Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Eighth - From Tudor Torture to Georgian Gaol - Chapter XI

Welcome to the eighteenth century …

Norwich is still the second richest city in the realm (yet to be overtaken by the slave-traders of Bristol), with the Worsted industry back up and booming (again, yet to be overtaken by the factory looms of the Industrial Revolution in the north and the midlands). Happy days for the merchants and wealthy landowners; not so happy for the working poor, whose wages were still being "fixed by their employers in the Quarter Sessions at the lowest figures possible to sustain life".

Alas and alack for poor old Norwich Castle, however. Still owned by the crown, Mary having died shortly after the Glorious Revolution and William the Third not giving a damn, along came Anne who cared even less.

Not Queen Anne at all, but an excellently grumpy Olivia Colman, via the interweb.

In 1707 the Norwich Justices of the Peace - who were supposedly responsible for the upkeep of the gaol - declared it in such bad repair that many prisoners were escaping, concluding the the castle was "not fitting to detaining prisoners in."

By this time the keep roof had gone and part of the first floor had also been demolished to create a kind of open yard. The majority of the prisoners were kept in appalling conditions in the surviving rooms of the ground floor and in ramshackle, makeshift sheds erected against the walls.

Between 1707 and 1709, the city managed to screw almost thirteen-hundred pounds from the queen for repairs. "Large cracks, from the top down to the midst, and lower in the east and south sides of the keep were repaired with stone from the removed battlements."

The main spine wall had fallen and was at this stage cut down to where is remains today with "thin red bricks" used to repair the upper parts of the keep (much cheaper than stone).

One of Edward Boardman's prison demolition photos from the 1880s.

The man in the centre with the pickaxe is standing on the top of the demolished spine wall.

You can see the cheap red brick repairs to the upper levels.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

The photograph above, though taken almost two-hundred years later, shows the gaol pretty much as it would have looked during Anne's reign. Add a few huts and sheds and some miserable looking prisoners and you get the picture.

In 1711 an Act was passed at Norwich "to erect work-houses, and a court of guardians to take care of the poor; by this Act, the whole county of the city of Norwich was made one parish as to the poor, which are maintained and provided for in the work-houses in the city, one of which is at the New-hall, another in the remains of the Duke's palace (and we know what a stinking pismire that was), and the third, commonly called the Infirmary, is on the right hand of the road out of St. Austin's-gates."

Blomefield goes on at considerable (but historically necessary) length about the setting up, rules and administration of the workhouses should you be so sick of the pandemic that you decide to bore yourself to death.

Cracks in the west elevation, to be repaired using stone from demolishing the battlements.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

In the few remaining rooms of the first floor, including the chapel, now repaired with cheap brickwork, debtors were imprisoned who could afford the appropriate fees. After Anne passed irritably from this world to the next, George the First attempted to make the gaol a going concern again.

"In 1729, a debtor or criminal prisoner would have had to pay the cost of two shillings a week for a bed to himself, a fee which was still in operation twenty-eight years later. If the bed was shared by two people the cost lowered to sixpence, while three sharing would pay only threepence each.

Debtors also had the advantage of sometimes obtaining food from friends or family and were often the only prisoners able to pay the fees charged by the gaoler for nearly all other privileges, such as receiving visitors, furniture, bed-clothes, and even removal of chains or leg-irons.

Those poorer prisoners who could not afford food were provided with meagre rations of bread and water, paid for by the county."

And so Part the Eighth of our tale comes to an end. Norwich Castle had endured sieges, fire and long neglect, starting life as the most magnificent royal palace in Europe, by the time of the Georges it was a roofless ruin, housing the very dregs of society. 

The age of the workhouse, the slum, the Industrial Revolution and the triumph of capitalist greed over reason had begun. For Norwich Castle, however, things were about to take a turn for the better, as we shall see in Part the Ninth - Prison and Reform.

Sources:

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

Narcissus Luttrell's Diaries (ongoing transcription project by Old Dive)

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 Cathedral Close: Roberta Gilchrist: 2005 

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