Queen Street

At the corner of Queen Street where the Haarts estate agency now stands were previously two nineteenth-century buildings, one occupied by William Plowright, an antiques dealer, the other by tearooms. The latter was seriously damaged by incendiary bombs during the war, and after remaining something of an eyesore both properties were eventually demolished in 1956.

With the site cleared, the long-hidden church of St Mary-the-Less was opened to view - but not for long; the value of the land prohibiting its continuation as an open space. Nowadays the north side of the church may still be glimpsed from the precinct known as St Michael-at-Pleas, between Princes Street and Tombland, while from Queen Street the south porch and upper stages of the tower are all that remain visible.

The church’s history is as chequered as any. At the dissolution it was granted to the Dean and Chapter of Norwich Cathedral, who thereupon declared it redundant, uniting the parish with that of St George Tombland. On 16th June 1544, the church itself was leased by the Dean, John Salisbury, to the city for five hundred years on payment of £20 and a yearly rent of 4d. The furnishings, no longer required, were then disposed of: the choir desks went to the city for fifteen shillings, the font and a slab to Thomas Farrour for 6s 8d and the rood loft and desks to the church of St George Tombland for thirty shillings.

In 1554 fifty-two hundredweights of lead were sold and the roof tiled, while a few years later £43 was spent fitting the building out for the use of “strangers” selling their baize. For this they were charged an annual rent of £13.

In 1623 it was converted into a hall for the sale of yarn and woven fabrics, but by 1631 the accommodation had become inadequate and the presses were moved to the much larger “New” (now St Andrew’s) Hall. Six years later the French or Walloons took it on for a forty-year lease for their place of worship, later obtaining a grant of it in fee.

As recorded by an eighteenth-century mural tablet to Paul Colombine on the south wall of the nave, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes late in the seventeenth century caused a further influx of emigrants from the Low Countries. By early in the nineteenth century however the congregation had dwindled; most had by then joined the Unitarian or other bodies. The last Elder, in fact, was appointed in 1803.

About 1862 the trustees let the building to the “receivers of doctrines enunciated by Emmanuel Swedenborg”, and later (in 1869) to the Catholic Apostolic church, followers of Edward Irving, who continued here until moving to other premises in 1953. Since then it has been used variously as St Andrew’s parish hall and then as a place of storage.

The building itself is not large, and consists of a nave and chancel with a rood stair turret to the north, a square west tower and a south porch with room above. The furnishings at the time of my visit were quite modern, but hollowed out of the south wall of the nave were two piscinae, with an angle piscina in the chancel at the side of a window whose sill formed the sedilia. Several small consecration crosses were also to be seen. The unusually tall and narrow tower arch, reaching almost to the nave ceiling and having banded shafts, was a feature not to be missed.

A branch of the Bank of Scotland has recently opened its doors at No 3 in a building specially designed for it. Ferrier House (right), the building that preceded it, was well known by Norwich folk; it was occupied since 1861 by Robertson and Colman, a high-class firm of upholsterers and cabinetmakers, originally trading as Robertson and Sons.

When in 1922 certain alterations were being made to the premises two important finds were made. The first was a wooden spandrel carved with the Tudor rose, which Walter Rye thought dated from about 1475. The other was a ceiling come twenty-seven feet by nineteen feet composed of moulded beams forming a number of rectangles. Over these were laid oak bearers, and the spaces between were filled in with plasterwork on rushes. Although the ceiling was described as fourteenth century in a brochure published at the time of the discovery, the writer seems to have overestimated its age by some two hundred years.

During the sixteenth century the house was occupied by the Ferror or Ferrier family, of whom Robert Ferror was Sheriff in 1507 and Mayor in 1526 and 1536. Later occupants were John Syer in 1783, and James Nosworthy, jeweller and toymaker, in 1802 and in 1811, when he was one of the councillors for the Great Wymer ward.

It seems rather a coincidence that while both the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of Scotland are now doing business on the south side of Queen Street, the Bank of England once had premises almost opposite. In 1825 a craze for speculation, brought about by the country’s increased prosperity, came to a head. By November of that year reaction had set in resulting in several banks suspending payment; in Norwich “Messrs. Gurney’s are said to have staid the plague by merely placing a pile of £1 notes on the counter”. Early in 1826 the Government moved to prevent a recurrence, proposing among other things that the Bank of England should open branches in different parts of the country. One such branch was accordingly opened in Norwich; in a house on the north side of what later became known as Old Bank of England Court. Its life was comparatively brief, however; not proving very successful, it closed its doors in 1852.

Also here at one time, and now commemorated by a small plaque, was the first headquarters of the Norwich Art Circle, who celebrated their centenary in 1985. An invitation to their first exhibition, held here in September 1885, depicted a view of the front of the building.

Only the ground floor of the original house remains, the upper part having been demolished just before the Second World War when Bally and Haldinstein’s shoe factory was extended. This left an unsightly gap in an otherwise stately Georgian square, but after the factory moved to its present site on Hall Road in 1969 the house was reconstructed. Although the design of its facade differs from that of the original it nevertheless harmonises well with its older surroundings.

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