Bishopgate
Bishopgate A section of Bishopgate,
north of the entrance to Life’s Green and The Close,
was known during the nineteenth century as Tabernacle
Street. Here in a secluded corner adjacent to the Adam
and Eve public house stood the Meeting House or Tabernacle
(right), a plain little red-brick building with pantiled
roof and a double row of sash windows, opened by Mr
Whitfield on 14th April 1753. Stanley Wearing in Georgian
Norwich and its Builders considered this to have been
the first building in Norwich with which the locally
famous architect Thomas Ivory was known to be connected.
Since arriving in Norwich in 1750, the Reverend James
Wheatley, a Calvinistic Methodist, had been preaching in
the city at various places including a Tabernacle set up
in a house on Scoles Green. Unfortunately his ideas were
not generally well received and frequent riotous scenes
occurred, resulting in his molestation to such an extent
that on more than one occasion “the poor creature
was half dead, not able to walk alone, and in a most
terrible condition”, to quote one eye-witness.
Nevertheless he was undeterred and was eventually able to
purchase land for the building of the Meeting House shown
in the photograph, together with an adjoining
three-storeyed dwelling house. |
 In 1775 the Tabernacle,
furnished with handsome mahogany seating and a beautiful
pulpit, was sold to the Countess of Huntingdon who set up
a trust to appoint ministers “whose preaching and
sentiments [were] according to the articles and homilies
of the Church of England”. Disused by the 1930s, it
was acquired by the Eastern Gas Board, whose works
adjoined to the north, and was pulled down early in 1953,
the year of its bicentenary. In the photograph (left) the
minister’s house may be seen on the extreme
right, forming an end support to an interesting row of
houses of varying dates. That to the left of the picture
stood in the centre of this row, next Goodrum’s
Yard. Timber framed and faced with plaster, it had rather
picturesque bay windows supported on wooden props and
contrived below the first floor overhang.At the western end of the row, opposite the church of St Martin-at-Palace, stood a rather plain little building, also cement rendered, known as the Cupid and Bow public house. Of its history little is known save that Edward VI granted six tenements here to the Great Hospital. Let on lease in 1827 to Youngs and Burt, brewers, predecessors of Youngs, Crawshay and Youngs, the inn remained in their occupation until the property was sold by the Great Hospital in 1917 to the British Gas Light Company. It was near here that in 1549 Lord Sheffield was killed by Kett’s rebels. For a long time a stone in the pavement, incised with the letter “S”, marked the spot. This was moved to the street corner in the middle of the nineteenth century, but was later taken up when the present tablet (now transferred to the wall opposite) was built into the south wall of the inn in the 1860s. This tablet was made and installed at the expense of Dr Charles Williams, who also had a new “S” stone placed as near as possible to the original spot. Unfortunately when the civic authorities later made up the path the stone was covered with asphalt and thus lost sight of. Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2004 |