Calvert Street

According to Ralph Mottram, Calvert Street, which now terminates at St Crispin’s Road, was named after the local proprietor “Count Calvert”, whose mansion lay there. In the early part of the eighteenth century however, the historian John Kirkpatrick wrote that it was Doughty’s Hospital Street and previously Snaylegate, then Snackegate, though he ventured no opinion as to the derivation of the latter names.

The district hereabout seems to have reached its zenith as a prosperous residential area when in the eighteenth century many new mansions were built and others modernised. Many have now gone but Nos 20 and 22, until recently commercially occupied, still survive to give an idea how the place formerly looked.

The street also has a number of restored buildings at its southern end, of that era. Among these, on the eastern side, may be mentioned Pope’s Buildings, a pair of coach houses which in the early 1970s the City Council restored from an almost derelict condition, converting them into eight dwellings. On the same side, the three-storey mansion at No 1 dates from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. It is of brick and tile construction with rusticated quoins, and on the north side a hooded doorway. In June 1975 when its restoration was well advanced, a fire swept through the building severely damaging the interior and destroying the staircase, which was its main feature. Further restoration was successfully carried out and the building has now been converted into a number of flats.

The street has suffered many losses, however. Near to Colegate were Nos 2-10 (above), casualties of an air raid during the morning of 5th September 1942. These were Tudor houses built of flint rubble and brick, and although they were not well maintained their gabled roofline gave considerable character to this entrance to the street. The new flats that now occupy this site, extending behind Bacon House through to St George’s Street, are known as Lowe’s Yard (left) after the original yard here, which was demolished in 1937. Its only entrance then was from St George’s. Built early in the nineteenth century, the house on the north had a curiously overhanging upper floor contrived of weatherboarding. The ladder seen leaning against the wall had just been removed by the demolition squad from its former position against a trap door in the floor of the overhang.

Nos 3 and 5 (right) together formed a large building of about the same age as its neighbour, from which a small courtyard separated it. It seems to have been one house originally, with a workroom in the northern half of the third storey lit by a large thoroughlight (weavers’) window, but the window may have been put in at a later date. On the south side was a tall semi-circular headed archway, extending through two storeys, which before it was blocked probably gave access to a coach house or stable. Between the wars the building was a shoe factory, and like many others in the area was becoming very dilapidated. Its end came when it fell victim to a firebomb raid, on 2nd August 1942, in which all but the outer walls were destroyed. These too were levelled on 5th September that same year when one of a stick of high-explosive bombs fell in the centre of the site.

Further along Calvert Street on the west side between King’s Head Lane and Green Lane was another building with a weavers’ window. Its front had been faced with plaster, with raised lettering declaring it to be the factory of Middleton and Hovell (left), Brush Manufacturers. This it had long ceased to be when my photograph was taken in 1938. In 1883, however, Middleton and Hovell were listed at this address as horsehair cloth manufacturers.

Describing the trade of horsehair weaving in Norwich early in the twentieth century, C. B. Hawkins stated that it occupied perhaps four hundred people, of whom only a few would be men. This presumably would have included outworkers, of whom there were 168 registered in 1909. The cloth was described as being made on a hand-loom with cotton warp and hair weft; horsehair weaving was largely a home industry, although one employer had then recently installed a few power looms. Hawkins added:

In the older quarters of the city an observer can still hear the peculiar click-clack of the hand-looms, and if he happens to be in Calvert Street or Peacock Streets, where the houses date back to the eighteenth century, he has a perfect example or what industrial Norwich was 150 years ago.

Another tragic loss from Calvert Street was its Methodist Chapel (right), built in 1810, as boldly declared by an oval-shaped stone plaque above its main entrance. The chapel closed after the morning service on Sunday, 26th June 1966, and all traces had been swept away by mid-August. Closure came not because the church was redundant but because it had to make way for the inner link road.

In a booklet published in 1961 to commemorate the church’s 150th anniversary, the late Mr W. W. Johnson gave an interesting account of its history. Designed by an unknown architect, the building, which was of red brick, was lit by a double row of round-headed windows having sashes fitted with interlacing glazing bars typical of the period. Its central doorway was recessed, with Tuscan pillars supporting an elliptical fanlight. Inside, a panelled gallery extended round all four walls, with an organ at the east end, below which was the pulpit and holy table. Mr A. F. Scott (architect of Chamberlin’s clothing factory in Botolph Street and Marks and Spencer’s in Rampant Horse Street) designed a new ceiling that was erected in 1895. At the same time a new wooden floor was laid, replacing the original brick paving, while new seating took the place of the old box pews.

It was doubly unfortunate that the building had to go, first, of course, from the point of view of the congregation, and secondly from the architectural aspect. A well-known local architect and antiquary, the late Stanley Wearing, said on several occasions that although the Calvert Street Chapel was simple it was of fine design, and in his opinion should be grouped with the Old Meeting House in Colegate and the nearby Octagon Chapel as a “trio of distinctive historic churches of non-conformity in Norwich”.

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