returning to the high road, the journey to Norwich is continued to
Hartford Bridge; bird's-eye views unfolding across the valley to the
right. At Hartford Bridge, where there are several bridges, none of
them sizeable, rivers, streams and runlets of sorts trickle, flow, and
gurgle in their different ways through flat meadows, below the long
rise where, two miles from Norwich, the road begins to grow suburban.
It is on the summit that the Newmarket and Thetford route from London
joins with this, and together they descend into the city.
XXXIX
THIS way came Queen Elizabeth into Norwich on her great "progress" of
1578, by St Stephen's Plain and through St Stephen's Gate. Gates and
walls are gone that once kept out the turbulent, or even condemned the
belated citizen to lodge the night without the precincts of the city,
in suburbs not in those times to be reckoned safe.
Norwich long ago swept away her defences and modernised her outskirts,
for this is no Sleepy Hollow, this cathedral city in the valley of the
Wensum, but the capital of East Anglia, throbbing with industry and in
every way in the forefront of modern life. To the entrance from London
Norwich turns perhaps its most unattractive side. No general view of
the city, lying in its hollow beside the winding Wensum, opens out, and
the eye seeks the cathedral spire and finds it with some difficulty,
modestly peering over tangled modern roof-tops. It is from quite the
opposite direction, from the noble height of Mousehold Heath, that
Norwich unfolds itself in a majestic picture of cathedral, churches
and houses, with trees and gardens, such as no other city can show,
displayed within its bounds. Norwich does not jump instantly to the
antiquarian eye, and its electric tramways that are the first to greet
the traveller who enters from the old coach road are not a little
forbidding. The city grows gradually upon the stranger in all its
wealth of beauty and interest, and becomes more and more lovable the
better he becomes acquainted with it.
Until these railway times, in the old days of slow, difficult,
dangerous and expensive travelling, the capital of East Anglia was in
a very high degree a capital, and sufficient to itself. Its shipping
trade and weaving industries, and the famous Norwich School of artists,
brought this exclusive attitude down from mediæval times to modern;
and Norfolk county families until the era of political reform had
almost dawned, still had their "town houses" in Norwich, just as, in
bygone centuries, that typical old family, the Pastons, owned their
town houses in Hungate and in what is now called King Street, formerly
Conisford Street.
The coaches coming to Norwich threaded the mazy streets to inns widely
sundered. The original "Norwich Machine" of 1762 traversed the greater
part of the city, to draw up at the "Maid's Head," in Tombland. On
the other hand, the Mails, the "Telegraph" and the "Magnet," came to
and started from the "Rampant Horse" in the street of the same name,
standing not far from the beginnings of the city. The street is there
still, but the oddly-named inn has given place to shops, and where
the "Rampant Horse" ramped rampageously, in violent contrast with the
mild-mannered "Great White Horse" of Ipswich, drapers' establishments
now hold forth seductive announcements of "alarming sacrifices."
Among other coaches, "Gurney's Original Day Coach" and the "Phenomenon"
favoured the "Angel," in the Market Place, while the "Times" house was
the "Norfolk Hotel," in St Giles's, and that of the "Expedition" the
"Swan" Inn. Other inns, many of them huddled together under the lee of
the castle mound, were then to be found in the Market Place and the
Haymarket and in the narrow alley in the rear that still goes by name
of "Back of the Inns." Others yet, many of mediæval age, are to be
sought in old nooks of the city. The Pilgrim's Hostel, now the Rosemary
Tavern, like the "Old Barge," belongs to the fourteenth century, the
last named still standing between King Street and the river, with
a picturesque but battered entrance. The steep and winding lane of
Elm Hill, where the slum population of Norwich stew and pig together
down ancient courts and dirty alleys, has more inns, ramshackle but
unrestored; and in the wide open space by the cathedral, dolefully
called Tombland, although it has not, nor ever had, anything to do
with tombs, is the "Maid's Head," the one establishment in Norwich
that stands pre-eminently for old times and good cheer. It is an
"hotel" now, and has the modern conveniences of sanitation and electric
light; but its restoration, effected through the enthusiasm of a
local antiquary, with both the opportunity of purchasing the property
and the means of doing so, has been carried through with taste and
discrimination. The "Maid's Head" can with certainty claim a history
of six hundred years, and is thought to have been built upon the site
of a former Bishop's Palace. Heavily-raftered ceilings and masonry of
evident antiquity may take parts of the present house back so far, or
even a greater length, but the especial pride of the "Maid's Head" is
its beautiful Jacobean woodwork. The old sign of the house was the
"Molde Fish," or "Murtel Fish," a name that antiquaries still boggle
at. It was long a cherished legend that this strange and unlovely name
was changed to the present sign in complimentary allusion to Queen
Elizabeth when she first visited the city, but later researches have
proved the change to have been made at least a century earlier, and so
goes another belief!
The "Music House," facing the now disreputable King Street, has not
for so very long been an inn. Its name tells of a time when it was the
meeting-place of the "city music," old-time ancestors of modern town
bands, but its story goes back to the Norman period, when the crypt
that bears up the thirteenth-century building above was part of the
home of Moyses, a Jew, and afterwards of Isaac, his nephew. "Isaac's
Hall," as it was known, was seized by King John and given to one of
his creatures; the unhappy Israelites doubtless, if they were allowed
to live at all, finding cool quarters in the castle dungeons. A long
succession of owners, including the Pastons, followed; last among them
Coke, afterwards Lord Chief Justice, who resided here in 1633.
It has already been hinted that the streets of Norwich are mazy. They
are indeed the most perplexing of any town in England. Many roads
run into the city, and from every direction. Glancing at a plan of
it, these roads resemble the main strands of a spider's web, and the
streets the cross webs. In midst of this maze is the great castle, like
the spider himself; that cruel keep in whose dungeons old wrong-doing,
religious and private spite, have immured many a wretched captive, like
that unfortunate unknown "Bartholomew," who has left his name scratched
on the walls, and the statement that he was here confined "saunz
resun," a reason of the best in those times. Did he ever see the light
of day again? Or did some midnight assassin murder him as many another
had been done to death?
"Blanchflower," that Bigod, Earl of Norwich who built the castle called
his keep when it arose on its great mound, its stone new and white.
He built upon the site of a castle thought to have been Saxon, and
built so well that it became a fortress impregnable save to famine
and treachery. It has, therefore, unlike weaker places that have been
stormed again and again, little history, and even seven hundred years
ago was little more than a prison. And a prison of sorts--for State
captives first, and for common malefactors afterwards--it remained
until so recently as 1883, when it was restored and then opened as the
Museum and Art Gallery it now is.
This is no place to speak at length of the cathedral that withdraws
itself with such ecclesiastical reserve from the busy quarters of the
city, and is approached decorously through ancient gateways in the
walls of its surrounding close; the Ethelbert Gate, with that other,
the Erpingham Gate, built in Harry the Fifth's time by Sir Thomas
Erpingham, whose little kneeling effigy yet remains in its niche in
the gable over the archway, and whose motto--variously held to be
"Yenk," or "Think,"--"Denk," or "Thank"--is repeated many times on the
stone work. Norman monastic gloom still broods over the close, for the
cathedral, save the Decorated cloisters and the light and graceful
spire in the same style, is almost wholly of that period, and the
grammar school that was once a mediæval mortuary chapel and has its
playground in the crypt, keeps a gravity of demeanour that, considering
its history, is eminently proper.
Through the Close lies the way to Bishop's Bridge and the steep road
up to Mousehold Heath: the "Monk's Hold," or monastic property, of
times gone by when it was common land of the manor belonging to the
Benedictine priory.
XL
[Illustration: NORWICH, FROM MOUSEHOLD HEATH.]
HERE, on this famous Heath of Mousehold where the gorse and heather
and the less common broom yet flourish, despite the electric tramways
that bring up the crowds and the picnic parties, Nature, rugged and
unconquerable, looks down upon the city, revealed as a whole. Even
though the chimneys of great factories may intrude and smirch the sky
when winds permit the smoke-wreaths to trail across the view, it is a
view quite unspoilable. The cathedral, as is only proper, is the grand
dominating feature, with its central tower and graceful crocketed spire
rising to a height of 320 feet. Second to it, on its left hand, the
huge bulk of the castle keep rears up; a time-ball on its battlements
to give the time o' day to the busy citizens; those battlements where
from a gibbet they hanged Robert Kett in 1549, when his rebellion was
crushed and his army of 20,000 peasants who had encamped on Mousehold
defeated. In similar fashion his brother William was hanged from
Wymondham steeple. Between castle and cathedral the great tower of
St Peter Mancroft looms up, and on the other side of the cathedral
tower the twin spires of the Roman Catholic place of worship crown the
sky-line. To the extreme right of the accompanying illustration is
St Giles's, and on the extreme left, in company with the pinnacled
tower of a modern church, the dark tower of St John-at-Sepulchre,
Bracondale, which for shortness and simplicity the citizens call "Ber
Street Church." For the rest, it is a mingling of town and country, of
houses and gardens and churches in great number, that one sees down
there; old Norwich, in short, exclusive of the modern suburbs that are
flung everywhere around and cause the Norwich of to-day to outnumber
the Norwich of coaching times by 80,000 inhabitants. It must be
evident from those figures that the picturesque old Norwich numbering
a population of only 30,000 has been in great degree improved away and
borne under by that human deluge. It is delightful now, but what it
was at the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Crome and De Wint
and others sketched and painted its quaint bits, the picture-galleries
of the Castle Museum can tell. Nay, even down to the mid-nineteenth
century it was still very different, as a collection of early
photographs in the castle proves. Then, before St Peter Mancroft was
restored, before the old Fish Market was cleared away, Norwich had many
more quaint nooks than now to show the stranger; even as, centuries
before, it was yet more quaint and even more remarkable for its many
churches than at the present time.
"The nearer the church the further from God," says the old saw. How
irreligious then should Norwich be, that has even yet a cathedral and
thirty-four ancient churches, and modern places of worship fully as
numerous! Let the citizens, therefore, as old Fuller suggested, "make
good use of their churches and cross that pestilent proverb." These
churches bear a close resemblance to one another, having nearly all
been rebuilt in the Perpendicular period, some five hundred years ago,
and all built of the black flint that gives a character to East Anglian
architecture quite distinct from that of other districts. The time when
they were thus rebuilt was not only a great period of church-building
throughout England, but a time of especial prosperity in mercantile
and trading Norwich; a time when guilds grew powerful and merchants
wealthy in the flourishing industry of cloth-weaving introduced some
time earlier by Flamand and Hollander immigrants. English wool that
before had gone across the narrow seas for manufacture into stuffs
was now weaved in the land of its growth. "Many thousands," says
Blomefield, "that before could not get their bread could now by this
means live handsomely." In that age, to become rich and prosperous was
to become also a founder and benefactor of churches; hence the great
ecclesiastical buildings that, according to the picturesque metaphor of
an old writer, writing when there were no fewer than sixty-one churches
in the city, "surrounded the cathedral as the stars do the moon."
The old citizens sleep in the parish churches for which they did so
much; their monuments in brass or marble, stone or alabaster curiously
wrought, often with their "merchant's marks"--the distinctive signs
with which they labelled their wares--engraved on them in lieu of coats
of arms. It is as though a modern trader were to have the registered
trade-mark of his speciality engraved on his tombstone. A typical
memorial of an old Norwich trader is that of Thomas Sotherton, in the
church of St John Maddermarket. He--
"Under this cold marbell sleeps,"
and was no common fellow, mark you, but
"Of gentell blood, more worthy merrit,
Whose brest enclosed an humble sperryt."
[Illustration: NORWICH MARKET PLACE.]
Although the calendar of saints is a long one and more than
sufficiently lengthy to have provided each one of the Norwich churches
with a patron, yet so popular were some saints, that several churches
to the same one are found in Norwich, as seen also in the city of
London. As in old London, it was in those cases necessary to confer
surnames, so to speak, upon those churches.
They are surnames of the geographical sort and not a little curious.
The four St Peters are, for example, St Peter Mancroft, the largest
and most important in the city, so called from the Magna Croft, or
large field of the castle; St Peter per Mountergate, in King Street,
named from the road by the "montem," the hill or mount, that runs
ridge-like in its rear; St Peter Hungate, the "hundred gate," or
road, reminiscent of the time when Norwich was a hundred of itself,
even as it is now by itself a county; and St Peter Southgate. St
Michael-at-Thorn has still thorn trees growing in its churchyard; St
Michael Coslany, with St Mary's of identical surname, was built in
Coast Lane; and St Michael-at-Plea was named from its neighbourhood to
an ecclesiastical court. St John Maddermarket is thus distinguished
from other St Johns--St John Timberhill and St John-at-Sepulchre.
In the neighbourhood of the first-named, madder for the dyers'
use was marketed; while at Timberhill was the market in wood. St
Martin-at-Palace, by the old Bishop's Palace, and St-Martin-at-Oak take
up the tale, which might be continued at great length.
[Illustration: NORWICH SNAP.]
The business life of modern Norwich centres in the Market Place and the
streets that immediately lead out of it: the mouldering signs of old
commerce peer in peaked gables, clustered chimneys and old red-brick
and plastered walls in the lanes and along the wharves of the Wensum.
There trade hustles and elbows to the front, in many-storeyed piles
of brick, stone and stucco, with great show of goods in plate-glass
windows and bold advertisement of gilt lettering. All those signs of
prosperity may be seen, and on a larger scale, in London, but not even
in London are the electric tram cars so great a menace to life and
limb as in these narrow and winding streets, where they dash along at
reckless speed.
The Market Place is not yet wholly spoilt. The huge bulk of St
Peter Mancroft and a row of queer old houses beside it still avert
that disaster, and form a picture from one point of view; while the
flint-faced Guildhall stands at another corner of the great open place
and in its Council Chamber, in use five hundred years ago as a Court of
Justice, and still so used, proves the continuity of "our rough island
story." In a dark and dismal cell of the Guildhall once lay the heroic
martyr, Thomas Bilney, who "testified" at the stake in the Lollards'
Pit, where many another had already yielded up his life. He wondered,
as others before and after him had done and were to do, whether the
tortured body could pass steadfast through the fiery ordeal; and on the
eve of his martyrdom put that doubt to the test by holding his finger
in the flame of a candle. That test sufficed, and he suffered with
unshaken constancy when the morrow dawned.
The Guildhall has less tragical memories than this, and was indeed the
scene of many old-time municipal revelries in times before Corporations
became reformed. But old revels and frolics have been discontinued,
and "Snap," the Norwich dragon, a fearsome beast of gilded wickerwork,
who was wont to be paraded from the Guildhall at the annual mayoral
election, and last frolicked with his attendant beadles and whifflers
in 1835, now reposes in the Castle Museum.
The Market Place on Saturday, when the wide open square is close-packed
with stalls, is Norwich at its most characteristic time and in its most
characteristic spot. In it the story of the Norwich Road may fitly end.
The city itself, glanced at in the immediately foregoing pages, could
not yield its story in less space than that occupied by that of the
road itself.
[Illustration]
INDEX
Aldgate, 1, 8, 11, 13, 51
---- Pump, 11
"Bacon End," 180
Boreham, 127-129
Bow, 6, 8, 75-80
---- Bridge, 77-79
Brentwood, 23, 94-99, 132, 200
Brockford, 257
Brome, 261
Brook Street, 94
---- Hill, 94, 132
Caistor St Edmunds, 4, 298, 301-303
Capel St Mary, 236
Chadwell Heath, 51, 83, 85, 86
---- Street, 86
Chelmsford, 5, 40, 51, 52, 54, 57, 80, 114-121, 127, 167, 200
Chipping Hill, 133-139, 302
Claydon, 252
---- Hall, 252
Coaches:--
"Confatharrat," 34
"Duke of Beaufort's Retaliator," 46, 140
"Expedition," 39, 306
"Gurney's Original Day Coach," 39, 267, 306
"Ipswich Blues," 23, 39, 132
"---- and Yarmouth Mail," 41, 45
"---- Post Coaches," 36
"---- Shannon," 39
"---- Umpire," 81
"Magnet," 39, 306
"New Colchester," 81
"Norwich Machine," 34-36, 306
"---- Mail," 39, 40, 43
"---- Post Coach," 39
"---- Times," 28, 39, 267
"Parcel Mail," 54-57, 111
"Phænomenon," 39, 306
"Telegraph," 306
Coaching, 30-51, 54-57, 81, 82, 97, 132, 142-151, 267
Coaching Notabilities:--
Alexander, Israel, 46, 140
Nelson, Mrs Ann, 19-25, 27, 81, 132
----, George, 19
----, John, 19, 25-27
----, Robert, 19
Suggate (Norwich carrier), 34
Thorogood, John, 28, 267
Colchester, 5, 6, 43, 54, 56, 94, 156, 163, 165, 167, 177, 179-212,
217
Constable, John, R.A., 149, 154, 217-219, 232, 238
Copdock, 236
Copford, 175, 176
_Copperfield, David_, 28, 44, 45, 150, 226, 274
Creeting, All Saints, 253
Creetings, The, 255
Dedham, 217-221
Deodand, Law of, 50
Dickleburgh, 6, 277-279
Dilbridge, 217
Dunston, 298
Feering, 152, 153, 158
Forest Gate, 81
Goodmayes, 83
Gore Pit, 152, 176
Great Eastern Railway, 25, 46, 51-54, 83, 152, 158, 175
Hare Street, 94
Hartford Bridge, 304
Hatfield Peverel, 129, 131
Highwaymen, 29, 30, 41, 58-62, 85, 86, 87, 88, 99, 142, 143, 214
Highwaymen:--
Cratfield, Rev. Wm., 30
King, Matthew, 58
----, Robert, 58
----, Tom, 58, 61
Tapyrtone, Thomas, 30
Turpin, Richard, 57-62
Ilford, 6, 29, 80, 82, 83, 167
Ingatestone, 6, 56, 99, 105-110
Inns (mentioned at length):--
"Angel," Colchester, 196, 197
----, Kelvedon, 140, 141, 147, 148, 162
----, Norwich, 34, 306
"Belle Sauvage," Ludgate Hill, 19
"Black Boy," Chelmsford, 121
"Blossoms," Laurence Lane, 34
"Blue Boar," Whitechapel, 28
"---- Posts," Witham, 132
"Bull," Bishopsgate Street, 15, 37
----, Leadenhall Street, 12, 15
----, Whitechapel, 15, 19-28
"Bull and Mouth," St Martin's-le-Grand, 15
"Cauliflower," Ilford, 83
"Coach and Horses," Upton, 81
"Cock," Thwaite, 260
"Cross Keys," Gresham Street, 15
"Duke's Head," Wacton, 288
"Fleece," Brook Street, 94
"Flower Pot," Bishopsgate Street, 15
"Four Swans," 34
"Golden Cross," Charing Cross, 15
"Good Woman," Widford, 111-114
"Grave Maurice," Whitechapel, 69
"Great White Horse," Ipswich, 36, 37, 228, 247-252, 306
"Gun," Dedham, 221, 228
"Half Moon," Ipswich, 243
"Horse and Leaping Bar," Whitechapel, 29
"King's Head," Dickleburgh, 278
"Lion and Lamb," Ipswich, 243, 244
"Magpie," Little Stonham, 256
"Maid's Head," Newton Flotman, 297
---- ----, Norwich, 34, 35, 306, 307
"Music House," Norwich, 307
"Norfolk Hotel," Norwich, 306
"Old Red Lion," Whitechapel, 57
"Popinjay," Norwich, 34
"Queen's Head," Thwaite, 259, 260
"Rampant Horse," Norwich, 306
"Red Lion," Colchester, 196
---- ----, Kelvedon, 140
---- ----, Whitechapel, 57
"Rising Sun," Manor Park, 81
"Saracen's Head," Aldgate, 14, 16, 17, 18
---- ----, Chelmsford, 117-120
"Spread Eagle," Gracechurch Street, 15-19
"Sun," Kelvedon, 152
"Swan," Washbrook, 237
"Swan-with-Two-Necks," Gresham Street, 15, 43
"Three Cups," Colchester, 37, 167, 196
---- ----, Springfield, 122
"Three Nuns," Aldgate, 29
"Vine," Mile End, 73
"Wheatsheaf," Kelvedon, 152
"White Elm," Copdock, 237
"---- Hart," Brentwood, 37, 97, 98, 119
---- ----, Colchester, 196
---- ----, Scole, 262-271
---- ----, Witham, 132
"White Horse," Fetter Lane, 15
---- Horse, Widford, 112, 114
Ipswich, 54, 56, 132, 212, 237-252
Kelvedon, 5, 139-153, 162, 176
Langham, 218
Lexden, 52, 147, 177-181, 302
---- Heath, 177-179, 187, 190, 201
Little Stonham, 6, 256
"London Stone," 4, 13
Long Stratton, 6, 292-295
Manor Park, 81
Margaretting, 57, 110, 111
Mark's Tey, 158, 175, 176
Martyr's Tree, 95, 96
Mile End, 70-74, 163
"Mockbeggar Hall," 252
Moulsham, 114
Mountnessing, 101-105
Needham Market, 255
New Hall, 123-127
Newton Flotman, 296-299
Norwich, 51, 52, 161, 301, 302-320
Old Ford, 6, 8, 76
Old-time travellers:--
Caroline of Brunswick, Princess, Queen of George IV., 165-168
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Princess, Queen of George III.,
162, 163
Kemp, Will, 79, 82, 161
Johnson, Samuel, 164, 165
Queen Elizabeth, 304, 307
William III., 140, 141, 161
Old-time travelling, 142-150, 159-168, 178, 225-237
Parcel Mail, 54-57, 111
Pulham St Mary Magdalene, 286, 287
---- St Mary the Virgin, 286, 287
Puttels Bridge, 93, 94
Rivenhall End, 139
Romford, 5, 23, 29, 51, 82, 85, 88-93, 167
Scole, 6, 40, 262-272
Seven Kings, 51, 83-85
Shenfield, 99, 100
Shrubland Park, 253, 255
Springfield, 121-123
Spurgeon, Rev. C. H., 151
Stanway, 6, 174-178
Steam Coaches, 46
Stoke Ash, 257, 260
Stonham Aspall, 256
---- Earls, 256
Stratford (Langthorne), 78, 80, 81
----- -le-Bow, 6, 8, 75-80
---- St Mary, 5, 6, 223-225, 274
Swainsthorpe, 298
Tasburgh, 292, 295, 296, 297, 302
Thwaite, 259
Tivetshall St Margaret, 6, 284, 287
---- St Mary, 6, 287
Toll-gates, 40, 70, 71, 78, 87, 93, 94, 139, 179, 222, 237, 257, 288
Uphall, 5, 302
Upton Park, 81
Wacton, 288, 292
---- Common, 288
Washbrook, 236
West Ham, 77, 81
Whalebone House, 86, 87
Whitechapel, 2, 12, 62-69
Whitton Street, 252
Widford, 111-114, 161
Witham, 23, 131-139, 163
Woodgrange, 81
Writtle, 5
Yaxley, 260
EDINBURGH
COLSTON AND COY, LTD.
PRINTERS
Transcriber's Notes:
Inconsistent hyphenation is retained.
Inconsistent punctuation is retained.
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Bold is shown thus: =strong=.
Small capitals have been capitalised.