As I've related a tedious number of times before (usually in a Monty Python cod North-Yorkshire accent), when I were a wee lad we 'ad no mains drainage and just a cold tap in't back yard. Mam cooked on't old black-leaded range, we 'ad a wood-fired copper in't corner for 'eating water an'a tin bath hung oop on a nail on't wall. Sundays were bath day an' we'd all tek turns in't tin bath in't middle o't back room floor.
Wust of all was th' outside privy … no light at night unless yer thought ter bring a candle, 'twas a haunt of darkness and spiders an' a terror to me wee self.
Mercifully the council came to the rescue in the early 1960s, putting in mains drainage on our street and building us a kitchen and bathroom extension, albeit in half-brick flettons and a metal framed window so the frost formed indoors and the walls ran with damp.
Conditions in Norwich before the slum clearance of the 1930s were far worse. Grasping landlords who had no intention of ever repairing their buildings crammed more and more poor families into what was a filthy, disease-ridden midden.
From the late 1920s through the 1930s - right up to the the start of the war in 1939 - Norwich City Council compulsorily purchased the sadly neglected housing from the landowners / landlords, at the same time building the council estates that ring Norwich, the houses of which are still far and away of a higher standard than even today's private spec. developers' housing. Solid masonry walls, proper cut timber roofs, large gardens for growing fruit and veg and keeping small livestock. A paradise compared to their old slum housing. And of course the rents were set by the council at what folk could afford; nobody was going to get evicted after a rate hike. Yay Socialism.
The inevitable result of allowing private landlords.
Whole neighbourhoods were flattened. An old friend (hi, Lynne) spent her childhood in a warren of slum streets just down the hill from the Castle and the cattle market. They lived in a one-up/one-down back-to-back terrace but she remembers it as being idyllic. Her gang of kids could run down to the river for a paddle and just up the hill behind her house were the meadows where the cattle drovers would let their horses graze on market days and let the kids feed them apples and carrots. All long gone to office blocks and multi-storey car parks … Alas and alack.
In 1923 the Norwich Society was formed as a pressure group to try to preserve as much of historical Norwich as they could. Founded by Architects and antiquarians, they managed to save the fourteenth century Bishop's Bridge, the Cathedral Close, the Castle and the Guildhall among others.
In the 1930s they somehow managed to rescue Elm Hill and get it removed from the slum clearance plans. See above and below. They carefully restored it and it is now one of the finest mediæval streets in Europe (though it's often closed down for filming some movie or TV show)
If only there had been funds available to save more. Even with great chunks of its heart ripped out Norwich is still one of the finest mediæval cities on this or any other planet.
Other odd things happened here in the twentieth century … The yellow building in the first of the coloured Elm Hill pics above was where Mister and Mrs Beethoven lived with Chopper Mozart in Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Python was only one of many to film in Norwich and Norfolk. Basically, we were cheap and we have a LOT of stately homes for period dramas. We also had some weird location filming here … Full Metal Jacket's sequences of helicopter gunships shooting up Vietnamese villages were filmed on the Norfolk Broads, home of Old Dive. Ditto, lots of Red Dwarf episodes … Yay!
One last look at the 2000 Millennium works done at the castle to assist wheelchair access before we go.
"It's GLASS … I tell you it'll be completely invisible!"
Never trust an Architect. Mercifully this was not us, but a rival who shall remain nameless, bless 'em.
The Great Glass Elevator … That's how not to do it; next time we shall look at how to do it properly.
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.
3 comments:
The black & whites are picturesque, but I imagine it was no fun living there. The redone buildings, however, are gorgeous. I'd love to wander those cobbled streets and dream.
Those streets and buildings are there waiting for you, Petrea. Once Covid is manageable and the castle is finished you can wander from the castle down to Elm Hill and the river along the route of the old GC Lane and all the way be surrounded by mediæval buildings. Gerry and me often wander (or at least pre-Covid) that route on a Sunday as there's a craft brewery at Blackfriars about half-way down which we rather like to stop at and sit outside enjoying the historical overload (and the beer).
It sounds idyllic. I can't wait to join you.
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