscape. In, Medieval Norwich (Eds Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson. Pub: Hambledon and London.
  2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Coke,_1st_Earl_of_Leicester_(seventh_creation)
  3. http://racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=6
  4. Francis Blomefield (1806).  ‘The City of Norwich’ Ch 25, online at: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/vol3/pp220-265
  5. Norfolk Record Office BR266/93.
  6. Nick Williams (2013). Norwich: City of Industries. Pub: Norwich Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust.
  7. Barry Pardue (2005). Norwich Streets. Pub: Tempus.
  8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cracker
  9. http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/markets.htm
  10. Frances and Michael Holmes (2013). The Story of the Norwich Boot and Shoe Trade. Pub: Norwich Heritage Projects.
  11. 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
  12. Communication from Cathy Terry, Senior Curator at Strangers’ Hall Museum, Norwich.
  13. https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Francis_Hinde_and_Sons
  14. https://www.atlas-repropaperwork.com/odol-toothpaste/#comment-22921
  15. Walter T Watling (1935). ‘Norwich AD 2035: A Prophetic Fantasy’. In, The Norwich Annual 1935.
  16. 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].

 

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Clocks

15 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

clocks, Public art

Imagine a time before clocks, when the working day was divided according to the passage of the sun: the sun comes up, the sun goes down and somewhere in the middle is a ploughman’s lunch.

sun.jpg

The Creation of Light. C15 roof boss Norwich Cathedral

The Babylonians marked the passage of the sun by following the shadow of a stick known as the gnomon – ‘one who knows’. On Norwich’s ‘parish church’, St Peter Mancroft, there is no clock tower but there is, on the south transept, a sundial whose gnomon is in the shape of crossed keys: Saint Peter’s keys to the kingdom of heaven.

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On St Andrew’s Church the X-shaped cross – the psaltire on which the saint was crucified – provides the gnomon.

StAndrewsDuo.jpg

St Andrew’s was re-built in Perpendicular style 1499-1518 on the site of a previous church, making it one of the last (late) medieval churches in Norwich. This large hall church, squeezed between two alleyways, is second only in size to St Peter Mancroft.

St Andrews possesses a clock as well as a sundial. The first mechanical clocks, driven by a weight whose fall was regulated by an escapement movement, appeared in the 1200s. The world’s oldest working clock (1386) in Salisbury Cathedral has no face since it was designed solely for striking the hour, as once required for the monastic Liturgy of the Hours – the daily routine of communal prayer at seven set hours of the day [1]. The striking of a bell to mark the hours was therefore originally religious: either private (in churches and monasteries) or public (the call to worship).

Once, Norwich Cathedral had an astronomical clock (1321-5), built by Roger de Stoke [2], that preceded Salisbury’s but was probably destroyed in the C16. The heavy weight in such clocks could also drive accompanying automata of which Norwich had 59, “including a procession of choir monks and figures representing the days of the month, lunar and solar models, and an astronomical dial” [3]. Imagine.

jacks.jpg

The Jacobean clock-jacks, or Jacks o’ the clock, were made to ring bells c1620; the clock above them is Victorian. South transept  Norwich Cathedral [2].

Probably the most famous clock-jack in East Anglia is in St Edmund’s Southwold, which provided the logo for Adnams Brewery.

AdnamsDuo.jpg

Left: St Edmund’s Southwold; right, © Adnams Brewery

As we recently saw in the Paston Treasure, displayed in the Castle Museum [4], the steady ticking of a clock offers an easy metaphor for the span of human life. In this vanity painting the hourglass, the guttering candle and the clock, all remind us of the fleeting nature of time and the worthlessness of human goods: “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity”.

The Paston Treasure (1660s). Courtesy of Norfolk Museums Collection NWHCM: 1947.170

In measuring the passing of time, clocks confront us with our own mortality. From their town hall clock, the city fathers of Manchester exhorted their citizens with: ‘Teach us to number our days’. Similar mottos include: ‘Time and tide wait for no man‘ or ‘Tempus fugit’. [Pathetically, I can no longer read tempus fugit without thinking of, ‘Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana‘, which Wikipedia [5] offers as an example of antanaclasis (me neither)].

Voysey clock.jpg

‘Tempus fugit’, designed by CFA Voysey (1903) ©Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Norwich does possess the ‘Forget me not‘ clock on the tower of St Michael-at-Plea. The previous ‘useless’ mechanism was replaced in 1889 by William Redgrave Bullen who, according to the Norwich Mercury, had the dial plate repainted ‘a deep chocolate’ [2].

StMatPleaDuo.jpg

The date of 1827 suggests that an earlier dial was retained. There was once a sundial on the porch but this was replaced in 1887 by the statue above the door [6].

Bullen is an alternative spelling of Boleyn and clock-restorer WR Bullen is said to be a descendant of Queen Anne Boleyn [7] who was born at Blickling. In the C17, Sir Henry Hobart built Blickling Hall on the ruins of the Boleyn’s manor house; the heraldic bulls on the Hobart crest [8] seem to be a punning allusion to the previous occupants.

Blickling.jpg

Bulls and the Hobart crest above the doorway to the Jacobean Blickling Hall. Courtesy of racns.co.uk 

WR Bullen’s business in London Street recently celebrated its 130th anniversary.

BullensDuo.jpg

Other jewellers are available …

ClockTrio.jpg

Aleks, London Street; Dipples, Swan Lane; H Samuel, The Walk

Clocks also remind us of the mortality of others, as in this tribute to the employees of Laurence, Scott & Co who died in the First World War.

Laurence Scott.jpg

Laurence, Scott & Co, founded in 1883, provided Norwich with its first electric lighting then grew their business by producing variations of the electric motor. The factory can be found in the hinterland behind the Canaries’ football stadium at Carrow Road. This clock, plus a plaque listing the fallen, commemorates those who died in WW1.

The clock on the tower of St Clement’s Colegate was restored in 2004 in memory of those who died in the Second World War.

St ClemDuo.jpg

St Clement’s Church at the junction of Colegate and Fye Bridge Street

As a military building, Britannia Barracks on Mousehold Heath is unusual in that it was built in the Queen Anne Revival style of the Arts and Crafts Movement, or as Pevsner and Wilson have it, ‘the Norman Shaw style’ [6]. It was built in 1886-7; the army moved out in 1959 to be replaced by prisoners in the 1970s. There are clock faces on all sides of the clock tower although the dials facing into the prison probably carry the extra layer of meaning of time as punishment: ‘serving time’ or ‘doing time’.

GaolClockDuo.jpg

When time was estimated by sundial, different towns often kept different times, each based on local noon. As the Earth rotates relative to the sun, a town one degree longitude west of another will experience solar noon four minutes later [9]. The prime meridian of 0 degrees longitude is at Greenwich, UK (although the stainless steel strip marking 0° has been shown by GPS to be 102 metres east of this). On the day this post was published, solar noon in Norwich was at 12.03:34 Greenwich Mean Time while on the other side of the UK, in Aberystwyth, it was 12.25:05. When travelling across the country,  stage coaches had to allow a generous leeway to accommodate different local mean times [9,10]. With the coming of trains and the complexity of making timetables something had to be done to standardise time so in 1847 the Railway Clearing House recommended that every rail company adopt Greenwich Mean Time as the standard ‘railway time’.

Norwich station.jpg

Of the city’s three stations Norwich Thorpe is the only one remaining. It was opened by the Yarmouth and Norwich Railway in 1844 [11]

Until pocket watches stopped being luxury items – probably around the early C19 – the public depended on the church clock to tell time. From Guildhall Hill, at the top of the marketplace, you only had to look down St Giles Street to read the time from the ten-foot-diameter dial of St Giles Church whose single clock face was directed straight down the street. To increase visibility the hour-hand was supplemented in 1865-6 by a six and a half foot/two-metre-long minute hand [2].

StGiles.jpg

But in the C19 – in what has been called the democratisation of time – clocks started to appear more frequently on secular buildings [10]. Just before the restoration of St Giles, Norwich Guildhall received a clock and clock turret, presented in 1850 by the mayor, Henry Woodcock [2].

NorwichGuildhall.jpg

The Victorian clock turret was added to the east end of the Guildhall by the mayor on the understanding that the ceiling of the council chamber would be taken down to expose the original ornate ceiling [2]. 

The clock on the tall tower of City Hall has superseded the Guildhall clock, presently stuck at noon.

NorwichCityHall3.jpg

Who could fail to feel a glow of civic pride on reading that, ‘The City Hall … must go down in history as the foremost English public building of between the wars‘ [6]? Norwich had missed the campaign of Victorian civic building seen in our northern cities and this allowed its City Hall (1938) to be built in a fresh, modern style. Architects, James & Pierce, therefore used a pared-down Scandinavian style with an interior that showed the influence of Art Deco. Consistent with this, the mace-like hour hand on the clock tower (top left) is surrounded by symbols instead of the Roman numerals that usually marked the hours on public clocks. The pattern is repeated in the Council Chamber (top right) and the Mancroft Room (bottom left). However, editorial control was not exerted over the clock above the lift (bottom right), which seems out of place in this Art Deco palace.

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The City Hall and St Giles Church clocks feature in the mural on the side of the Virgin Money Lounge on Castle Street.

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Mural by Derek Jackson for Norwich Business Improvement District (BID)

Throughout the C19, commercial enterprises like banks and insurance companies increasingly displayed public clocks. While advertising their sense of public duty (and their name) it also allowed them to borrow prestige and respectability from the church and civic authorities who had previously been the guardians of time.

NorwichUnionClock.jpg

Advertising Norwich Union outside Bignold House No 9 Surrey Street, once the home of Norwich Union Fire Office

Opposite this clock at No 8 Surrey Street is the Norwich Union (now Aviva) building designed by George Skipper in 1904-5, looking as solid and durable as any bank. Inside, is the famous Marble Hall made from stone surplus to requirements at London’s Westminster Cathedral [6].

MarbleHall.jpg

Norwich Union’s Marble Hall

A century later, large public buildings maintain the tradition of displaying clocks to the public.

Intu Norwich.jpg

intu Chapelfield shopping mall, opened 2005

The earlier Castle Mall (1993) has a clock tower, shown here on the right.

CastleMallNorwich.jpg

The clock on the left, in the Back of the Inns, is a relic from an ironmongery business that disappeared from the city some time ago. The company’s internet-unfriendly name appears on the other side.

KnobsNKnockersNorwich.jpg

One-time sellers of door furniture

©2018 Reggie Unthank

Thanks to those of you who bought the book. I’m delighted to say it is in its third print run since Christmas.

Colonel Unthank AD.jpg

Also available from Waterstones

Bonus track

About an hour after posting this article, reader Jeremy Whigham mentioned the clock on West Acre All Saints, Norfolk, that had the letters of ‘Watch and Pray’ instead of numerals. Too good to miss.

west acre church clock.JPG

From, http://bystargooseandhanglands.blogspot.co.uk/

Sources

  1. https://www.salisburycathedral.org.uk/visit-what-see/medieval-clock
  2. Houseago, J. and Houseago, A. (1996). Clockmaking in Norfolk. Part I: Up to 1900. In, Norfolk and Norwich Clocks and Clockmakers, Eds C. and Y. Bird. Pub: Phillimore. 
  3. Pruitt, E.R. (2016). Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art. Pub: Phillimore. University of Pennsylvania Press.
  4. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2017/12/15/the-pastons-in-norwich/
  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_flies_like_an_arrow;_fruit_flies_like_a_banana
  6. Pevsner, N. and Wilson, W. (2002). The Buildings of England. Norfolk 1. Pub: Yale University Press.
  7. https://www.bullensjewellers.co.uk/about
  8. http://racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=27
  9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_meridian_(Greenwich)
  10. Peters, Rosemary A. (2013). Stealing Things: Theft and the Author in Nineteenth-Century France. Pub: Lexington Books
  11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_railway_station

Thanks. I am grateful to Sarah Cocke of www.racns.co.uk/ for supplying the Blickling image.

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Faces

13 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

George Skipper, norwich cathedral, Norwich City Hall, Public art, roof bosses, Stained Glass

The face is the most important part of one’s identity. It conveys a visible expression of  personality and can used in art to evoke a range of emotions. But at a time when faces were not universally recognised other symbols could be used to underline identity.

“The face is a picture of the mind with the eyes as its interpreter.” (Cicero)

I was reminded of this by the painted rood screen from St Mary’s North Elmham. Despite having their faces scratched in the reign (probably) of Edward VI the rather mournful saints, Barbara, Cecilia and Dorothy (Babs, Cissy and Dot) can still be recognised to be portraits of the same woman. But likeness to long-departed saints is hardly the point here; instead, beauteous Barbara is identified by the tower in which she was hidden from the world, Cecilia’s virginity is signified by her wreath of lilies, and Dorothy (patron of gardeners, amongst others) holds a bunch of flowers. The face is incidental to the virtue signified.

NthElmham2.jpg

Rood screen, St Mary’s North Elmham, Norfolk (ca 1474) saved from destruction by being used as floorboards. SS Barbara, Cecilia and Dorothy

In the late medieval period Norwich was a major centre for glass painting and the often stereotypical faces of saints and angel can be recognised throughout East Anglia [2, 3]. The same faces appear in various guises suggesting they were drawn from the same cartoon. For example, the angel from the Toppes-sponsored windows in St Peter Mancroft can be overlaid pretty faithfully upon the saint from the ‘Toppes’ window in Norwich Guildhall. Both were painted ca 1450 by the workshop of John Wighton, in which his wife and son also worked [4].

Angel TrioFinal.jpg

Left, St Peter Mancroft; right, Guildhall; centre, overlay

A wonderful sequence of images from the late C15 is to be found in the chantry chapel of St Helen’s in the Great Hospital, Norwich. These roof bosses may have escaped desecration because Henry VIII’s zealously Protestant and iconoclastic son, Edward VI, handed over control of the chapel to the mayor, sheriff and citizens of Norwich [1].

StHelenRoof.jpg

Two faces are reputed to be of Queen Anne of Bohemia and her husband King Richard II, but the evidence is slender. The woman does wear a hard-to-see crown: the man does not, but then he was usurped [1].

GTHospitalDuo.jpg

Reputedly, Queen Anne of Bohemia and King Richard II

Queen Anne and her husband visited Norwich in 1383 but by the time Bishop Goldwell (rebus, a golden well) …

Goldwell.jpg

… had this vaulted ceiling built (ca 1472-1499) the couple had been dead a century. In the glorious Wilton Diptych, Richard II kneels clean-shaven before the Virgin. So if the boss of the hirsute man is meant to represent Richard then it may not be a likeness but a representation of deposed majesty, wearing a headband instead of a crown.

Wilton_diptych3.jpg

The Wilton Diptych 1395-9. National Gallery

Norwich Cathedral has over 1000 bosses carved into the keystones of its roof vaults – more than any other religious building in the world. In the cloisters are several of the Green Man – a pagan figure representing, perhaps, the rebirth of nature. However … just as the term ‘ploughman’s lunch’ seems to have been a fiction concocted by The Cheese Bureau (surely a Philadelphia soul group?) as recently as the 1950s, so – it is claimed – the term  ‘Green Man’ as applied to church roof bosses can only be traced back to an article by Lady Raglan in 1939 [quoted in 5]. Can this be right? Anyway, the faces can be classified as: a ‘leaf mask’ made from a single leaf; a ‘foliate face’ made from several leaves; ‘disgorgers’, with leaves or vines exiting mouth, ears, nose; this one seems to be a ‘peeper’ or ‘watcher’.

GreenMan1.jpg

A face peeps out behind the leaves in the cloisters of Norwich Cathedral (1316-19)

Roof bosses also decorate the vaulting inside St Ethelbert’s Gate to the Cathedral. The present gate was built ca 1316 (restored in 1815 and 1964), incorporating the remains of the Norman gate burnt in the riots of 1272 [6]. The conflict centred on a jousting target (quintain) in Tombland at which two priory men were detained. The prior replied by bringing in armed men from Yarmouth who went on the rampage; the citizens, in turn, attacked the priory, set fire to St Ethelbert’s Gate and parts of the cathedral itself were set ablaze. Thirteen of the prior’s men were killed but King Henry III, who came from Bury St Edmunds to restore order, put 35 citizens to death: by dragging some behind a cart; by hanging, drawing and quartering others; and by burning alive a woman who set fire to the gate. To compensate the priory the citizens were required to fund the rebuilding of the gate. The naturalistic head on the boss looks down with distaste.

mason.jpg

The Despenser Retable survived the Reformation by being inverted as a table top. Now, this altarpiece can be seen in St Luke’s Chapel in Norwich Cathedral. One intriguing hypothesis is that this late medieval treasure was commissioned by Henry le Despenser, the ‘Fighting Bishop’ (1370-1406), to mark the suppression of the Peasant’s Revolt by Richard II and perhaps his own part in the East Anglian skirmishes [7]. Incidentally, the rich red colour in the painting was known as ‘Norwich Red’ and was later used in the city’s famous C18 shawls [7].

retable.jpg

The Despenser Retable, Norwich Cathedral

The first panel depicts the Scourging of Jesus. Pilate’s representative handles Jesus’ hair while the face of the man holding the scourge is “contorted with the effort” [7] of delivering the punishment (out of shot, both his feet spring off the ground).

scourging.jpg

On Agricultural Hall Plain, between the Hall (‘Anglia TV’) and Shirehall, is George Wade’s memorial. Unveiled in 1904, ‘Peace’ records the 300 Norfolk men who served in the Boer War. The mood, subdued rather than victorious, is conveyed by the angel’s neutral expression as she sheathes her sword [8].

Peace1.jpg

‘Peace’, George Wade’s Boer War memorial on Agricultural Hall Plain (1904)

In St Martin-at-Palace Plain, next to the Wig and Pen pub, is Cotman House. One of the city’s favourite sons, the painter John Sell Cotman, lived here from 1823 to 1834. If he had been born in London rather than the provinces an artist of Cotman’s stature would surely have been commemorated in Westminster Abbey.

cotman.jpg

JS Cotman by Hubert Miller 1914 [8]

cotman house.jpg

Cotman House, where John Sell Cotman opened his ‘School for Drawing and Painting in Water-colours’ [9]

 

Magdalen Street and nearby Colegate have a good number of late medieval and Georgian doorways [see 10, 11]. Pevsner and Wilson judged No. 44 to be the climax of Magdalen Street, with “one of the most ornate Georgian façades in Norwich.” [12]. George Plunkett wondered if the doorway might have been constructed to designs by Thomas Ivory, architect of The Assembly Rooms and the Octagon Chapel [13]. The keystone on the arch is decorated with a classically-influenced head.

44MagdalenSt1.jpg

The closed eyes of the head suggest a death mask: the ostrich feathers in the figure’s hair  signify a woman of fashion [14].

head2.jpg

At the beginning of the C20, Norwich architect George Skipper played with a variety of influences, including Art Nouveau [15], but for the city’s banks and insurance companies he used a Neo-Classical Palladian style, adding seriousness with borrowed classical motifs. Above the door of the London and Provincial Bank in London Street (now The Ivy) is a female head [8]. The mild erosion makes it difficult to confirm whether she wears a garland, synonymous with Flora the Roman goddess of flowers and Spring. However, the swags of fruit at the putti’s feet convey the required air of prosperity.

Gap3.jpg

The same year (1906), Skipper commissioned similar stone sculpture for the Norwich and London Accident Assurance in St Giles Street (currently St Giles Hotel). Once more, a sense of prosperity is conveyed by the swags of fruit and flowers.

StGilesHotel1.jpg

Although the androgynous head bears a laurel wreath, rather than flowers, the festoons of fruit and flowers again are indicative of Flora.StGiles2.jpgFor the later (1928-30) Lloyds Bank on Gentleman’s Walk by HM Cautley, a similar head was used, decorated with a mini-swag of finely carved flowers. Richard Cocke suggests this is a direct tribute to Skipper’s London and Provincial Bank around the corner [8].

 

LloydsBank2.jpg

Nearby, on Red Lion Street is another Skipper building, Commercial Chambers built in 1903 [15]. The facade is almost riotously decorated in buff terracotta (probably Doulton). The first floor cornice is supported by two boys and a girl, almost certainly sculpted from life, making a change from the usual putti.

Fig Trio.jpg

Crowning the building is a cowled figure making entries into a ledger with a quill. This might reasonably be thought to represent the owner, the accountant Charles Larking; but as we saw previously it is clearly modelled on the architect himself [15].

SkipperDuo.jpg

At about the time that Skipper was designing these buildings, his pupil J. Owen Bond – who was responsible for some of the few Modernist buildings in the city – designed the Burlington Buildings in Orford Place (1904). Instead of female heads, the building was decorated with three pairs of full-length, reclining women: one of each pair reading a book, the other holding a cornucopia.

BurlingtonBldgs1.jpg

‘Burlington Buildings’ was built for offices rather than for a bank or insurance company. Unfortunately, this fine Renaissance-style building is hard to appreciate, being rather hemmed in at the back of Debenhams.

The Horn of Plenty is not especially associated with Flora and could just as well refer to Concordia (goddess of Peace and Harmony), Abundantia (Abundance personified) and Fortuna (Luck and Fortune). In architecture it seems that the symbolism of plenty may be more important than adherence to any particular goddess.

This can be seen on the bases that James Woodford sculpted for the flagpoles in the memorial gardens outside the City Hall [16]. Each base shows an Assyrian-influenced priestess holding an overflowing basket. Woodford’s references to the two-dimensional  paintings and reliefs from the Assyrian and Ancient Egyptian empires are entirely fitting outside a City Hall that shunned Gothic and Classical motifs in favour of Modernism. As in Egyptian art, the figure presents a combination of frontal and profile views. With the head in profile it is difficult to express emotion; it is the associated animals and plants that bear the symbolic load, celebrating the region’s agricultural abundance.

AssyrianFinal.jpg

A celebration of Agriculture by James Woodford (1938), who also sculpted the 18 roundels celebrating Industry on the City Hall’s bronze doors [8].

cheeky face.jpg

©2018 Reggie Unthank

 

Sources

  1. Rose, Martial. (2006). A Crowning Glory: the vaulted bosses in the chantry of St Helen’s, the Great Hospital, Norwich. Pub: Lark’s Press, Dereham.
  2. Woodforde, C. (1950) The Norwich School of Glass-Painting in the Fifteenth Century. Pub, Oxford University Press
  3. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2015/12/19/norfolks-stained-glass-angels/
  4. King, D. J. (2006) The Stained Glass of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, CVMA (GB), V, Oxford.
  5. https://thecompanyofthegreenman.wordpress.com
  6. Meeres, Frank (2011). The Story of Norwich. Pub: Phillimore and Co Ltd. (A highly readable account of the city’s history).
  7. McFadyen, Phillip (2015). Norwich Cathedral Despenser Retable. Pub: Medieval Media, Cromer.
  8. Cocke, Richard (with photography by Sarah Cocke) (2013). Public Sculpture of Norfolk and Suffolk. Pub; Liverpool University Press. (An essential source for anyone interested in East Anglian sculpture).
  9. Kent, Arnold and Stephenson, Andrew (1949). Norwich Inheritance. Pub: Jarrold and Sons Ltd
  10. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/06/16/entrances-and-exits-doors-ii/
  11. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/05/26/early-doors-tudor-to-georgian/
  12. Pevsner, Nikloaus and Wilson, Bill (1997). The Buildings of England. Norfolk I, Norwich and North-East. Pub: Yale University Press.
  13. http://www.georgeplunkett.co.uk/Norwich/mag.htm
  14. https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2010/12/05/regency-fashion-how-a-lady-accommodated-her-head-feathers-at-the-end-of-the-18th-century/
  15. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2017/02/15/the-flamboyant-mr-skipper/
  16. http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib2_1208277486

Thanks. Chris Walton writes the very informative Company of the Green Man website [5] and I am grateful to him for information on foliate faces. I thank Revd Dr Peter Doll, Canon Librarian of Norwich Cathedral for permission to photograph the Despenser Retable and Dr Roland Harris, Cathedral Archaeologist for information on the cathedral bosses and the Ethelbert Gate.

Bonus track

Nelson.jpg

Nelson with his favourite alpenhorn

Unfortunately, the surface on this statue of Admiral Lord Nelson by Thomas Milnes (1852) – which is situated in the Upper Cathedral Close – is now quite worn and has lost much of its detail [8].  This, combined with its north-facing aspect, doesn’t favour photography but I couldn’t omit Norfolk’s most famous son, albeit ‘below the line’.

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Public art, private meanings

15 Monday May 2017

Posted by reggie unthank in Norwich buildings, Norwich history

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Norwich statues, Public art

Once, I took part in an alternative sculpture-trail, visiting unexpected art in public spaces: pieces hidden in full view, works that had outlived their original purpose and unseen eroticism in a monument to a national heroine.

Cavell2.jpg

Edith Cavell monument by Henry Pegram 1918 [1]. Originally sited in the road outside the Maid’s Head Hotel (left) it is now placed beside the Erpingham Gate of the cathedral (right).

This was in May 1999 and the sculpture trail was led by Krzysztof Fijalkowski, a young lecturer from the Norwich School of Art [2]. Here, I retrace some of his steps and add a few of my own.

Open secrets.jpg

Edith Cavell, born in nearby Swardeston, was a nurse during WW1. In 1915 she was shot by a German firing squad in Belgium for assisting the escape of Allied prisoners and – according to former head of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington – for espionage [3]. Notes on the guided tour (price 20p) gave a Freudian interpretation of the Cavell Memorial, mentioning the wreaths that mark Cavell’s breasts and the soldier’s erect rifle “pointing straight to her sex”. Works of art can hold many meanings although not everyone agrees with them, as Tony Hall’s cartoon shows.

Cavell cartoon.jpg

Eastern Daily Press May 20 1999 ©Tony Hall

Not far away we visited a curved mural, tucked away from passers-by at the top of London Street. Betfred.jpg

Boldly commissioned in 1974 by the Abbey National Building Society, Tadeusz Zielinski’s ‘Symbol of Norwich’ depicts a modern family, sheltered under the Society’s roof, against the background of the walled city with its cathedral (three panels up from the right). The modernist treatment is reminiscent of the Festival of Britain style of the early 1950s [4] but any obscurity of meaning will only have been increased by Betfred’s logo that – drilled and screwed into the artwork – now blocks the first row of panels. Aaaagh!

Who, when buying half a pound of six inch nails in Thorns the ironmongers in Exchange Street, has failed to notice the wall paintings on the first floor? On a recent visit, an assistant moved some ladders for me to see the paintings behind the protective screen. Emily Duke, a member of the Paston family – partners of the founder RE Thorn – told me that before the business was opened in the early C19th the building had been a hotel in which an artist painted the rooms in return for accommodation. The remaining figures seem to represent People of All Nations.

Thorns 3.jpg

Courtesy of Emily Duke at Thorns, Exchange Street, Norwich [5]

The redundant church of St Laurence is one of five along St Benedict’s Street. It has one of the most prominent towers in the city yet it and the west doorway are easy to miss as you concentrate on the steep steps down St Laurence’ s Passage [6]. In the spandrels above the door are two gruesome deaths: the roasting of the eponymous saint on a gridiron and St Edmund riddled with Viking arrows. His head was thrown into a forest but rescuers were guided to it by a Latin-speaking wolf (bottom right) crying hic, hic, hic.

The Saints.jpg

High above Orford Hill stands a stag with moulting antlers – a 1984 fibreglass replica of the statue placed there about 100 years earlier.

Stag1.jpg

Its original meaning is likely to be obscure for the bold wooden sign ‘GUNMAKER’, which advertised the trade of occupants George Jeffries then Darlows, has disappeared in recent years [7].

Orford Hill 8 [2707] 1938-08-13 A.jpg

No8 Orford Hill in 1938. Edwards’ saddlery and Darlow & Co gunmaker. Courtesy georgeplunkett.co.uk

Another stop on the trail was to see one of the first purchases by the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society in 1978. At the time this work by Peter Hide, a former lecturer at the School of Art, was situated on a piece of wasteland behind the Duke Street carpark. Hide may have intended this as a formal exercise in ‘horizontality’ and balance but in its original location – a stone’s throw from Barnard, Bishop and Barnards’ Victorian ironworks – the girders provided an incidental link with the city’s industrial past.

Girderrs.jpg

Some time over the intervening years the sculpture has been re-sited next to the busy St Crispin’s roundabout near Halford’s store, gaining a further – less welcome – layer of meaning. The Girder Structure is now near the site of Norwich’s City Station, which was bombed in the 1942 Baedeker raids and eventually closed in 1959. This does add a further resonance to The Girder Structure in its new position but the industrial-strength attachment of the M&GN logo (presumably by the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway Preservation Society?) overrides the artist’s original intentions.

choo choo.jpg

The following examples of public art come from my own travels. At the corner of St Stephens and Surrey Streets, opposite Marks and Spencer, is a postwar block decorated with identical stone carvings hidden beneath the keystones of the three curved window arches.

Hog3.jpg

Even if you can discern them without the aid of a telephoto lens (I couldn’t) it is not obvious that these animals commemorate the previous building on the site – the Boar’s Head public house, destroyed by a Baedeker raid in April 1942. The surname of the C19 licensee, Richard Norgate of Cawston, can just be made out on the pub sign below [8].

Old Boar Inn.jpg

A basket-maker’s shop on nearby Ber Street was also destroyed in the 1942 air raids. The reconstructed building is now occupied by Gerald Giles’ home-electricals store but the wooden carving on the tympanum above the door recalls a different post-war life. The panel by Joseph Lloyd Royal depicts dockers unloading ships, suggesting that the building was once a warehouse for storing goods from Norwich docks [9].

gerald giles1.jpg

The Wensum was still navigable by quite large vessels until the 1980s.

norwichport_cigcard.jpg

Coasters at the Port of Norwich ca 1936 broadlandmemories.co.uk

The Norfolk and Norwich Agricultural Hall (now occupied by Anglia TV), at the top of Prince of Wales Road, is built from alien Cumberland sandstone [10]. The Prince of Wales feathers relate to the prince’s involvement and to the road itself; however, there is no record of the identity of the worthies whose terracotta heads decorate the keystones of the ground floor windows. The bull’s head could simply be symbolic of agricultural trade but once you recognise the name of local philanthropist JJ Colman on the foundation stone it is impossible not to see the beast as an allusion to his family’s mustard business.

New Colmans montage.jpg

Around the year 2000, the City Council commissioned a sculpture of the Three Wise Monkeys to go on top of the pavilion at Waterloo Park. As well as seeing, hearing and speaking no evil, the monkeys have – with the passage of time – come to illustrate the speed with which technology becomes dated. Now, a monkey with an iPhone could do all three jobs.

Three Monkeys.jpg

Alex Johannsen ca 2000 [11]

Palimpsests – traces of past use – can be seen all around the city. Some of my favourites are the mosaics advertising what once were household names. The initials, FH&W, were used as a symbol to advertise national shoe chain Freeman Hardy and Willis in the 1960s but by the 1990s the chain had disappeared. The Maypole dairy chain was known, paradoxically, for promoting non-dairy margarine. Their name was phased out in the 1970s.

FHW Maypole.jpg

Magdalen Street, Norwich

Norwich, fortunately, isn’t blighted by equestrian statues of Victorian luminaries …

There once was a very famous man
On his famous horse he’d ride through the land
The people used to see him everywhere
When he died they put a statue in the square
(Hurray)

The Equestrian Statue, (click audio link) by The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (composer Neil Innes) 

… but it does have a statue that commands an entire square – the statue of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1689) on Hay Hill, near his house. Here he is contemplating a Roman burial urn found at Brampton, which was the subject of his book ‘Urne Burial’ (“man is pompous in the grave“).

browne.jpg

Sir Thomas Browne by Henry Pegram 1905

At the foot of the Browne statue are several pieces of marble statuary comprising a work entitled, Homage to Thomas Browne. In his esoteric book, The Garden of Cyrus, Browne discusses the power of the quincunx – an interlocking figure where four points mark the corners of a diamond with the fifth point at the centre. The marble blocks do not, at first, appear to be arranged in a particular fashion but by phasing out the other blocks it can be discerned that the five high-backed seats are arranged in a quincunx [12].

Quinkx2.jpg

Left, the Quincunx from The Garden of Cyrus 1658 (Wikipedia); right, one of five marble seats, part of the Homage to Thomas Browne by Anne and Patrick Poirier 2007  

In the 1980s, the smell of chocolate would float over the city – usually on Sundays – from the Nestlé/Rowntree chocolate factory next to Chapelfield Gardens. Originally this had been Caley’s Fleur de Lys chocolate factory; it was another victim of the 1942 bombing raids but the building was reconstructed in the early 1950s. The site is now occupied by the Chapelfield Shopping Mall and the lost chocolate factory is commemorated by two pairs of panels, one either side of the St Stephen’s Street entrance. These sculptures were initially made for the postwar building by local artist Edward Barker who celebrated the ingredients: cocoa, exotic fruits, maize and milk [13].

Caley4.jpg

The layering of history can also be seen inside the shopping mall. Two sets of 18 panels, high up on the top floor of the arcade, are based on the 18 relief panels decorating the bronze doors to the City Hall (1938) [14]. Their designer, James Woodford, depicted trades that were then associated with a thriving industrial city but which, like chocolate-making, have gone the way of the city’s shoe and aeronautical industries shown below.

Mall7.jpg

On the left,  in intuChapelfield Shopping Mall, are copies of James Woodford’s roundels (right) originally designed in the 1930s for the bronze doors of Norwich City Hall

©ReggieUnthank 2017. 

Sources

  1. http://www.racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=289.
  2. Krzysztof Fijalkowski and Rachel Fijalkowski (1999) Open Secrets: Unexpected Art in Norwich (pamphlet produced as part of Norfolk Visual Arts Festival) see [4].
  3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/bbc/11861398/Revealed-New-evidence-that-executed-wartime-nurse-Edith-Cavells-network-was-spying.html
  4. http://www.racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=86
  5. http://www.thornsdiy.co.uk/pages/ourstory.html
  6. http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/norwichlawrence/norwichlawrence.htm
  7. http://www.racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=169
  8. http://www.norridge.me.uk/pubs/areasrch/centre/pubs83/indiv/boar.htm
  9. http://www.racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=316
  10. https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/2016/07/28/norwichs-pre-loved-buildings/
  11. http://racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=283
  12. http://racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=591
  13. http://racns.co.uk/sculptures.asp?action=getsurvey&id=363
  14. http://www.heritagecity.org/research-centre/social-innovation/norwich-city-hall.htm

I have drawn heavily on the essential website for local sculpture in Norfolk and Suffolk  www.racns.co.uk and thank Sarah Cocke for patiently answering my queries. Do visit this fascinating archive.

Thanks: to Professor Krzysztof Fijalkowski for his blessing; to Tony Hall and the EDP for permission to use the cartoon; to Emily Duke for the Thorns photographs; Carol Gingell of Broadland Memories for the photograph of ships on the Wensum; and the georgeplunkett.co.uk website for the 1938 photo of the stag on Orford Hill.

The Norwich Society helps people enjoy and appreciate the history and character of Norwich.   Visit: www.thenorwichsociety.org.uk

NorwichSocLogo.jpg

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