Martineau Lane
Martineau Lane A
victim of one of the earlier raids on Norwich was a house
at Old Lakenham known as the Villa Gardens, in
Martineau Lane next to the entrance to the Lakenham
swimming pool. According to a stone on the northern gable
of this substantially built house of eleven rooms it was
built in 1638; certain alterations, including the
addition of a pillared doorway, were made during the
following century. One of its upper rooms formerly
contained some fine wooden panelling incorporating a
cupboard, all of the seventeenth century, but this was
removed earlier in the twentieth century to the Keep of
the Norwich Castle museum.At about 1 a.m. on the 17th May 1941, two heavy bombs were dropped near here, one of them on a piggery. Although the walls of the house withstood the terrific blast, many windows were broken and the tiles were stripped from the roof, some of the timbers of which collapsed. Furniture in all the rooms was twisted and broken, but in spite of this damage nobody was killed and only three people required hospital treatment. Several new semi-detached houses on nearby Long John Hill were also wrecked in the same incident. Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2004 |