Fyebridge Street
Fyebridge Street Fyebridge Street (surely
one of the shortest thoroughfares in the city) connects
Magdalen and Wensum Streets. Around 1920, Ian C. Hannah
in his book The Heart of East Anglia called
attention to a stone shaft (right) of the
fifteenth century wedged between two shop fronts, of
which No 11 was one. This was indeed a surviving fragment
of the house of Edmund Wood, a grocer, who was Sheriff in
1536 and Mayor in 1548, in which year he died. His son
Robert succeeded him, becoming Mayor in 1569 and again in
1578 when he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I during her
visit to Norwich.Much of the original house remains behind its eighteenth-century “re-front”, but the stone angle shaft was unfeelingly cemented over, some time after this picture was taken in 1937. Happily though it has recently been re-exposed, perhaps as a result of the attention drawn to it by my 1987 book Disappearing Norwich. Another relic, the spandrels of its doorway, carved with Edward’s arms and those of the Grocers’ and Mercers’ Companies, now forms part of the front doorway of 24 Princes Street. Fye Bridge is on the site of an ancient crossing, as was revealed in 1896 when trenching was carried out for a drainage scheme. There was then discovered a long series of ancient wooden piles, buried haphazardly not only under the street but in the river bed and extending altogether from the foot of Elm Hill in the south to the entrance to Fishergate on the north. As well as the piles there were also found several horizontal pieces of oak board, the whole apparently once forming a wooden plankway over the water. Fragments of pottery found here at the same time were deemed to be of early Saxon origin. The first known mention of a bridge called “Fibrigge” or “Fifbrigge” occurs about 1153. Until King Henry IV’s time it was a timber structure, but was then rebuilt of stone with two arches. In 1570 the stone bridge was washed away by a flood, but it was rebuilt three years later. Considerably repaired in 1756, this second stone bridge was finally taken down in 1829, when it was replaced by one of cast-iron with a single span of thirty-six feet (pictured August 1931 below). The carriageway, originally twenty-two feet in width, was widened on the west side at the end of the nineteenth century by fourteen feet to allow for a footpath on either side, and no doubt to make provision for the new tramway system. |
 The origin of its unusual
name remains a matter for conjecture. Ralph Mottram
thought it was almost certainly not Five brigge (i.e. the
fifth to be built) but more likely the bridge by the
channel or fyeing-out place. Arthur Whittingham on the
other hand suggested it was originally a bridge of five
spans.
|
 This sufficed for another
thirty years or so, by which time traffic congestion in
Magdalen Street had become so acute that a wider bridge
was planned, to be built one half at a time. Work
commenced in May 1932, by the removal of about fifteen
feet of the cast-iron bridge, leaving just sufficient
room for a single tram track. Fourteen months later the
first half of the new bridge was opened; Councillor H. C.
Southgate was the first motorist to cross. The bridge was
estimated to cost £22,132, and alterations to the
drainage system £7,170. September 1932 (right). |
 February 1934
(left).Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2004 Full
Fyebridge Street photo archive |