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

The archives at Norwich Castle contain much that is splendid including Boardman's working drawings for the museum. First up, however, these must be either the worst-located benches in the history of human beings needing a sit down or a very nicely located seating arrangement for an extremely niche type of fetishist …

Bench seating beneath the eight great poop chutes of Norwich Castle. 1962.

Courtesy Norfolk Museums Service.

Sure, the view across the Great Cockey valley toward the market place and City Hall is spectacular, but if anyone decides they need to use the garderobes … 

Good old gratuitous grossness; we've not had a lot since mediæval times so I couldn't resist that one.

Now we shall wander downhill from the castle to Old Bank of England Court and the architectural drawing offices of Edward Boardman (and later of Old Dive). How much prettier the old drawings were than our modern computer degenerated versions …

Here is Boardman's scheme for his new stair up to the Bigod Tower (I've just last week - end of Feb, 2021 - issued my own drawings to the stonemasons for correcting this back to the original alignment). All Boardman drawings courtesy of Norfolk Museums Service.

 

An enlargement from the previous picture showing - along with a lovely ink-spatter - it being signed off by the committee, including Lord Walsingham and John Gurney, before it all went wrong.

 

Boardman's signature and date on another of the working drawings.

Boardman's scheme for the great stone arcade, atop the remains of the Norman spine wall.

Note again that John Gurney signs this one off.

Ah, if only John Gurney hadn't toddled of the the south of France for his health and got earthquaked to death … At least Boardman got the roof and the arcade built before the penny-pinchers ruined his grand scheme.

The keep interior in 1932.

 

Late mediæval Snap Dragon carnival costume atop a large box. 1932.

As these two photos demonstrate, the walkway proved useless as a museum gallery space. In 1970, Boardman's grandson H. C. Boardman wrote to the Eastern Daily Press, describing his grandfather's intention to reconstruct the principal floor and the Great Hall in the keep to help visitors understand the keep as it existed in the mediæval period. The campaign slowly grew and by the time Old Dive returned to Norwich from the dreary wastes of Westminster the idea of Royal Palace Reborn was beginning to come together.

We have nearly come to the end of our nine-hundred-year journey through the history of Norwich Castle but there's still a little more to come before Part the Eleventh - Royal Palace Reborn.

 

In  the meantime, here's Norwich Castle and the whacking great crane taken at sunset from my office last Thursday (25th Feb 2021).

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