Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Tenth - From Gaol to Museum - Chapter I

Enter Edward Boardman sporting a superhero cape with his undercrackers worn outside his trousers.

Back in the days of drawing boards I did a seven year stint working in Boardman's old drawing office on Old Bank of England Court and I swear it hadn't been redecorated since the 1870s.

Brown … very brown.

I still have one of the massive, cast-iron framed drawing boards in my garage.  It was a leaving prezzie but I had to hire a truck and borrow some hefty lads to get it home.

Photo courtesy Old Dive.

When the city bought Norwich Castle from the county in 1884, Edward Boardman already had an idea of what to do with it. He was on the committee of the old and cramped Norwich Museum and had been busily sketching plans for a vastly larger Norwich Castle Museum before it was even envisaged by the city.

Anyhoo, once he heard of the sale Boardman bearded banker and Norwich mayor John Gurney and hassled him to take a look at his proposals.

Boardman's sand plans, courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

Metallica fans can start playing Enter Sandman now …

This proved kind of tricky as the man was totally blind, so Boardman used his noggin and smeared glue all over the wall thicknesses on his floor plans, sprinkled sand over them and shook them clean. Not unlike the bottom of a budgie's cage but with feely walls.

It seemed to do the trick as - after a quick feel - Gurney supported Boardman's proposals and offered £5,000 toward the project. Just as well as the city had no other takers for the castle keep and intended to let it go to ruin if none could be found. Boardman and Gurney: heroes.

Some sixty years earlier, Norwich's first museum had been housed in a few small rooms on the Haymarket and was not open to the public, being more a place where the rich and leisured could show off their personal collection to subscription-paying "gentlemen members".

The Paston Treasures painting at the Castle Museum.

Photo courtesy Old Dive.

Local nobility like the Paston Family would have exhibited the results of their planet-wide looting sprees. A couple of years back the museum managed to track down most of the items in the Paston Treasures painting for an exhibition linked to it.

That first museum then moved to what is now Jarrold's Office Equipment store and opened to the 'better class' of paying public and thence to a new building constructed on the site of the ruined Duke's Palace (now St.Andrew's multi-storey car park). The public were allowed in for free to celebrate Victoria and Albert's wedding and the museum became a success.

In October 1886 a committee was formed for the new Castle Museum, consisting of twenty "gentlemen" chaired by Lord Walsingham and including John Gurney. Boardman was officially appointed as Architect and the future looked decidedly rosy.

We are fortunate enough to have a photographic record of Boardman's work on site.

Here you can see one of the last of Soane's internal prison walls about to be demolished.

All Boardman photographs courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

While the committee bickered as committees do, Boardman's first task was to strip the keep of the last remains of Soane's internal prison cell blocks. These had been condemned shortly before the castle ceased to be a prison due to settlement cracks and fear of the castle mound itself collapsing.

Edward Boardman poses atop the remains of the spine wall.

The dark arched thing above him is the fireplace in the King's Chamber;

the keep floor is down where the foreground guys are standing.

Fortunately for all concerned, Boardman discovered that good old arrogant neo-classicist Sir John Soane had built his four storey high cell blocks with no foundations, the brickwork being laid straight onto planks placed on the ground. Classy …

Around eight feet of mediæval poo being excavated by hand.

Turns out Soane had not bothered to dig as he wanted to save money, simply placing his boards on top of the surface he found inside the keep. Boardman's workmen shifted around eight feet of filth before they found the original floor of the keep. They also discovered the well and cleared it out to incorporate into the new museum. The mound itself was not collapsing, merely the eight feet of mediæval poo under Soane's cell blocks.

The brickwork on the upper levels is from the 1707 repairs.

Demolition was well under way and Boardman also gutted the panopticon prison wings, making structural improvements and replacing the slate roofs with glazing to light the proposed galleries.

Some on the committee had objected to re-using the panopicon prison buildings as they considered the association with criminals and debtors to be in poor taste. Luckily Boardman slapped them down as the panopticon turned out to be the ideal layout for a multi-gallery museum. He also retained the heating ducts, just as we are re-using them today.

Some of Salvin's re-facing left a little to be desired.

The outside of the keep needed a little TLC, too, so Boardman's stonemasons did the necessary. All in all, things were going very well indeed.

Next time: a tragic death fucks things up royally, plus more of Boardman's lovely 1880s photographs, showing the new works under way.

Sources:

The Annual Register: A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year: Edmund Burke (ed) and successors: 1758 to Present

Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004 

Norwich Mercury Archives.

Norwich Records Office: Slum Clearance Photograph Archive.

The Oxford History of England: Volume XIV:"England, 1870 to 1914" Sir Robert Ensor (ed): 1936

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XV:"English History, 1914 to 1945" A.J.P.Taylor (ed): 1965 

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Ninth - Prison and Reform - Chapter VII

On 20th June 1837 the nation celebrated the accession to the throne of a small, tubby and exceedingly randy young woman.

"Live long and prosper."

Vicky via the interweb, doing the other half of that children's finger trick that we saw James the Second attempt earlier … later appropriated by Leonard Nimoy.

There followed sixty-four years of rampant desecration of architectural elegance and its replacement with tacky bling and Puginesque kitsch, the degradation of pure Gothic that was "Victorian Gothick", the craze for fake "clan" tartan (thank you, Sir Walter Scott), the invention of the horror that is the modern Christmas (thank you, Albert), the exploitation of a third of the planet under the boot-heel of the British Empire and probably most importantly the re-naming of the common penis ring as "The Prince Albert" in honour of his impressive feats of keeping up with his queen's prodigious appetites.

Puginesque Kitsch.

The hideous Buxton Memorial Fountain in the garden south of Victoria Tower.

Courtesy Old Dive.

 

Overwrought Victorian Gothick.

Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin desecrate William Rufus' Palace of Westminster.

Courtesy Old Dive.
 

You may get the impression that I've got it in for the Victorians and you'd be absolutely right. They ripped the heart out of our mediæval towns and cities, they desecrated our churches but above all they had terrible, TERRIBLE taste. Not a whit of elegance in the whole damned bunch of 'em. Least of all in the royal couple themselves. Over-ornamentation, kitsch, clutter and a fondness for the cheap and nasty. Sheesh!

Georgian interior - Fournier Street, Spitalfields - Elegant Perfection.

Photo courtesy Old Dive.

 

Georgian interior - Strangers' Hall, Norwich - Elegant Perfection.

Courtesy Old Dive again.

Victorian interior - Dennis Severs' House - Spitalfields.

Nuff said?

Courtesy Old Dive.
 

Victorian "taste" … subtle as a gas-mask full of gorilla-fart.

Anyhoo … to Norwich Castle …

In the 1840s, Soane's multi-storey cell blocks were still standing in the keep but were fast falling to pieces, so the top storey was completely removed as unsafe. During archæological excavations under the rotunda the original, hypocaust-style heating ducts for Wilkin's panopticon gaol were rediscovered and which we are retaining to house our own services. There was one big boiler house and the heated air was ducted in two-foot square clay tunnels first to the governor's house, then the guardrooms and finally to the prison wings by which time it would have been of much diminished comfort. There was no heating in the keep cells.

An early photograph showing the remains of Soane's cell blocks within the keep (sans top floor) just prior to their demolition. Courtesy Norfolk Museum's Service.

Then in 1869, those prudish spoilsport Victorians deprived the citizens of their most popular form of entertainment by banning public executions.

Public executions at Newgate (I couldn't find any of Norwich), via the interweb.

Public executions at Norwich Castle (after they stopped burning folk at the stake in the Lollards' Pit and the Castle Ditches) were carried out on a gallows erected across the lower end of the bridge between the two gatehouses. They were hugely popular, with thousands attending, pushing past the guards to grab souvenirs from the corpses as they were cut down, be it a hank of hair, a scrap of clothing or a fingernail. 

Then everybody would retire to the nearest alehouses and celebrate a grand day out. Those pesky Victorians spoiled everbody's fun. They moved the executions to a private drop in the north-east of the prison yards. 

If you poke about in the little alleys and yards and store-rooms at Norwich Castle (which you're not supposed to do), you can find lots of these. The headstones of prisoners executed inside the prison and buried alongside the main prison wall. Photos courtesy Old Dive.

Those hanged in public prior to 1869 were all buried outside the south face of the keep and we had to dig a large test pit into the mound here, carefully avoiding the prisoners' corpses (and the plague pit bodies underneath) as part of our site investigations.

FUN! Protective clothing and inoculation shots ahoy!

Once the museum is open again, post-Covid, if you wander through our lovely new glazed atrium and on across the rotunda, you'll come to a large gallery straight ahead. Walk through this and you'll find yourself in a smaller, square room with side galleries leading off. Turn right and enter the east side gallery and you'll be standing where the execution yard was set up. Lots of ghosties in there for the supernaturally-minded visitor! Strangely, the museum folk don't tend to advertise the old gallows location. Shame on them as children would love it.

The joys of working in a crapitalist society, via the interweb.

Victorian Britain saw the Industrial Revolution reach its zenith of capitalist inequality. Dickens' "Hard Times" gives a grim but accurate picture of the terrible poverty wreaked by a tiny minority of grasping industrial factory owners such as Bounderby of Coketown. The aristocracy and the 'new money', today's one-percenters, oppressed and exploited the poor into grinding poverty, workhouses, filth, squalor, disease and early graves.

What with pesky child-labour reforms restricting children to a ten-hour day of hard labour in the mills and mines and adult workers campaigning for a twelve-hour working day and a six-day week with a day off at Christmas it was becoming trickier to make obscene profits from the labour of the English poor.

The Victorians now outsourced their labour to where it was even cheaper, the far-flung outposts of Empire, taking over the East India Company in 1858 and leaving millions in our sceptred isle destitute, starving and yet breeding faster than cholera could kill them. The workhouses and debtors' prisons were overflowing and Norwich Castle's model prison bursting at the seams, especially after 1877 when the nationalisation of prisons shut down all the private gaols and bridewells, transferring their wretched inhabitants to the already overcrowded County Gaols.

What was to be done?

The crapitalists took off their top hats and scratched their heads  …

(a) Economic reform and a fairer society? or …

(b) Keep on exploiting the underclass and build more prisons?

Well you can guess the answer to that one.

Fortunately for Norwich there was a huge tract of empty land behind Britannia Barracks up on St.James' Hill. 

Britannia Barracks, with a grand view of the city from atop St.James' Hill.

Courtesy Old Dive.

On this land a large, modern (for the 1880s) prison was built, relieving Norwich Castle of its near six centuries of gaol duty. After months of haggling, the City Corporation bought the castle and the old gaol from the county in 1884 for a discount price of £5,000 and decided that it was high time a new use was found for it.

Next time, Part the Tenth and … ENTER BOARDMAN! (Metallica fans, start your air guitars now).

Sources:

The Annual Register: A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year: Edmund Burke (ed) and successors: 1758 to Present

Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002 

Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996

Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004 

Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981

Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XI "The Whig Supremacy: 1714 - 1760" Sir George Clark (ed): 1934 

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XII "The Reign of George III: 1760 - 1815" J. Steven-Watson (ed): 1960

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XIII "The Age of Reform: 1815 - 1870" Sir. Llewellyn Woodward (ed): 1938

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Ninth - Prison and Reform - Chapter VI

Tricksy buggers, those Georgians …

My late, great and deeply lamented boss and mentor Hugh making a startling discovery. March, 2018.

Photo courtesy Old Dive.

Look carefully at the photo above. The stonework Hugh is measuring is from the re-facing work to the east elevation carried out by Francis Stone and mason James Watson in 1827.

The stonework directly behind Hugh is from Stone and Watson's repairs to a section of the wall which Soane had destroyed to erect his fantasy castle gaol.

The section of weathered stonework to the lower left is original facing from the William Rufus / Henry the First 1094 to 1121 royal palace build and was still in good enough condition to be left in situ and not messed with.

Part of the east façade of Norwich Castle, courtesy Old Dive.

It's amazing what you don't notice when you're not looking for it … Such as how every bay of every elevation of Norwich Castle is  either very subtly or totally outrageously different to all the others (trust me on this, I've measured 'em all). Or that Stone and Watson were sneaky little buggers …

I imagine the conversation going much like this:

Stone: "Well, master mason; how do you suggest we repair this wall with the budget we've got?"

Watson: "In my opinion, sir, we can repair it with proper ashlar or … we can cheat."

And cheat they did!

Etching showing the Salvin re-facing in progress on the south elevation.

The gatehouse is the new Wilkins entrance and the east face has been neatened up so this is about as accurate a depiction of the method as can be found.

At Hugh's prompting I had a good rummage in the castle archives and discovered the etching above, the only known representation we have of the re-facing works in progress. It shows Salvin and Watson's workmen re-facing in lifts of around six feet.

Salvin and Watson's re-facing above the south-west postern door.

Courtesy Old Dive.

Here is what Hugh discovered: the ashlar joints in the re-facing work are totally fake. Take a look at the above … you can make out the tiny thin joints between the actual facing slabs which are very large. The "jointing" for the fake ashlar is formed by raking out lines in the stone facing and filling them with dark-coloured mortar.

Packers behind thin stone facings.

Courtesy Old Dive.

Continuing Hugh's investigations after his sad passing, I hi-jacked a cherry picker and poked around in some otherwise inaccessible places. I discovered that the Stone / Watson / Salvin facings were extremely thin and backed with cheap packer stones and in places even brickwork. This method allowed the re-facing to be completed extremely speedily and I dare say some of the savings got stuffed into the bulging pockets of the sneaky Georgian cheats.

Amazingly, no-one at the castle had any idea that this method was used, even though they see the stonework every day, so we had to re-map the elevations to show the actual joints and the fake joints. It makes our own work in restoring the royal palace quite a bit easier so three cheers for those tricksy little buggers.

EXCEPT …

Grrr … Much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

Whether 'twas Salvin or whether 'twas Watson I know not, which is a shame as I don't know whose grave to shit on … SOMEbody decided to replace the elegant, thirteen-merlon-a-side Norman battlements with a disastrously inappropriate new design. The new battlements are way too large, have only nine merlons per side and so do not match the arcaded bays below, and they project out in a gross manner never used by Norman masons but popular these days with Disney World. Much to my regret we are not allowed to change them back. Damn Damn Damn Damn Damn!

Next time: Victorian variations.

Sources:

The Annual Register: A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year: Edmund Burke (ed) and successors: 1758 to Present

Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002 

Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996

Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004 

Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981

Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XI "The Whig Supremacy: 1714 - 1760" Sir George Clark (ed): 1934 

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XII "The Reign of George III: 1760 - 1815" J. Steven-Watson (ed): 1960

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XIII "The Age of Reform: 1815 - 1870" Sir. Llewellyn Woodward (ed): 1938

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Ninth - Prison and Reform - Chapter V

In 1827, Francis Stone, the County Surveyor repaired the east elevation of the keep (where Soane's building had been demolished) and re-faced it in Bath stone to the original design using the skills of stonemason James Watson (of whom more next time).

View of the east face of the castle with the new Shire Hall from the hill across the valley where our office would eventually be built in 1969.

Collection of Old Dive.

The lovingly repaired and glowing east elevation naturally made the rest of the keep look a tad tatty and smoke-blackened and so the proposal was made to repair and re-face the other three sides. Francis Stone passed away in 1835 and - chastened by their previous error in letting neo-classicist Soane desecrate the castle - an authority on mediæval military architecture, one Anthony Salvin was appointed to carry on Stone's repair work and to reface the rest of the castle where it was too far degraded to mend.

Cue much spuffling pomposity in the letters page of the Norwich Mercury. The Rev. E. T. Daniell, prominent in the late period of the Norwich School of Artists wrote to the Mercury in protest:

"With unnecessary, misguided and hastening zeal, these 'Mock-Normans' are pegging away at that which is all but as durable as the odium which will attend the measure (whatever that meant), and foisting in its stead the abomination that will perpetuate its shame!"

The artists and antiquarians were up in arms, demanding that the castle keep remain a "picturesque ruin" to rot away and fall down over the centuries in a fashionably early-nineteenth-century "Romantic" manner. Fortunately they didn't get their way …

Prior to the ranty Rev. Daniell joining their ranks, the early Norwich School artists, such as J. S. Cotman and John Crome, together with topographical artist Henry Ninham left us something of incalculable value: a wonderful record of the tumbledown timber-framed glory that was Georgian Norwich.

St. Benedict's Street (now a Bohemian arty, crafty, musical place) by Henry Ninham.

All these are taken from Cotman's descendant's book, "Old Norwich" published by Jarrold's of Norwich in 1961.

 

Another Ninham of the alley linking the Haymarket with the Market Place.

St. Peter Mancroft is on the left.

 

Ninham again … this time the side alley of the Old Barge Inn. Now Dragon Hall (see posts passim), with Anne Boleyn's grandfather's house on the left (mercifully both of these buildings survive).

 

Yet another Henry Ninham, this time of Cowgate (now rather pompously re-named Whitefriar's Street).

I first got fascinated by Ninham when I was a kid and our rare treat was a meal in Jarrold's then top floor restaurant. The table-mats were all of Ninham's topographical drawings.

 

Last one for now. This is a view from about where the fish and chip stall sits in the market, gazing over the Great Cockey Valley toward the eight great poop-chutes of Norwich Castle.

Most of these buildings and views would be long gone by the time photography came around so they form a pictorial record that can be kept in the head while wandering the modern streets.

Next time, Hugh and Old Dive turn detective in an attempt to figure out how Salvin re-faced the keep well under budget. Some admirable Georgian sneakiness is involved.

Sources:

The Annual Register: A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year: Edmund Burke (ed) and successors: 1758 to Present

Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002 

Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996

Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004 

Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981

Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XI "The Whig Supremacy: 1714 - 1760" Sir George Clark (ed): 1934 

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XII "The Reign of George III: 1760 - 1815" J. Steven-Watson (ed): 1960

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XIII "The Age of Reform: 1815 - 1870" Sir. Llewellyn Woodward (ed): 1938

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Ninth - Prison and Reform - Chapter IV

For the new prison, the younger William Wilkins proposed a "panopticon" plan, developed by Socialist and reformer Jeremy Bentham (an all-round good egg who advocated equal rights for women, the abolition of slavery, the end of the death penalty and the decriminalisation of homosexual acts … it's taken us two-hundred years but we've just about managed three out of four; just equal rights - and wages - for women to go … at least in this country).

Wilkins' design for the new prison. The keep is on the lower left.

The cock and balls shape at the bottom is the bridge and the footprint of the old guard towers.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

Wilkins' panopticon design featured wings radiating out from a central hub so that guards in the hub could potentially see every prisoner at all times. This meant that far fewer guards were needed per cell block wing and that larger prisons could be built, something desperately needed after the Napoleonic Wars, with unpaid de-mobbed soldiers roving in armed bands across the countryside.

At the same time, Wilkins built a new Shire Hall at the base of the Castle Mound to replace the old one demolished by Soane. An underground passage links the keep and the Shire Hall, still in use today.

Spiffy old postcard from the interweb.

Behind the Shire Hall is the main prison wall with the panopticon wings inside it.

Note also the old tram tracks across Castle Meadow.

In 1824, the company Bramah's of London proposed a design for the first treadmill, used for the prisoners to grind corn. In 1838 this was moved to a yard outside and re-geared for hard labour punishment rather than corn-grinding.

This currently sits in my plan chest, though I dare say the Castle will ask for it back at some point.

On the left is the drawing for Westminster Prison, on the right, that for Norwich Castle.

 

Here's a larger version of the cross section. The prisoner would stand on the platform to the left and grab the handrail marked 'D' and start treading; each revolution triggered the cute little bell on the lower right. You can see additional timber reinforcement sketched in at the top.

 

Here's an elevation from behind the prisoners' position. The three on the left show the doors locked shut with the peepholes for the warders; the three on the right show the treadmill platform with the doors not shown; the 'D' grab handles at the top, the treads in the middle and the platform at the bottom.

 

After several repairs, the treadmill was rebuilt in 1844 as a two-storey job running the full length of a new treadmill building.

I've not found the working drawings for that one, but here's a similar set-up from the interweb.

If only Jeremy Bentham had been successful in his call for decriminalising homosexual acts, poor old Oscar Wilde would have been spared the treadmill in Reading Gaol.

Unfortunately we've not been asked to build a new treadmill as part of our castle works; parties of schoolchildren would love having a go on one and help to power the castle. Just a thought …

Next time, the Norwich School of Artists get revolting and we get to look at some pretty pictures.

Sources:

The Annual Register: A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year: Edmund Burke (ed) and successors: 1758 to Present

Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002 

Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996

Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004 

Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981

Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XI "The Whig Supremacy: 1714 - 1760" Sir George Clark (ed): 1934 

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XII "The Reign of George III: 1760 - 1815" J. Steven-Watson (ed): 1960

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XIII "The Age of Reform: 1815 - 1870" Sir. Llewellyn Woodward (ed): 1938

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Ninth - Prison and Reform - Chapter III

Outside of Norwich all manner of exciting things were going on under the four Georges: the American War of Independence, The French Revolution, The Napoleonic Wars, but we're going to ignore all of that and concentrate on two tetchy old men slagging one another off in print. You can't say I don't get my priorities right.

William Wilkins the Elder, via the interweb.

Enter, in the red corner, stern of visage, slightly out of focus and wearing a marble toga Norwich Architect William Wilkins the Elder (1751 - 1815), presenting a paper in 1795 to the Society of Antiquaries, entertainingly excoriating Soane's new design at the castle. From it I quote:

"The east front, which was the grand entrance, is grossly mutilated and entirely hidden by an additional building that appears to have no kind of connection with it … this unfortunate addition has totally destroyed its symmetry."

Here, in the margin of his own copy, Soane had angrily scribbled, "A most gross falsehood and wilful misrepresentation!"

Ooooooh, tetchy …

Wilkins goes on, " … it is now bereaved of its ancient beauty under pretense of giving more internal convenience for the accommodation of its miserable tenants. The interior has been gutted also and equally ill-managed."

Soane rather cowardly waited until Wilkins had died before taking up his handbag and swinging it at the corpse of his critic. In his "Memoires of the Professional Life of an Architect" (1835) he grabs the Petty Bitchiness Trophy with both hands …

"Mister William Wilkins, of Norwich, an able stuccatore (plasterer … this from a bricklayer's son), who had acquired some facility in drawing, and a smattering of Gothic lore, fancying himself an Architect, feeling much disappointed at not having been intrusted with the alterations and additions to the Castle, gave vent to his feelings in unfounded criticisms …"

John Soane you be-atch! Thought you'd got the last word in, did ya, you pompous prick? Well I do love a poetic denouement and William Wilkins the Elder's son William Wilkins the Younger now stuffed a brick inside his handbag and SMACK-DOWN! Soane was left spuffling with apoplectic rage and a neon "LOSER" sign on his hat.

William Wilkins the Younger, when he was … er … older. Via the interweb.

Step forth the forces of righteousness … Norwich's own wonder woman, the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, aided in parliament by Jeremy Bentham and John Howard. Their demands for prison reform had rendered Soane's design obsolete within fourteen years of its being built.

The city wanted a future-proof prison to take into account the new reforms and the Visiting Justices at Norwich set a competition in 1819 - 20 for a new prison to replace Soane's gaol.

The winning Architect was … you've guessed it … one William Wilkins the Younger, son of the Elder, who promptly (and I would imagine with some degree of glee) demolished Soane's ghastly extension, much to Sir John's purple-faced rage.

Of course in these enlightened times Architects would never behave with such immature petulance … er …

Next time we take a look at the new prison and a delightful machine installed within.

Sources:

The Annual Register: A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year: Edmund Burke (ed) and successors: 1758 to Present

Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002 

Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996

Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004 

Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981

Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XI "The Whig Supremacy: 1714 - 1760" Sir George Clark (ed): 1934 

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XII "The Reign of George III: 1760 - 1815" J. Steven-Watson (ed): 1960

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XIII "The Age of Reform: 1815 - 1870" Sir. Llewellyn Woodward (ed): 1938

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Ninth - Prison and Reform - Chapter II

And suddenly we're back talking about Norwich Castle again! Away with wars and kings dying of poo-waterfalls and good Christian folk barbecuing one another. At last the County of Norfolk has had the sense to purchase the castle from the Crown and spend the groats to make it a viable prison.

And what else do they do? They keep records! No more toiling through the Pipe Rolls to see how much was spent on nails and timber; we have proper account books, measured plans and drawings. Antiquarians and early archæologists appear on the scene and make my job a whole lot easier.

Sir John Soane, via the interweb.

The brief for the new County Gaol was to use the existing castle keep to house male felons with a new prison building to the east to house debtors and women prisoners.

"Hokay …" said the County Gaol Committee, "now we need an architect. Who's good at prisons?"

Step forth, young John Soane, bricklayer's son on the rise. Sir John's biography states, "Like all young architects starting up in office he was 'taking in washing' to supplement his income." A situation with which all of us architects are only too familiar.

Young John had begun his career at age fourteen helping to prepare "descriptions and estimates" for the rebuilding of Newgate Gaol in London after the Gordon Riots (a splendid hubbub, hoo-hah and great big brawl … do look up the Gordon Riots [though not on Wikipedia, you can do better than that] and be sure to read Barnaby Rudge for a rip-roaring Dickensian riot).

Anyhoo … John was young, he had experience of prison work and above all he was cheap. He got the job. The only trouble was, young master Soane was training in neo-classicism and went on to become one of our greatest neo-classicist architects. What he knew bugger all about was Norman castles. He also went on to become one of the world's greatest looters of cultural artifacts and his house - now a museum - is a showcase for the very worst of the British Empire's theft of anything worth taking.

Soane's sketch section for the new prison; the keep on the right and the new extension on the left.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service. 

 

Soane's plan of the Ground Floor.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

 

Soane's plan of the First Floor (that's second floor if you're in the US).

Soane's absurd "castle-style" extension.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

This is what happens when you give a Norman castle to a neo-classicist. First Soane gutted the keep, ripping out all the makeshift cells to clear the way for a multi-storey, U-shaped cell block. Regrettably he also ripped out a lot of the original Norman features, an act of vandalism that forces me to brand him a git.

He demolished the old Shire House and built his new fantasy castle against the east wall of the keep. He originally wanted to demolish the Bigod Tower, flat-roofed porch extensions being insufficiently neo-classical, but mercifully was told to retain it. However, the defended stair leading to the tower was destroyed as part of Soane's plan, having stood firm since 1136.

A strangely incongruous engraving showing Soane's execrable County Gaol extension built in 1789 - 1793 attached to the old, un-repaired keep.

Looks like someone had an old etching plate of Norwich Castle and added Soane's extension to it.

Collection of Old Dive.

 

 

Before we get too bogged down in architectural drawings, none of these chapters have been complete without a good old-fashioned handbag fight and so it's about time that we kicked one off …

Next up: The Soane v. Wilkins Handbag Smack-down. Picture two old men in Mexican wrestling masks and spandex bashing one another over the head with folding chairs and you get some taste of what's to come … or possibly not.

Sources:

The Annual Register: A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year: Edmund Burke (ed) and successors: 1758 to Present

Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002 

Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996

Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004 

Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981

Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983

The Oxford History of England: Volume XI "The Whig Supremacy: 1714 - 1760" Sir George Clark (ed): 1934 

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XII "The Reign of George III: 1760 - 1815" J. Steven-Watson (ed): 1960

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XIII "The Age of Reform: 1815 - 1870" Sir. Llewellyn Woodward (ed): 1938

Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Ninth - Prison and Reform - Chapter I

Here come the Hanoverians: George, George, George and George, the third of whom spent much of the time believing that he was a penguin and made of glass.

Under his rule, our American Colonies declared themselves independent and stated that all men are created equal … though it turned out that some were more equal than others …

Norwich Castle sadly sans battlements. Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

Under Queen Anne the gaping cracks in the external keep walls at Norwich Castle had been patched up using stone taken from the battlements, the inside faces of the now roofless ruin being reinforced with cheap brickwork. Now, as shown above, bushes sprouted from the unprotected tops of the walls and rain fell onto the timber and brick shacks and lean-to buildings housing the prisoners. The insides of the walls were blackened with soot, much of which remains to this day. We are leaving it as it is to help tell the story of the keep.

The Norwich Worsted weavers were under pressure again, this time from cheap cotton calico imported by the East India Company. In 1719 and 1720 the weavers of Spitalfields and Norwich fought back.

Blomefield: "In 1720, on the 20th day of Sept, a great riot happened, under pretence of destroying callicoes, as pernicious to the trade of Norwich Stuffs; the rabble cutting several gowns in pieces on women's backs, entering shops to seize all callicoes found there &c. and beating the constables that endeavoured to apprehend them, opposing the sheriff's power to such a degree, that the artillery company was forced to be raised, upon the approach of which they instantly dispersed."

Not the Calico Riots but fun nonetheless from that inexhaustible source of mirth the interweb.

In the Spitalfields riots, the Huguenot silk-weavers had been similarly put out of work by the cheap calicos and one Dorothy Orwell claimed "she was assaulted by a multitude of weavers in Red-Lion-Fields in Hoxton, who tore, cut and pull'd off her gown and petticoat by violence, threatened her with vile language and left her naked in the fields."

Things continued to escalate until in 1721 the Calico Act was passed, banning men and women from wearing and using calico for clothing and in household interiors. Five-pound fines for wearing calico and twenty-pound fines for selling it were strictly enforced. For once in our history, people power forced the government to act against unfettered free trade and the greed of the East India Company. Hasn't happened since, mind you …

While George the First spent most of his time at home in Hanover and George the Second concentrated on tupping a monstrous menagerie of mistresses, the Whig parliament got on with running the country and generally made a pretty decent shot of it.

While George the Second was otherwise occupied further repairs were made to Norwich Castle in 1746 through 1749, stitching breaches in the west and north walls of the keep. As part of these works one Matthew Brettingham replaced the missing battlements in the style of the originals.

Anyhoo, in 1760 along came George the Penguin who refused to pay for sufficient repairs to maintain the castle as a viable prison, so in 1780 Norwich Castle and its remaining grounds were purchased from the Mad King by the County. In 1788 one Thomas Dove was tasked with carrying out a survey of the rotting remains prior to some proper investment.

The east elevation from Dove's survey, showing the covered stair to the Bigod Tower in front of the keep and the Shire Hall to the right, rebuilt over Edward the First's palace.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

The ground floor plan from Dove's survey, showing the chapel (top-left), the felons' yard in the centre of the keep and the debtors' yard to the south of the skewed wall.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

 

At this point we must bid a fond farewell to our constant companion and guide through the centuries, the wonderful Francis Blomefield, he 'of the many commas' as we whizz by in our time machine, watching him dwindle into the past as he publishes his great work between 1753 and 1775.

Fortunately for us, in 1758, the publisher Robert Dodsley signed the great Enlightenment intellectual Edmund Burke to write and edit the Annual Register, which covers parliamentary debates, state papers, news, reviews, poetry and general gossip, from the salacious to the horrific to the downright strange for each year from then until now (it's still going strong).

 

 The first printed and published copy of the Declaration of Colonial Uppitiness.

From the State Papers in the Annual Register of 1776.

Above it is the 1775 Declaration that got the Tories in such a tizz that they lost us America.

Courtesy Old Dive.

 

I'm an avid … okay, "obsessive" … collector of the Annual Register and have dozens of tatty and coverless old reading copies from the first hundred years or so purchased for a pittance. My favourite years I get professionally re-bound in mottled calf with hand-marbled endpapers in 18th century style, being a pretentious git. They shall replace Blomefield as my primary historical source from here on in.

Beware, however, should you wish to get hold of a copy with the Declaration of Independence in it.  Due to its popularity across the Pond it has become wildly expensive. I was fortunate enough to find a disbound copy held together with … er … duct tape (see "Pimp My Uppity Colonials"). The amount of restoration work and rebinding was still waaaay cheaper than buying a decent copy.

Anyhoo … back to the castle next time.

Sources:

The Annual Register: A View of the History, Politicks and Literature of the Year: Edmund Burke (ed) and successors: 1758 to Present.

For the final time, alas: Francis Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: published 1753 to 1775 

Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society

East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part II: c.1345 to Modern: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009

The Printed Plans of Norwich 1558-1840, A Carto-Bibliography: Raymond Frostick: 2002 

Norwich Cathedral - Church, City and Diocese: 1096 - 1996: Various Eds. 1996

Norwich Since 1550: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004 

Norwich - The Growth of a City: Barbara Green & Rachel M R Young: Norfolk Museums Service: 1981

Norwich Houses Before 1700: Vernacular Architecture, Vol 14: 1983

The Oxford History of England: Volume X "The Later Stuarts: 1660-1714 " Basil Williams (ed): 1939

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XI "The Whig Supremacy: 1714 - 1760" Sir George Clark (ed): 1934 

 

The Oxford History of England: Volume XII "The Reign of George III: 1760 - 1815" J. Steven-Watson (ed): 1960