St Stephen’s Street
St Stephen’s Street
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In the 1920s and 1930s certain small parts of the wall were revealed as opportunity allowed, notably at St Benedict’s and Ber Street. The construction of the inner link road and the widening of St Stephen’s Street in the early 1960s, however, provided the opportunity of opening up considerable length along Chapel Field Road, together with a smaller section incorporating a tower at Queens Road. |
The question of widening St Stephen’s Street itself, first arose in 1915, the Great Eastern Railway Company offering the City Council the sum of £10,000 towards the project. The railway company wanted a grander approach to its terminus Victoria Station (now the site of Sainsbury’s). The offer, however, was refused (perhaps because of the war) and in consequence the following year Victoria Station was closed to all except goods traffic, passenger trains being diverted to the main terminus at Thorpe. With the increase in motor transport in the 1930s the Council began studying the problem in earnest, but agreement could never be reached on the question of which side should be set back. On the east side stood the mediaeval Boar’s Head inn and Crown and Angel public house, while on the west were two large department stores. In the end the air raids of April 1942, solved the problem, the old thatched Boar’s Head inn among many neighbouring buildings providing a vulnerable target. |
It was the late Mr Ernest Kent who first drew attention to an interesting external feature, a stone bracket that supported the first-floor jetty at the right-hand end. On it was a coat-of-arms which Mr Kent made out to be “Argent, on a fesse Azure, three eagles displayed Or (for Clere) impaling Argent, a cross moline Gules (for Uvedale)”. From this it was deduced that the dwelling was erected sometime between 1434 and 1492 as a town house, possibly on the site of an older building belonging to the Uvedales, for it was just inside the city walls and on the highway leading to their country estates at Tacolneston and Wymondham. Although the original town house of the Cleres was sited at the Old Barge inn, King Street, the family was for long connected with St Stephen’s district, as is shown by the register of that parish. The upper storey of the building with its two substantial dormers was severely damaged in the blitz of April 1942, and the whole house was demolished four years later. The stone bracket with the coat-of-arms was transferred for safe keeping to one of the city’s museums. |
Details concerning houses previously on this site and their occupants were given in East Anglian Notes and Queries Volume 9 by “A. E. R.”, in a footnote to a paper on the account books of St Stephen’s Church and parish. Among the earliest recorded owners was Thomas de Bokenham, Mayor in 1479 and 1486, who sold the property to Robert de Burgh, Sheriff in 1494 and Mayor in 1504. One of these probably built part of the cellars, which survived until 1942, while the latter built the Tudor mansion. Thomas Petingale bought the property in 1547 and sold it to Nicholas Baker, Alderman, who held it from 1576 to 1626. Here there was a break in succession; built into the property was a stone inscribed with the initial W. / J. s F. and the date 1668, which is thought to be about the time the Tudor house was much altered. Later owners or occupiers included Francis Tavernier, “Oylman” of London, Alderman Goodman and Parrott Hanger, all in the eighteenth century, followed by Colonel Knipe Gobbett and then the Barwells. The site was later occupied for many years by the Saxone Shoe shop, and now Superdrug’s. After all these losses, the City of Norwich Plan - 1945 found the street to have “few buildings of outstanding merit” and proposed that it be provided with dual carriageways and pavements fifteen feet wide - the new buildings to be controlled in so far as materials, height and design were concerned. In 1953 a start was made by widening on the east side at the city end, the whole scheme being completed in the early 1960s, leaving nothing to attract the historically minded. Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2004 |
With the road from London leading
directly to St Stephen’s Street the gate here was
perhaps the most important in the city’s
circumvallation. Certainly it was the most imposing in
appearance, with a tower on either side surmounted by
battlements, and with the city arms above the outside
arch. What an attraction to antiquarians it would have
been were it standing today, though it would have posed a
problem for present- day traffic. It was, however,
demolished in 1793; no price was charged, the work being
done in exchange for the materials of the gate alone.
This “price” included the paving of twenty-two
yards of the carriageway and finishing an abutment to the
wall, although £20 would be allowed if rusticated piers
were introduced.
On 20th October 1908, the council
requested the City Committee to make a report on the
condition of the old city wall with the possibility of
further exposing it to view. Seven months earlier, when
some worn-out cottages were being demolished in Coburg
Street, a small section of the city wall upon which these
houses had been built had collapsed, and it may have been
this that prompted the request for a survey. City
Engineer Arthur Collins presented his report in 1910, but
four years later with the advent of war matters had to be
held in abeyance.
The latter, known as the eighth
tower, had stood in the back garden of No 8 Queens
Road with only its upper doorway and rear wall visible to
the public from Bull Lane. For a while its fate hung in
the balance, one councillor describing it as “a bit
of old rubbish”, but something of a compromise was
reached: part of the adjoining wall had to go but the
tower was allowed to remain, albeit robbed of the smooth
flint facing of its upper stage. A report published in
1964 mentions the brick vault supporting the first floor
and a doorway to the wall walk on the west side.
Subsequent vandalism unfortunately seems to have damaged
if not destroyed the two fourteenth-century gun ports
also described.
Another wartime casualty was the Crown
and Angel inn. This interesting old building,
comprising Nos 41 and 43, originally formed one large
house but was divided in its later years into two, the
smaller portion becoming part of the inn and the larger
(No 43) Page and Son’s corn store.
Also lost was 12 St Stephen’s
Street, the premises of Barwell’s the wine
merchants. This contained a little-known feature, a
magnificent seventeenth century plaster ceiling. This
ceiling had existed in the house formerly occupying the
site, but was considered to be of such importance that
when the premises were rebuilt towards the end of the
nineteenth century it was raised several feet and a new
room built around it. Beams adorned with a moulding of
oak leaves divided it into eight rectangular panels, four
of which displayed large cornucopias figured in high
relief. Of two others, each had a female figure, one
holding an anchor symbolising Hope, while the
other carried a book and a lamp (probably for Knowledge).
The remaining two panels were blank.