Old Dive's History of Norwich Castle - Part the Eleventh - 1121 Revisited - Chapter VII - A Bridge Not Too Far

Gosh, it's been nine-hundred-and-fifty-three years since Herbert the Ditcher turned up with his shovel and started work on Norwich Castle for good old William the Bastard.

Nine-hundred-and-fifty-three years will soon turn to nine-hundred-and-fifty-four years and still we've not finished it …

This week's exciting goings on include - as promised - a man holding a piece of plywood.

Some more crash deck covering the archæology in the basement.

 

 

 Does he drop it on his foot? Of course he does; that's what site safety boots are for …

And as I also promised you a man in a hole, here he is; I'm a man of my word, even if that word is usually plucked from my Roget's Profanisaurus.

Oooooh … a brick wall! Be still my beating heart.

Those of you who have heroically endured the history so far will recall the hideous monstrosity of a gaol that Sir John Soane erected against the east wall of the keep. You may also recall my sweary rant about the damage he caused and how he patched it up with cheap brickwork, the git.

Local hero William Wilkins the Younger tore out most of Soane's execrable wen of a building but this bit got left in place. See the chalk marks on the wall?

Well they mark the dimensions of the arched piece of arcading that Hugh is measuring in this photo. The wide arcade was once a window before being bricked up by Soane and re-faced by Salvin.

It will soon be opened up again as it will form the level wheelchair access to the Great Hall at the end of Gabriela's waffy glass bridge.

The glass bridge is the kind of beige arched contraption that will glom onto the newly re-opened arched arcading, shown in a rather confusing cutaway of Old Dive's working model above.

Gabriela is designing all the modern stuff outside the keep, replacing the 1960s crap; the keep and everything inside it being my domain. The junction between the bridge (and all the other new works abutting the keep) and the Norman fabric is designed so that, if the bridge gets demolished in a hundred-and-odd years time, it will leave no trace on the keep walls.

All drawings & 3D renderings copyright F+M.

Here's Gabi's design for the glass bridge. She's brilliant at the modern stuff while crusty Old Dive is the historic buildings expert and I'm very protective of "my" keep!

Anyhoo … here's what it might look like crossing the glass bridge from the café area toward the keep.
 

I'll finish today with a classic Tom Gauld cartoon which I think he must have drawn especially for our Petrea, whose voice coach looks to be very versatile …

And speaking of Anubis …