Surrey Street
Surrey Street
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the property was known as the Greyhound, the sign apparently being changed to that of the Boar’s Head when Mr John Norgate acquired the property about the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was then that the arms of the Norgates of Cawston were inserted; their crest is a demi-boar rampant. Until about 1870 the portion of the building that faced St Stephen’s was a grocery store. Acquired by Diver and Son Ltd early in the twentieth century, the old inn was carefully restored by them on the reconstruction of the company in 1925, but it met a fiery end in April 1942. |
For centuries weaving was one of the city’s staple industries. In the fourteenth century artisans from Bruges and Ghent began to settle in the city because, it is said, of the initiative of Philippa, Queen of Edward III. Towards the close of the sixteenth century the industry was considerably augmented by a “great wave” of Flemings seeking refuge from the religious persecution of the Duke of Alva, followed a century later by French Protestants escaping from the consequences of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. |
Unfortunately the optimism, expressed by these building proved unfounded, due at least in part to the city’s considerable distance from any coalfields. Nevertheless, in 1901 some 60 men and 643 women were still being described as silk weavers, although it was then feared that in the process of time the old textile industry would disappear from Norwich completely. In fact the large silk mills of Courtaulds (formerly Francis Hinde and Hardy) were demolished only in February 1983, having closed down two years previously. For reminders of this once-great Norwich industry one must now visit the Bridewell museum to see examples of the old looms, with specimens of their products, or inspect the main doors of the City Hall, where a bronze plaque, one of eighteen by James Woodforde ARA, depicts a girl operating a power loom. |
On 30th July 1940, at about 6 a.m. a single enemy raider dropped a stick of bombs, one of which exploded outside these houses, blowing the portico into fragments. The pieces were carefully gathered up, leading to the discovery of a number of pencilled inscriptions, one of which said “James Rump, carpenter and joiner...Norwich, made this portico in the year 1821”. There were other, earlier inscriptions which Mr Wearing, in a letter to the Press, thought could be explained only by some portions having been adopted from an earlier structure, but he would certainly have put the date of the portico as earlier than 1821. The pieces, stored in a builder’s yard pending reconstruction after the war, were unfortunately destroyed by fire during a later raid on the city. Text and photographs copyright George Plunkett |
Much could be written with regard to
the Boar’s Head inn at the corner of Surrey
Street and St Stephen’s. Sufficient here to refer to
the historian Francis Blomefield, who said that
“this was the ancient house where the Brownes lived,
as Richard Browne, Alderman in 1456”, adding that
the Brownes’ arms impaling those of the
grocers’ and mercers’ companies were to be seen
in the windows there. Richard was a man of considerable
note, being Sheriff in 1449, Mayor in 1454 and burgess in
Parliament in 1459. He died in 1461, his wife three years
later, and both were buried in St Crouch’s Church,
the site of which lies close to the lower end of Exchange
Street.
On the opposite corner of St
Stephen’s and Surrey Street was a four-storeyed
building of red brick, some two and a half centuries old,
occupied before the Second World War by Gerald
Spalding’s stationer’s shop and post
office. A prominent stringcourse of moulded brick divided
the first and second floors, but the chief feature was
the long range of weavers’ or thoroughlight windows,
which lit the top floor on the Surrey Street side. This
lost its glass and was boarded up in 1942, but the
building escaped the serious damage suffered by its
neighbours. The whole building was, however, taken down
some years later when a start was made on widening St
Stephen’s Street.
From this time onwards the production
of silk fabrics was greatly increased. A comprehensive
account of the Norfolk and Norwich silk industry
communicated by Walter Rudd will be found in Norfolk
Archaeology Volume 21. Rudd gives a vivid description
of its flourishing state during the eighteenth century,
followed by an account of its general decline when from
1812 yarns spun by power looms began coming from the
Yorkshire mills. Nevertheless, despite the fact that
about 1830 the East India Company ceased to export
Norwich camlets to the east, sufficient business remained
to inspire the building in 1836 of the great yarn factory
in St James’s (now Jarrold’s printing works)
and the following year of the Albion Mills in King Street
(now being converted into flats).
Further up Surrey Street, on the west
side at the corner of All Saints Green, stands a terrace
of houses (Nos 29-35) four storeys high, built by the
Norwich architect Thomas Ivory in 1761. The adjoining
pair, Nos 25-27 (demolished in 1963), while
similar to and perfectly harmonising with those
adjoining, had a number of minor differences which led
Stanley Wearing to believe that Ivory’s son William
took some share in their execution. One of the most
obvious of these differences was to be seen by comparing
the porticos, that of 25-27 being much more ornate than
those of the earlier houses.