All Saints Green
All Saints Green An attractive feature of All Saints
Green before the war was the Thatched Assembly Rooms.
Its history is best related by quoting a report from the Eastern
Daily Press of 24th December 1904:Those who have
passed over All Saints Green lately will have noticed
that some extensive builders’ work is going on
around a picturesque old house on the eastern side. Some
ten or twelve years ago there stood upon this site two or
three thatched cottages. These came into the possession
of the late Major Crow, who had a charming taste in the
older styles of English domestic architecture. He
stripped off the plaster and exposed a beautiful
half-timbered front; and making a careful choice of
various old materials he put in a fine square-headed
doorway and a line of projecting bay windows; and thus he
made of the front one of the most picturesque things of
its kind in Norwich. The house was never occupied. But at
last a use for it has been found. In a like architectural
style the frontage has been extended to the northward;
and by the demolition of some old cottage property at the
rear, room has been found for the construction of a
splendid suite of ball and assembly rooms, with which
there is certainly nothing comparable in Norwich. The main hall had for its ceiling a single vault, richly ornamented in the Italian style, with elaborate gilded mouldings forming the frames to variously-shaped panels, each containing a picture. On 11th November 1915, it opened as a cinema (The Thatched) but closed down as such in 1930, just two years before the opening of the Carlton cinema (later to become the Gaumont) on the opposite side of the road. The Thatched was then adapted by Bonds’ as a ballroom (its original purpose) and furnishing hall. So it remained until 27th June 1942, when incendiary bombs gutted this and all of the adjoining store. |
 Robert Herne Bond, who was born at
Ludham, Norfolk, 1844, commenced business in Essex, but
moved to a shop in Ber Street in 1879. Over the years
adjoining property was gradually acquired, so that by
1939 the store extended through to All Saints’ Green
and included a large arcade.The last extension to be built before the outbreak of the Second World War was on the site of 23-25 All Saints’ Green (right). Erected in 1938, it had but a brief existence before succumbing to the flames. Its upper front had been designed to harmonise with that of its neighbour, the Thatched, being constructed with vertical timbers alternating with red brickwork. A pleasing gable above a large oriel window to the left and a small dormer in the centre or the steeply pitched roof completed the illusion of “medieval Norwich”. |
 At the junction of All Saints Green
with Westlegate, Nos 4-8 (left) were
three-storeyed cottages of brick and tile construction,
the front wall cement rendered. Only the doorway on the
left appeared to be original, the other two doorways and
their adjoining windows looking as though they had been
put in as an afterthought. In fact from the outside it
looked very much as though the building had been just one
house originally and was divided up later in the
nineteenth century. Displayed on the front of the houses
was the date “1793” and the initials,
“R.M.B.”, or perhaps “R.B.M.”, for
the “M” although in the middle was on a lower
plane than the other two letters. They were of metal, but
quite plain compared with those on the King’s Arms
public house in Botolph Street.No 10 to the left still stands, but these three houses and an adjoining public house were demolished in 1937 when the corner was set back and a new public house built. |
 The Tuns Inn, No 2 All Saints
Green:-Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2004 |