Oak Street
Oak Street Oak Street was the scene
of considerable change during the twentieth century. Some
of this was caused by enemy action, particularly on the
nights of the 27th and 29th April 1942, when no doubt the
nearby City Station was one of the intended targets. No
141 (right), which faced up Sussex Street, was one
casualty. An eighteenth-century brick-built house, three
storeys high, it had a typical range of weavers’
windows to light the top floor. A covered passageway to
the south led to Little Buck Yard, while its neighbour on
the north was Steward and Patteson’s maltings. |
 A little further south is Flower
Pot Yard (left) - or what remains of it. This
picturesque piece of old property, which has a Great Hall
dating from about 1480, was condemned in the early 1930s
as the “worst slum in Norwich”, but was
subsequently acquired by Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel)
S. E. Glendenning to demonstrate that old houses,
originally well built, could be reconditioned for a
further span of useful life even after years of neglect.The building with the little bay window to the left of the courtyard entrance was during the nineteenth century a public house known as the Flower Pot - or more accurately as the Pot of Flowers - where, according to Walter Wicks, early flower shows were held over a century ago. Tulips apparently were the chief attraction. This and the house at the back of the yard were wrecked both by fire and high explosive during the raids. The Great Hall however, (out of sight on the right) was rather more fortunate and some years later was once more restored. Like its contemporary, the old Rosemary Tavern on St Mary’s Plain, it had had a floor put in during the sixteenth century, half way up the building, and a fireplace and chimney added. It is possible that during the time of the Huguenots the room was used for weaving, for there was evidence that it had contained looms. |
 Almost opposite to Flower
Pot Yard stood Nos 156-158 (right), a
centuries-old building of which one of the most notable
features was the chimneystack, since there are few old
ones in Norwich showing any attempt at ornamentation. It
was of brick, both shafts being octagonal and sharing a
neat base. The windowless dormers were not so attractive,
however, and gave rather a vacant appearance to the
building. Perhaps the Window Tax had something to do with
this.Shortly before the war No 158 underwent a most regrettable metamorphosis. Double doors to admit motor traffic replaced the street door, the dormers were removed together with the old English plain tiles and the chimneystack, and the roof was covered with white asbestos sheeting. The result was a building devoid of all architectural interest, an effect which would have been heightened were it not for the fact that the adjoining house (No 156) remained unchanged. From their similarity of appearance one might have thought that these two dwellings formed one large residence originally. At the time of the blitz, however, much of the plaster fell away from the front of both houses, revealing that No 156 was of flint rubble construction and No 158 entirely of brick. The raids did such extensive damage to this property that it was found necessary to clear the whole site shortly afterwards. It was not only the raids that were responsible for the changes here. Slum clearance also took its toll. For very many years this had been one of the poorer areas of the city. The larger houses which lined the streets, many of them of Tudor origin, had become divided up into small tenements and otherwise neglected, while their former gardens had become built over with little brick cottages to form narrow crowded yards - their names being the only picturesque thing about them. |
 In between Nos 103 and
119 (left), for instance, were located no less than
seven, named as follows: Ragged School Yard, Key and
Castle Yard, Robinson’s Yard, Horton’s Yard,
Saddler’s Yard, Suffolk Arms Yard and Smith’s
Yard. Some were named after neighbouring public houses,
while others no doubt commemorated early residents or
owners.The landlord of the Key and Castle at No 105 was at one time William Sheward, who in January 1869, confessed to having murdered his wife some eighteen years earlier while living in Tabernacle Street (now the west end of Bishopgate). At the time of the crime portions of an adult female body were found in various outlying parts of the city and it was thought that some medical students at the hospital were perpetrating a hideous joke in order to terrify people. Sheward was subsequently hanged at the old City Gaol at St Giles’ Gates on 20th April 1869 - the first execution to be held in private in Norwich. As to the city’s last public execution, there is a popular belief that this took place on the Castle Hill on 21st April 1849, when the double murderer James Blomfield Rush was hanged. Although the notoriety of the case attracted enormous crowds, augmented by many coming by rail on cheap day excursions from as far afield as London, this occasion did not mark the end of such grim spectacles. In fact three more public hangings took place in Norwich after that date, the last on 26th August 1867, when twenty-two-year-old Hubbard Lingley was executed for the murder of his uncle. |
 No 103 Oak Street
(right), next door to the Key and Castle, was a small
timber-framed building with a slight overhang to the
first floor. It had long been in an extremely dilapidated
condition and the raids of April 1942, served only to
hasten an end that had already appeared inevitable. In
the front wall of the ground floor were two sash windows
from the eighteenth century with slightly bowed frames.
To the right a decayed wooden Tudor arch spanned a
covered passageway leading to a court at the rear. This
was known as the Ragged School Yard because during the
nineteenth century a Sunday School primarily for the
benefit of poor people’s children was maintained in
a room here. |
 On the opposite side of
the street at No 132 stood the Royal Oak public
house (left), another of the several domestic buildings
in Norwich whose front walls at least were of knapped
flint. Here at the Royal Oak those of the rear wall were
unknapped. Probably of the late sixteenth or early
seventeenth century, the fine street frontage had been
somewhat spoiled by the insertion of a discordant florid
shop front of apparently Victorian vintage. The roof had
red pantiles except at the back, where some of the
original old English plain tiles remained. On this side,
too, was a dormer giving light to the commodious attic
storey. After the 1942 blitz only the walls, joists and
roof beams remained, to be cleared away shortly after the
war. |
 The sign of the inn
commemorated the escape of Charles II when he secreted
himself in the oak tree at Boscobel. It is not from this
that the street is named, however, but from the church of
St Martin-at-Oak which stands further south. In its
churchyard formerly grew an oak tree bearing an image of
Our Lady, visited with great reverence in pre-Reformation
days.St Martin-at-Oak is a redundant church, whose belfry was destroyed during the war. The tower has since been taken down to the level of the nave roof and now serves as a porch. During the course of the alterations some of the stringcourse of carved stonework that had formed a base to its battlemented top was re-used lower down in the reconstruction. After serving for a time as the parish hall St Martin’s has for some years been in use as a night shelter. Among the monuments here the most elaborate in that to Jeremiah Revans and his wife; the former died in 1727, the latter in 1711. They are represented as near-lifesize kneeling figures, one on each side of a reading desk. The furnishings were mostly modern, but there was a very nice Jacobean priest’s chair, of which I give an illustration. |
 A few yards to the south
of the Royal Oak was Old Brew Yard (left). This,
one of the widest yards then existing in the city, took
its name from an early nearby brewery, as also did Little
Brew Yard next door. The houses on the south, which
divided one yard from the other, probably dated from the
seventeenth century, but their walls had since been
cement rendered, and the fine row of gables roughcast.
The photograph shows the west side of the yard, formed by
the houses facing Oak Street. No 126, on the right, was
the oldest, having flint and brick rubble walls and an
old English plain tiled roof.Beyond Little Brew Yard is Jenkins Lane, a narrow alley that leads past the site of nineteenth century Oak Terrace and eventually to the Gildencroft. It was once popularly known as “Chafe Lug Alley”, being barely a yard wide at its entrance, but since the demolition of adjoining property its nickname has fallen into disuse. |
 Immediately adjoining the
alley on the south, Nos 110-114 Oak Street (right)
came at the end of a picturesque terrace of Tudor
dwellings. In February 1935, the whole row (with the
exception of No 114, the Anchor of Hope public house) was
the subject of an inquiry held at the Guildhall under the
Housing Acts of 1925 and 1930. It was then agreed that
the Norwich Amenities Preservation Society should be
permitted to acquire the buildings, providing that they
made them fit to the satisfaction of the Medical Officer
of Health, and acquired additional land at the rear for
air space. This undertaking was accepted and the property
subsequently thoroughly overhauled.During the April raids in 1942, unfortunately, No 114 was completely burned out and Nos 110 and 112 so severely damaged that all three had later to be demolished. Luckily the remainder of the block, Nos 98-108, received comparatively minor damage; standing as they do now by the busy inner link road, their brightly colour-washed walls make an attractive feature in an otherwise rather plain setting. |
 Before the conservation of
this row took place, four courtyards occupied the former
garden ground at the rear, reached from the street
through covered passageways between the houses. They were
Baldwin’s Yard, Goat Yard, Dog Yard and Talbot Yard.
Most of the cottages they contained originated in the
earlier part of the nineteenth century, but in Dog
Yard (left) stood a rather unusual semidetached pair
of perhaps more than a century earlier. Of brick and tile
construction, they had a plain stringcourse at first
floor level, and while much of the brickwork was
constructed in the orthodox manner, the crow-stepped end
walls had double courses of stretchers alternating with
double courses of bricks standing on end. At the angles
the orthodox brickwork was “tenoned” into the
unorthodox in a kind of saw-edge pattern. The cottages
were demolished towards the close of 1936, apparently not
being considered sufficiently unusual to be retained. |
 When slum property was
being cleared away between Oak Street and Quakers Lane in
1936 a little-known Jewish cemetery was brought to
view. Although no longer used for burials it was still
being attractively gardened by a caretaker appointed by
the city’s Jewish community. Ten headstones, some
with Hebrew inscriptions, testified to the one-time use
of this small plot, which was opened for burials in 1813
and closed in 1856 when the Corporation cemetery at
Bowthorpe Road was opened. There had been an earlier
cemetery on a site at the top of Mariners Lane, Ber
Street, granted by the Corporation early in the
eighteenth century. This cemetery had been used by the
whole of the eastern counties until closed about a
century later, but on the other hand this one at Oak
Street, adjoining Talbot Square, was used by the Norwich
Community only. |
 At 93-101 Oak Street
(left), on the west side just north of the inner link
road was a rather run-down block of shops and tenements
occupying what had been a mansion of considerable size.
Built of brick late in the seventeenth century, it was of
two main storeys, with a basement and attics. Rusticated
quoins, small keystones above the windows, and a
stringcourse marking the division between the two floors
relieved an otherwise austere facade. An opening wide
enough to admit carriages divided the ground floor into
two unequal parts and gave access to Bath House Yard at
the rear.This house is depicted in the top right-hand corner of James Corbridge’s plan of Norwich. It then had a front doorway to the left or the opening and a row of six dormers to light the attics. These dormers had at some time during the nineteenth century been replaced by casement windows of a much more modest design. Corbridge identified the house as the residence of Thomas Newton, who was a brewer, Sheriff in 1716 and Mayor in 1722. His wife who was Rebecca Tawell, died on 8th February 1737-38, and he died on 1lth July following. Principal parishioners for many years, they were buried in the Church of St Martin-at-Oak, where a monument on the south wall of the chancel testifies to their memory. The house, although listed as Grade 2 under Section 3 of the Housing Act, 1949, was cleared away some years after the Second World War. |
 Among the many old
properties formerly lining either side of Oak Street was
the Railway Arms tavern at No 90 (pictured right
with 92 and 94). It stood almost opposite the modern
Station Road that was constructed as an approach to City
Station (1882), the terminus of the Midland and Great
Northern Joint Railway. The public house was an old one,
and before the coming of the railway its sign had been
that of the Fellmongers’ Arms. This name continued
to be preserved in the yard whose entrance was spanned by
the property adjoining it to the north until early in
1937, when slum clearance took its toll and rendered the
site void. When shortly afterwards the old inn, too, was
demolished a more commodious building was erected to
replace it, to which was given the older name of the
Fellmonger. Although the architect, possibly as a
concession to its antique surroundings, designed the new
building with a pleasing series of gables, it never
seemed to be at one with its neighbours and would have
appeared to better advantage on an outlying estate where
a garden could have surrounded it. Its life was a
comparatively brief one, for it was gutted by fire during
the raids of April 1942. St Crispin’s (inner link)
Road now crosses the site.When the bisection of Oak Street by inner link road took place, it was proposed that the southern part should be renamed Coslany Street, of which it forms a continuation; but objections were raised by affected traders and the idea was dropped. However, according to an 1883 street directory the dividing line between the two at that time was at St Mary’s Plain and not at Colegate as at present, so the change had it come about would not have been quite such a revolutionary one as some people thought. |
 At No 80 Oak Street
(left) was what had been described (unavailingly) as
“a modest little bit of Tudor work which should be
preserved if possible”. Somewhat similar to those
houses higher up the street that were retained, it was
plaster-faced and jettied at the front, with a dormer
overlooking the yard to the south. Here was formerly a
public house with the sign of the Bess o’ Bedlam,
making a twin with Tom o’ Bedlam, also in St
Martin-at-Oak, a reminder of the days when mentally
deranged folk were largely uncared for and left to roam
the streets.Modern council flats now occupy the site between St Mary’s Plain and St Miles’ (otherwise known as St Michael-at-Coslany) church. Here were formerly Sun Yard and Greenland Fishery Yard, whose houses were declared unfit very early in the city’s programme of slum clearance. The latter yard was named after an adjacent public house whose sign seems to have been a comparatively rare one. Larwood and Hotten make no mention of it; according to Walter Wicks it originated with the Greenland whale fishery, once based both at Yarmouth and Lynn, which ceased about 1821. |
 Until the Second World War
on the west side of Oak Street, opposite St Miles’
church stood an interesting row of Tudor houses, Nos 1-9.
These were the usual two-storeyed type, timber framed and
faced with plaster, the upper floors projecting slightly
over the street. When I photographed them in 1938 they
ware boarded up and in a derelict condition, with the
plaster falling off in places, revealing a little of the
wattle and daub construction beneath. Here was once the Pheasant
Cock public house (right) - not a unique name as far
as Norwich was concerned, for another was still serving
its customers until quite recently at “Richmond
Hill”, the junction of Queens Road and Bracondale.Behind was a building of which White in his Norfolk Directory (1883) wrote “In Dial Yard, St Martin’s are the remains of what was the grand old mansion of William Coe, Mayor of Norwich”. No such name appears on the mayoral roll and it seems that White was really referring to William Coo, mercer, who was admitted to the freedom of the city in the fourth year of Henry VIII’s reign after having been apprenticed to Gregory Clerk. The latter had been Sheriff in 1497 and Mayor in 1505 and 1514, and both he and his father (also Gregory) had previously lived here. Coo seems to have acquired the property through marrying his master’s daughter, Agnes Clerk and what some considered to be their initials, the merchant’s mark and the arms of the Mercer’s Company added enrichment to ribbon-patterned-panelling which once lined a room here from floor to ceiling. Sold many years ago to Lord Stafford, much of the panelling was later acquired by J. J. Colman, and subsequently by Dr Philip Nelson of Liverpool. Sketches of just four of the panels were published in 1886-88 by the local artist C. J. W. Winter in a series entitled Norfolk Antiquities; in the accompanying letterpress he agreed with W. C. Ewing in ascribing the initials and merchant’s mark to Gregory Clerk senior (Sheriff in 1477) and his wife Agnes. Gregory Clerk now lies buried in the south aisle of St Miles’ Church, as does his wife Agnes who survived him. She subsequently married Robert Thorp, the founder of the Thorp Chapel with its beautiful flint flushwork on the exterior. |
  Gregory Clerk’s house Oak Street from Tuns Yard and Dial Yard. Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2004 |