Barrack Street
Barrack Street Barrack Street lies in the district of
Pockthorpe, so called from the Latin pauca,
little, and Old English thorp, village. Here was
the Barregate, one of the twelve gates in the city’s
circumvallation. The gate was removed in 1792, one of the
first to go, but the greater part of a wall tower remains
a few yards to the north, with most of its stone vaulting
intact.In the nineteenth century the name of Barrack Street applied only to that part of the highway outside the city wall, extending from Silver Road to Bishops Bridge Road. West of this, the part within the city was known as St James’s Street. Although slum clearance had been active here for some years before 1931, when I first took up photography, evidence of an early spread of the population beyond the walls was to be seen in some of the houses that yet remained. Just beyond Steward and Patteson’s Pockthorpe, Brewery for instance, Nos 82-84 and 88-90 were simple domestic buildings probably of Tudor origin; both groups has jettied upper storeys, and Nos 82-84 possessed an added second floor. In between these two groups, at No 86 (included with 88-90 right), stood the Griffin public house, one of several hostelries in the city with that sign. |
 On the opposite side of the street, the
Cellar House at No 105 (left) was a late Georgian
building with weavers’ windows to light the top
floor. Walter Wicks in referring to this tavern recalled
the ritual of the Pockthorpe “corporation”,
which was modelled on the Norwich pageant, with
“Mayor”, “Sheriffs”,
“Officers” and snapdragon. Here at the Cellar
House in 1838, amid great cheering, the newly elected
“Mayor” promised in his inaugural address
“to remove the duty off tea and sugar”. After a
state procession to the banquet held further along the
street at the Dun Cow public house (used as their
“guildhall”) the “corporation”
returned to the Cellar House to hold various sports in
its gardens.Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2004 |