Origin

The capital of the Iceni tribe was a settlement located near to the village of Caistor St Edmund on the River Tas about 5 mi (8 km) to the south of modern Norwich.^[10] After an uprising led by Boudica in about 60 AD, the Caistor area became the Roman capital of East Anglia named Venta Icenorum, literally "marketplace of the Iceni".^[10] This fell into disuse about 450.

The Anglo-Saxons settled the site of the modern city some time between the 5th and 7th centuries,^[11] founding the towns of Northwic ("North Farm"), from which Norwich takes its name,^[12] and Westwic (at Norwich-over-the-Water) and a lesser settlement at Thorpe. Norwich became settled as a town in the 10th century and then became a prominent centre of East Anglian trade and commerce.

Early English and Norman conquest

Norwich Cathedral is one of the great Norman buildings of England

It is possible that three separate early Anglo-Saxon settlements, one north of the river and two either side on the south, joined as they grew; or that a single Anglo-Saxon settlement, north of the river, emerged in the mid-7th century after the abandonment of the previous three. The ancient city was a thriving centre for trade and commerce in East Anglia in 1004 when it was raided and burnt by Swein Forkbeard, the Viking king of Denmark. Mercian coins and shards of pottery from the Rhineland dating from the 8th century suggest that long-distance trade was happening long before this. Between 924 and 939, Norwich became fully established as a town, with its own mint. The word Norvic appears on coins across Europe minted during this period, in the reign of King Athelstan. The Vikings were a strong cultural influence in Norwich for 40 to 50 years at the end of the 9th century, setting up an Anglo-Scandinavian district near the north end of present-day King Street. At the time of the Norman Conquest, the city was one of the largest in England. The Domesday Book states that it had approximately 25 churches and a population of between 5,000 and 10,000. It also records the site of an Anglo-Saxon church in Tombland, the site of the Saxon market place and the later Norman cathedral. Norwich continued to be a major centre for trade, described officially as the Port of Norwich. Quern stones and other artefacts from Scandinavia and the Rhineland have been found during excavations in Norwich city centre. These date from the 11th century onwards.

Norwich Castle's 12th-century keep

Norwich Castle was founded soon after the Norman Conquest.^[13] The Domesday Book records that 98 Saxon homes were demolished to make way for the castle.^[14] The Normans established a new focus of settlement around the Castle and the area to the west of it: this became known as the "New" or "French" borough, centred on the Normans' own market place, which survives today as Norwich Market, the largest permanent undercover market in Europe.^[4]

In 1096, Herbert de Losinga, Bishop of Thetford, began construction of Norwich Cathedral. The chief building material for the Cathedral was limestone, imported from Caen in Normandy. To transport the building stone to the site, a canal was cut from the river (from the site of present-day Pulls Ferry) up to the east wall. Herbert de Losinga then moved his See there, to what became the cathedral church for the Diocese of Norwich. The Bishop of Norwich still signs himself Norvic. Norwich received a royal charter from Henry II in 1158, and another from Richard the Lionheart in 1194. After a riot in the city in 1274, Norwich has the distinction of being the only complete English city to be excommunicated by the Pope.^[15]

Middle Ages

The first recorded presence of Jews in Norwich is 1134.^[16] In 1144, the Jews of Norwich were falsely accused of ritual murder after a boy (William of Norwich) was found dead with stab wounds.^[16] William acquired the status of martyr and was subsequently canonised. Pilgrims made offerings to a shrine at the Cathedral (largely finished by 1140) up to the 16th century, but the records suggest there were few of them.^[17] In 1174, Norwich was sacked by the Flemings. In February 1190, all the Jews of Norwich were massacred except for a few who found refuge in the castle. At the site of a medieval well, the bones of 17 individuals, including 11 children, were found in 2004 by workers preparing the ground for construction of a Norwich shopping centre. The remains were determined by forensic scientists to be most probably the remains of such murdered Jews, and a DNA expert determined that the victims were all related so that they probably came from one Ashkenazi Jewish family.^[18] The study of the remains featured in an episode of the BBC television documentary series History Cold Case.^[19] A research paper from 30 August 2022 confirmed the remains were most likely Ashkenazi Jews. The paper found that many of the victims had certain medical disorders most often seen in Ashkenazi communities, suggesting that a population bottleneck had occurred among Ashkenazim before the 12th century.^[20] This challenged traditional views among historians that the bottleneck had happened between the 14th and 16th centuries.^[21][22]

St Ethelbert's Gate at Tombland was built as penance for riots which occurred in the 1270s

In 1216, the castle fell to Louis, Dauphin of France, and Hildebrand's Hospital was founded, followed ten years later by the Franciscan Friary and Dominican Friary. The Great Hospital dates from 1249 and the College of St Mary in the Field from 1250. In 1256, Whitefriars was founded. In 1266 the city was sacked by the "Disinherited". It has the distinction of being the only English city ever to be excommunicated, following a riot between citizens and monks in 1274.^[15] As a penance, St Ethelbert's Gate, one of the entrances to the cathedral priory, was constructed by Norwich citizens. In 1278 the Cathedral received final consecration. In 1290 the city flooded. Austin Friary was founded in that year.

From 1280 to 1340 the city walls were built. At around 2+1⁄2 mi (4.0 km), these walls, along with the river, enclosed a larger area than that of the City of London. However, when the city walls were constructed it was made illegal to build outside them, inhibiting the expansion of the city. Part of these walls remains standing today.

Around this time, the city was made a county corporate and became the seat of one of the most densely populated and prosperous counties of England. The engine of trade was wool from Norfolk's sheepwalks. Wool made England rich, and the staple port of Norwich "in her state doth stand With towns of high'st regard the fourth of all the land", as Michael Drayton noted in Poly-Olbion (1612). The wealth generated by the wool trade throughout the Middle Ages financed the construction of many fine churches, so that Norwich still has more medieval churches than any other city in Western Europe north of the Alps. Throughout this period Norwich established wide-ranging trading links with other parts of Europe, its markets stretching from Scandinavia to Spain and the city housing a Hanseatic warehouse. To organise and control its exports to the Low Countries, Great Yarmouth, as the port for Norwich, was designated one of the staple ports under the terms of the 1353 Statute of the Staple.

Early modern period (1485–1640)

Hand-in-hand with the wool industry, this key religious centre experienced a Reformation significantly different from that in other parts of England. The magistracy in Tudor Norwich unusually found ways of managing religious discord whilst maintaining civic harmony.^[23]

Mousehold Heath, Norwich by Norfolk-based artist John Crome

The summer of 1549 saw an unprecedented rebellion in Norfolk. Unlike popular challenges elsewhere in the Tudor period, it appears to have been Protestant in nature. For several weeks, rebels led by Robert Kett camped outside Norwich on Mousehold Heath and took control of the city on 29 July 1549 with the support of many of its poorer inhabitants. Kett's Rebellion was particularly in response to the enclosure of land by landlords, leaving peasants with nowhere to graze their animals, and the general abuses of power by the nobility. The uprising ended on 27 August when the rebels were defeated by an army. Kett was convicted of treason and hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle.^[24][25][26]

Unusually in England, the rebellion divided the city and appears to have linked Protestantism with the plight of the urban poor. In the case of Norwich, this process was underscored later by the arrival of Dutch and Flemish "Strangers" fleeing persecution from the Catholics and eventually numbering as many as one-third of the city's population.^[27] Large numbers of such exiles came to the city, especially Flemish Protestants from the Westkwartier ("Western Quarter"), a region in the Southern Netherlands where the first Calvinist fires of the Dutch Revolt had spread. Inhabitants of Ypres, in particular, chose Norwich above other destinations.^[28] Perhaps in response to Kett, Norwich became the first provincial city to initiate compulsory payments for a civic scheme of poor relief, which it has been claimed led to its wider introduction, forming the basis of the later Elizabethan Poor Law of 1597–1598.^[29]

Norwich has traditionally been the home of various minorities, notably Flemish and Belgian Walloon communities in the 16th and 17th centuries. The great "stranger" immigration of 1567 brought a substantial Flemish and Walloon community of Protestant weavers to Norwich, where they are said to have been made welcome.^[30] The merchant's house which was their earliest base in the city — now a museum — is still known as Strangers' Hall. It seems that the strangers integrated into the local community without much animosity, at least among the business fraternity, who had the most to gain from their skills. Their arrival in Norwich boosted trade with mainland Europe and fostered a movement towards religious reform and radical politics in the city. By contrast, after being persecuted by the Anglican church for his Puritan beliefs, Michael Metcalf, a 17th-century Norwich weaver, fled the city and settled in Dedham, Massachusetts.^[31]

The Norwich Canary was first introduced into England by Flemings fleeing from Spanish persecution in the 16th century. Along with their advanced techniques in textile working, they brought pet canaries, which they began to breed locally, eventually becoming in the 20th century a mascot of the city and the emblem of its football club, Norwich City F.C.: "The Canaries".

Printing was introduced to the city in 1567 by Anthony de Solempne, one of the strangers, but it did not take root and had died out by about 1572.^[32]

Norwich's coat of arms was first recorded in 1562. It is described as: Gules a Castle triple-towered and domed Argent in base a Lion passant guardant [or Leopard] Or. The castle is supposed to represent Norwich Castle and the lion, taken from the Royal Arms of England, may have been granted by King Edward III.^[33]

Civil War to Victorian era

In the English Civil War, across the Eastern Counties, Oliver Cromwell's powerful Eastern Association was eventually dominant. However, to begin with, there had been a large element of Royalist sympathy within Norwich, which seems to have experienced a continuity of its two-sided political tradition throughout the period. Bishop Matthew Wren was a forceful supporter of Charles I. Nonetheless, Parliamentary recruitment took hold. The strong Royalist party was stifled by a lack of commitment from the aldermen and isolation from Royalist-held regions.^[34] Serious inter-factional disturbances culminated in "The Great Blow" of 1648 when Parliamentary forces tried to quell a Royalist riot. The latter's gunpowder was set off by accident in the city centre, causing mayhem. According to Hopper,^[35] the explosion "ranks among the largest of the century". Stoutly defended though East Anglia was by the Parliamentary army, there were said to have been pubs in Norwich where the king's health was still drunk and the name of the Protector sung to ribald verse.

At the cost of some discomfort to the Mayor, the moderate Joseph Hall was targeted because of his position as Bishop of Norwich.

Norwich was marked in the period after the Restoration of 1660 and the ensuing century by a golden age of its cloth industry, comparable only to those in the West Country and Yorkshire,^[36] but unlike other cloth-manufacturing regions, Norwich weaving brought greater urbanisation, mainly concentrated in the surrounds of the city itself, creating an urban society, with features such as leisure time, alehouses and other public forums of debate and argument.^[37]

Founded in 1771, the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital cared for the city's poor and sick. It closed in 2003 after services were moved to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

Norwich in the late 17th century was riven politically. Churchman Humphrey Prideaux described "two factions, Whig and Tory, and both contend for their way with the utmost violence."^[38] Nor did the city accept the outcome of the 1688 Glorious Revolution with a unified voice. The pre-eminent citizen, Bishop William Lloyd, would not take the oaths of allegiance to the new monarchs. One report has it that in 1704 the landlord of Fowler's alehouse "with a glass of beer in hand, went down on his knees and drank a health to James the third, wishing the Crowne [sic] well and settled on his head."^[39]

Writing of the early 18th century, Pound describes the city's rich cultural life, the winter theatre season, the festivities accompanying the summer assizes, and other popular entertainments. Norwich was the wealthiest town in England, with a sophisticated system of poor relief, and a large influx of foreign refugees.^[40] Despite severe outbreaks of plague, the city had a population of almost 30,000. This made Norwich unique in England, although there were some 50 cities of similar size in Europe. In some, like Lyon and Dresden, this was, as in the case of Norwich, linked to an important proto-industry, such as textiles or china pottery, in some, such as Vienna, Madrid and Dublin, to the city's status as an administrative capital, and in some such as Antwerp, Marseilles and Cologne to a position on an important maritime or river trade route.^{[lower-alpha 1]}

In 1716, at a play at the New Inn, the Pretender was cheered and the audience booed and hissed every time King George's name was mentioned. In 1722 supporters of the king were said to be "hiss'd at and curst as they go in the streets," and in 1731 "a Tory mobb, in a great body, went through several parts of this city, in a riotous manner, cursing and abusing such as they knew to be friends of the government."^{[lower-alpha 2]} However the Whigs gradually gained control and by the 1720s they had successfully petitioned Parliament to allow all adult males working in the textile industry to take up the freedom, on the correct assumption that they would vote Whig. But it had the effect of boosting the city's popular Jacobitism, says Knights, and contests of the kind described continued in Norwich well into a period in which political stability had been discerned at a national level. The city's Jacobitism perhaps only ended with 1745, well after it had ceased to be a significant movement outside Scotland.^[39] Despite the Highlanders reaching Derby and Norwich citizens mustering themselves into an association to protect the city, some Tories refused to join in, and the vestry of St Peter Mancroft resolved that it would not ring its bells to summon the defence. Still, it was the end of the road for Norwich Jacobites, and the Whigs organised a notable celebration after the Battle of Culloden.^[39]

The events of this period illustrate how Norwich had a strong tradition of popular protest favouring Church and Stuarts and attached to the street and alehouse. Knights tells how in 1716 the mayoral election had ended in a riot, with both sides throwing "brick-ends and great paving stones" at each other.^[39] A renowned Jacobite watering-hole, the Blue Bell Inn (nowadays The Bell Hotel), owned in the early 18th century by the high-church Helwys family, became the central rendezvous of the Norwich Revolution Society in the 1790s.^[41]

Britain's first provincial newspaper, the Norwich Post, appeared in 1701. By 1726 there were rival Whig and Tory presses, and as early as mid-century, three-quarters of the males in some parishes were literate.^{[lower-alpha 3]} The Norwich municipal library claims an excellent collection of these newspapers, also a folio collection of scrapbooks on 18th-century Norwich politics, which Knights says are "valuable and important". Norwich alehouses had 281 clubs and societies meeting in them in 1701, and at least 138 more were formed before 1758. The Theatre Royal opened in 1758, alongside the city's stage productions in inns and puppet shows in rowdy alehouses.^[42][43] In 1750 Norwich could boast nine booksellers and after 1780 a "growing number of circulating and subscription libraries".^[44] Knights 2004 says: "[All this] made for a lively political culture, in which independence from governmental lines was particularly strong, evident in campaigns against the war with America and for reform... in which trade and the impact of war with Revolutionary France were key ingredients. The open and contestable structure of local government, the press, the clubs and societies, and dissent all ensured that politics overlapped with communities bound by economics, religion, ideology and print in a world in which public opinion could not be ignored."^[39]

The Octagon Chapel

Amid this metropolitan culture, the city burghers had built a sophisticated political structure. Freemen, who had the right to trade and to vote at elections, numbered about 2,000 in 1690, rising to over 3,300 by the mid-1730s. With growth partly the result of political manipulation, their numbers did at one point reach one-third of the adult male population.^[39] This was notoriously the age of "rotten" and "pocket" boroughs and Norwich was unusual in having such a high proportion of its citizens able to vote. "Of the political centres where the Jacobin propaganda had penetrated most deeply only Norwich and Nottingham had a franchise deep enough to allow radicals to make use of the electoral process."^[45] "Apart from London, Norwich was probably still the largest of those boroughs which were democratically governed," says Jewson 1975, describing other towns under the control of a single fiefdom. In Norwich, he says, a powerful Anglican establishment, symbolised by the Cathedral and the great church of St Peter Mancroft was matched by scarcely less powerful congeries of Dissenters headed by the wealthy literate body [of Unitarians] worshipping at the Octagon Chapel.^[46]

Map of Norwich 1781

In the middle of political disorders of the late 18th century, Norwich intellectual life flourished. Harriet Martineau wrote of the city's literati of the period, including such people as William Taylor, one of England's first scholars of German. The city "boasted of her intellectual supper-parties, where, amidst a pedantry which would now make laughter hold both his sides, there was much that was pleasant and salutary: and finally she called herself The Athens of England."^[47]

St Peter Mancroft

Despite Norwich's longstanding industrial prosperity, by the 1790s its wool trade had begun facing intense competition, at first from Yorkshire woollens and then, increasingly, from Lancashire cotton. The effects were aggravated by the loss of continental markets after Britain went to war with France in 1793.^{[lower-alpha 4]} The early 19th century saw de-industrialisation accompanied by bitter squabbles. The 1820s were marked by wage cuts and personal recrimination against owners. So amid the rich commercial and cultural heritage of its recent past, Norwich suffered in the 1790s from incipient decline exacerbated by a serious trade recession.

As early in the war as 1793, a major city manufacturer and government supporter, Robert Harvey, complained of low order books, languid trade and doubling of the poor rate.^{[lower-alpha 5]} Like many of their Norwich forebears, the hungry poor took their complaints onto the streets. Hayes describes a meeting of 200 people in a Norwich public house, where "Citizen Stanhope" spoke.^{[lower-alpha 6]} The gathering "[roared its] applause at Stanhope's declaration that the Ministers unless they changed their policy, deserved to have their heads brought to the block; – and if there was a people still in England, the event might turn out to be so." Hayes says that "the outbreak of war, in bringing the worsted manufacture almost to a standstill and so plunging the mass of the Norwich weavers into sudden distress made it almost inevitable that a crude appeal to working-class resentment should take the place of a temperate process of education which the earliest reformers had intended."^[48]

At this period opposition to Pitt's government and their war came – in their case almost unanimously – from a circle of radical Dissenting intellectuals of interest in their own right. They included the Rigby, Taylor, Aitkin, Barbold, and Alderson families – all Unitarians - and some of the Quaker Gurneys (one of whose girls, Elizabeth, was later, under her married name of Fry, to become a noted campaigner for prison reform). Their activities included visits to revolutionary France (before the execution of Louis XVI), the earliest British research into German literature, studies on medical science, petitioning for parliamentary reform, and publishing a highbrow literary magazine called "The Cabinet", in 1795. Their blend of politics, religion and social campaigning was seen by Pitt and Windham as suspicious, prompting Pitt to denounce Norwich as "the Jacobin city". Edmund Burke attacked John Gurney in print for sponsoring anti-war protests. In the 1790s, Norwich was second only to London as an active intellectual centre in England, and that it did not regain that level of prominence until the University of East Anglia was established in the late 20th century.^[49]

By 1795, it was not just the Norwich rabble who were causing the government concern. In April of that year, the Norwich Patriotic Society was founded, its manifesto declaring "that the great end of civil society was general happiness; that every individual had a right to share in the government."^[50] In December the price of bread reached a new peak, and in May 1796, when William Windham was forced to seek re-election after his appointment as war secretary, he only just held his seat.^{[lower-alpha 7]} Amid the disorder and violence that was such a common feature of Norwich election campaigns, it was only by the narrowest margin that the radical Bartlett Gurney ("Peace and Gurney – No More War – No more Barley Bread") failed to unseat him.^[51]

Though informed by issues of recent national importance, the bipartisan political culture of Norwich in the 1790s cannot be divorced from local tradition. Two features stand out from a political continuum of three centuries. The first is a dichotomous power balance. From at least the time of the Reformation, Norwich was recorded as a "two-party city". In the mid-16th century, the weaving parishes fell under the control of opposition forces, as Kett's rebels held the north of the river, in support of poor clothworkers. Indeed there seems to be a case for saying that with this tradition of two-sided disputation, the city had steadily developed an infrastructure, evident in its many cultural and institutional networks of politics, religion, society, news media and the arts, whereby argument could be managed short of outright confrontation. Indeed, at a time of hunger and tension on the Norwich streets, with alehouse crowds ready to have "a Minister's head brought to the block", the Anglican and Dissenting clergy exerted themselves to conduct a collegial dialogue, seeking common ground and reinforcing the well-mannered civic tradition of earlier periods.

Surrey House, historic headquarters of the Norwich Union insurance company

In 1797 Thomas Bignold, a 36-year-old wine merchant and banker founded the first Norwich Union Society. Some years earlier, when he moved from Kent to Norwich, Bignold had been unable to find anyone willing to insure him against the threat from highwaymen. With the entrepreneurial thought that nothing was impossible, and aware that in a city built largely of wood the threat of fire was uppermost in people's minds, Bignold formed the "Norwich Union Society for the Insurance of Houses, Stock and Merchandise from Fire". The new business, which became known as the Norwich Union Fire Insurance Office, was a "mutual" enterprise. Norwich Union would later become the country's largest insurance giant.

From earliest times, Norwich was a textile centre. In the 1780s the manufacture of Norwich shawls became an important industry^[52] and remained so for nearly a hundred years. The shawls were a high-quality fashion product and rivalled those of other towns such as Paisley, which had entered shawl manufacturing in about 1805, some 20 or more years after Norwich. With changes in women's fashion in the later Victorian period, the popularity of shawls declined and eventually manufacture ceased. Examples of Norwich shawls are now sought after by collectors of textiles.

Norwich's geographical isolation was such that until 1845, when a railway link was established, it was often quicker to travel to Amsterdam by boat than to London. The railway was introduced to Norwich by Morton Peto, who also built a line to Great Yarmouth. From 1808 to 1814, Norwich had a station in the shutter telegraph chain that connected the Admiralty in London to its naval ships in the port of Great Yarmouth. A permanent military presence was established in the city with the completion of Britannia Barracks in 1897.^[53] The Bethel Street and Cattle Market Street drill halls were built around the same time.^[54]

20th century

Waterloo Park, one of six parks built during the 1930s to help alleviate unemployment in the city

In the early 20th century, Norwich still had several major manufacturing industries. Among them were the large-scale and bespoke manufacture of shoes (for example the Start-rite and Van Dal brands, Bowhill & Elliott and Cheney & Sons Ltd respectively), clothing, joinery (including the cabinet makers and furniture retailer Arthur Brett and Sons, which continues in business in the 21st century), structural engineering, and aircraft design and manufacture. Notable employers included Boulton & Paul, Barnards (iron founders and inventors of machine-produced wire netting), and the electrical engineers Laurence Scott and Electromotors.

Norwich also has a long association with chocolate making, mainly through the local firm of Caley's, which began as a manufacturer and bottler of mineral water and later diversified into chocolate and Christmas crackers. The Caley's cracker-manufacturing business was taken over by Tom Smith in 1953,^[55] and the Norwich factory in Salhouse Road closed in 1998. Caley's was acquired by Mackintosh in the 1930s and merged with Rowntree's in 1969 to become Rowntree-Mackintosh. Finally, it was bought by Nestlé and closed in 1996, with all operations moving to York after a Norwich association of 120 years. The demolished factory stood where the Chapelfield development is now. Caley's chocolate has since reappeared as a brand in the city, though it is no longer made there.^[56]

HMSO, once the official publishing and stationery arm of the British government and one of the largest print buyers, printers and suppliers of office equipment in the UK, moved most of its operations from London to Norwich in the 1970s. It occupied the purpose-built 1968 Sovereign House building, near Anglia Square, which in 2017 stood empty and due for demolition if a long-postponed redevelopment of Anglia Square went ahead.^[57]

Jarrolds department store has been based in Norwich since 1823.

Jarrolds, established in 1810, was a nationally well-known printer and publisher. In 2004, after nearly 200 years, the printing and publishing businesses were sold. Today, the company remains privately owned and the Jarrold name is best recognised as being that of Norwich's only independent department store. The company is also active in property development in Norwich and has a business training division.^[58]

Post-war redevelopment

The University of East Anglia, which opened in 1963

As the war ended, the city council revealed what it had been working on before the war. It was published as a book – The City of Norwich Plan 1945 or commonly known as "The '45 Plan"^[65] – a grandiose scheme of massive redevelopment which never properly materialised. However, throughout the 1960s to early 1970, the city was completely altered and large areas of Norwich were cleared to make way for modern redevelopment.

In 1960, the inner-city district of Richmond, between Ber Street and King Street, locally known as "the Village on the Hill", was condemned as slums and many residents were forced to leave by compulsory purchase orders on the old terraces and lanes. The whole borough demolished consisted of some 56 acres of existing streets, including 833 dwellings (612 classed as unfit for human habitation), 42 shops, four offices, 22 public houses and two schools.^[66] Communities were moved to high-rise buildings such as Normandie Tower and new housing estates such as Tuckswood, which were being built at the time. A new road, Rouen Road, was developed instead, consisting mainly of light industrial units and council flats. Ber Street, a once historic main road into the city, had its whole eastern side demolished. About this time, the final part of St Peters Street, opposite St Peter Mancroft Church, were demolished along with large Georgian townhouses at the top of Bethel Street, to make way for the new City Library in 1961.^[62] This burnt down on 1 August 1994 and was replaced in 2001 by The Forum.

A controversial plan was implemented for Norwich's inner ring-road in the late 1960s. In 1931, the city architect Robert Atkinson, referring to the City Wall, remarked that "in almost every position are slum dwellings put up during the last 50 years. It would be a great adventure to clear them all out and open up the road following the wall which has always been a natural highway. Do this, and you will have a wonderful circulating boulevard all around the city and its cost would be comparatively nothing."^[67] To accommodate the road, many more buildings were demolished, including an ancient road junction – Stump Cross. Magdalen Street, Botolph Street, St George's Street, Calvert Street and notably Pitt Street, all lined with Tudor and Georgian buildings, were cleared to make way for a fly-over and a Brutalist concrete shopping centre – Anglia Square – as well as office blocks such as an HMSO building, Sovereign House. Other areas affected were Grapes Hill, a once narrow lane lined with 19th-century Georgian cottages, which was cleared and widened into a dual carriageway leading to a roundabout. Shortly before construction of the roundabout, the city's old Drill Hall was demolished, along with sections of the original city wall and other large townhouses along the start of Unthank Road (named after the Unthank family, local landowners).^[68] The roundabout also required the north-west corner of Chapelfield Gardens to be demolished. About a mile of Georgian and Victorian terrace houses along Chapelfield Road and Queens Road, including many houses built into the city walls, was bulldozed in 1964. This included the surrounding district off Vauxhall Street, consisting of swathes of terrace housing that were condemned as slums. This also included the whole West Pottergate district, which contained a mix of 18th and 19th-century cottages and terraced housing, pubs and shops. Post-war housing and maisonettes flats now stand where the Rookery slums once did. Some aspects of The '45 Plan were put into action, which saw large three-story Edwardian houses in Grove Avenue and Grove Road, and other large properties on Southwell Road, demolished in 1962 to make way for flat-roofed single-story style maisonettes that still stand today.^[69] Heigham Hall, a large Victorian manor house off Old Palace Road was also demolished in 1963, to build Dolphin Grove flats, which housed many Norwich families displaced by slum clearance.

Other housing developments in the private and public sector took place after the Second World War, partly to accommodate the growing population of the city and to replace condemned and bomb-damaged areas, such as the Heigham Grove district between Barn Road and Old Palace Road, where some 200 terraced houses, shops and pubs were all flattened. Only St Barnabas church and one public house, The West End Retreat, now remain. Another central street bulldozed during the 1960s was St Stephens Street. It was widened, clearing away many historically significant buildings in the process, firstly for Norwich Union's new office blocks and shortly after with new buildings, after it suffered damage during the Baedeker raids. In Surrey Street, several grand six-storey Georgian townhouses were demolished to make way for Norwich Union's office. Other notable buildings that were lost were three theatres (the Norwich Hippodrome on St Giles Street, which is now a multi-storey car park, the Grosvenor Rooms and Electric Theatre in Prince of Wales Road) The Norwich Corn Exchange in Exchange Street (built 1861, demolished 1964), the Free Library in Duke Street (built 1857, demolished 1963) and the Great Eastern Hotel, which faced Norwich Station. Two large churches, the Chapel Field East Congregational church^[70] (built 1858, demolished 1972) was pulled down, as well as the 100-foot (30 m) tall Presbyterian church in Theatre Street, built in 1874 and designed by local architect Edward Boardman. It has been said that more of Norwich's architecture was destroyed by the council in post-war redevelopment schemes than during the Second World War.

Lord mayoralty and shrievalty

Norwich Guildhall, the seat of local government from the early 15th century until 1938

The ceremonial head of the city is the Lord Mayor; though now simply a ceremonial position, in the past the office carried considerable authority, with executive powers over the finances and affairs of the city council. The office of Mayor of Norwich dates from 1403 and was raised to the dignity of lord mayor in 1910 by Edward VII "in view of the position occupied by that city as the chief city of East Anglia and of its close association with His Majesty".^[75][76] The title was regranted on local government reorganisation in 1974.^[77] From 1404 the citizens of Norwich, as a county corporate, had the privilege of electing two sheriffs. Under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835 this was reduced to one and became a ceremonial post. Both Lord Mayor and Sheriff are elected for a year's term of office at the council's annual meeting, but the term of office was temporarily extended to two years for the periods 2019-2021 and 2021-2023, the normal annual elections having been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in the years 2020-2022.^[78][75][79]

Westminster

Since 1298 Norwich has returned two members of Parliament to the House of Commons. Until 1950 the city was an undivided constituency, returning two MPs. Since that date, the area has been two single-member constituencies: Norwich North and Norwich South.^[80] Both proved to be marginal seats in recent elections until 2010, switching between the Labour and Conservative parties.

Norwich North, which includes some rural wards of Broadland District, was held by Labour from 1950 to 1983 when it was gained by the Conservatives. Labour regained the seat in 1997, holding it until a by-election in 2009. The current MP is the Conservative, Chloe Smith, who held the seat in the 2015 General Election.^[81] Norwich South, which includes part of South Norfolk District, was held by Labour from February 1974 to 1983, when it was gained by the Conservatives. John Garrett regained the seat for Labour in 1987. Charles Clarke became Labour MP for Norwich South in 1997.^[82] In the 2010 General Election, Labour lost the seat to the Liberal Democrats, with Simon Wright becoming MP.^[83] At the 2015 General Election, Clive Lewis regained the seat for Labour.^[84]

In both the 2017 General Election and 2019 General Election, the two incumbent 2015 MPs held their seats.^[85]

Ethnicity

Religion

Religion	2001[97]		2011[98]		2021[91]
	Number	%	Number	%	Number	%
Holds religious beliefs	76,108	62.6	65,417	49.4	57,189	39.7
Christian	73,428	60.4	59,515	44.9	48,399	33.6
Buddhist	485	0.4	978	0.7	983	0.7
Hindu	348	0.3	1,017	0.8	1,719	1.2
Jewish	239	0.2	241	0.2	331	0.2
Muslim	887	0.7	2,612	2.0	4,289	3.0
Sikh	102	0.1	168	0.1	185	0.1
Other religion	619	0.5	886	0.7	1283	0.9
(No religion and Religion not stated)	45,442	37.4	67,095	50.7	86,733	60.3
No religion	33,766	27.8	56,268	42.5	76,973	53.5
Religion not stated	11,676	9.6	10,827	8.2	9,760	6.8
Total population	121,550	100.0	132,512	100.0	143,922	100.0

Primary and secondary

The city has 56 primary schools (including 16 academies and free schools) and 13 secondary schools, 11 of which are academies.^[99] The city's eight independent schools include Norwich School and Norwich High School for Girls.^[99] There are five schools for children with learning disabilities.^[100]

The former Norwich High School for Boys in Upper St Giles Street has a blue plaque commemorating Sir John Mills, who was a pupil there.^[101]

Universities and colleges

Norwich University of the Arts

Norwich has two universities: the University of East Anglia and Norwich University of the Arts. The student population is around 15,000, many of them from overseas.^[102] The University of East Anglia, founded in 1963, is located on the outskirts of the city. It has a creative writing programme, established by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson, whose graduates include Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan. It has done work on climate research and climate change. Its campus is home to the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, which houses several important art collections. The Norwich University of the Arts dates back to 1845 as the Norwich School of Design. Founded by artists and followers of the Norwich School art movement, it was founded to provide designers for local industries. Previously a specialist art school (the Norwich School of Art and Design), it achieved university status in 2013.

Norwich has three further education colleges. City College Norwich, situated on Ipswich Road, was founded in 1891 and is one of the largest such colleges in the country.^[103] Access to Music is located on Magdalen Street at Epic Studios, and Easton & Otley College's Easton Campus is located 7 mi (11 km) west of the city.^[104]

Attractions

Pulls Ferry, once a 15th-century watergate

Norwich is a popular destination for a city break. Attractions include Norwich Cathedral, the cobbled streets and museums of old Norwich, Norwich Castle, Cow Tower, Dragon Hall and The Forum. Norwich is one of the UK's top ten shopping destinations, with a mix of chain retailers and independent stores, and Norwich Market as one of the largest outdoor markets in England.

The Forum, designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners and opened in 2002 is a building designed to house the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, a replacement for the Norwich Central Library building which burnt down in 1994, and the regional headquarters and television centre for BBC East. In 2006–2013 it was the most visited library in the UK, with 1.3 million visits in 2013.^[109] The collections contains the 2nd Air Division Memorial Library, a collection of material about American culture and the American relationship with East Anglia, especially the role of the United States Air Force on UK airbases throughout the Second World War and Cold War. Much of the collection was lost in the 1994 fire, but the collection has been restored by contributions from many veterans of the war, European and American. The building also provides a venue for art exhibitions, concerts and events, although the city still lacks a dedicated concert venue.

Recent attempts to shed the backwater image of Norwich and market it as a popular tourist destination, as well as a centre for science, commerce, culture and the arts, have included refurbishment of the Norwich Castle Museum and the opening of the Forum. The proposed new slogan for Norwich as England's Other City has been the subject of much discussion and controversy. It remains to be seen whether it will be adopted. Several signs at the city's approaches still display the traditional phrase: "Norwich — a fine city".

The Forum, housing, among other things, the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library and the BBC's East of England headquarters and studios

The city promotes its architectural heritage through a collection of notable buildings in Norwich called the "Norwich 12". The group consists of: Norwich Castle, Norwich Cathedral, the Great Hospital, St Andrew's Hall and Blackfriars' Hall, The Guildhall, Dragon Hall, The Assembly House, St James Mill, St John the Baptist RC Cathedral, Surrey House, City Hall and The Forum.

Art and music

Each year the Norfolk and Norwich Festival celebrates the arts, drawing many visitors into the city from all over eastern England. The Norwich Twenty Group, founded in 1944, presents exhibitions of its members to promote awareness of modern art. Norwich was home to the first arts festival in Britain in 1772.^[110]

Norwich Arts Centre is a notable live music venue, concert hall and theatre located in St Benedict's Street. The King of Hearts in Fye Bridge Street is another centre for art and music. Norwich has a thriving music scene based around local venues such as the University of East Anglia LCR, Norwich Arts Centre, The Waterfront and Epic Studios. Live music, mostly contemporary musical genres, is also to be heard at a number of other public house and club venues around the city. The city is host to many artists that have achieved national and international recognition such as Cord, The Kabeedies, Serious Drinking, Tim Bowness, Sennen, Magoo, Let's Eat Grandma and KaitO.

Norwich hosted BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend in 2015. The event was held on 23–24 May in Earlham Park.^[111]

Established record labels in Norwich include All Sorted Records,^[112] NR ONE,^[113] Hungry Audio and Burning Shed.

The British artist Stella Vine lived in Norwich from the age of seven,^[114] including for a short while in Argyle Street, Norwich and again later in life with her son Jamie. Vine depicted the city in a large painting, Welcome to Norwich a fine city (2006).^[115]

Theatres

Norwich Arts Centre, opened in 1977, on St Benedict's Street

The Theatre Royal, Norwich's largest theatre

Norwich Playhouse on St George's Street

Norwich has theatres ranging in capacity from 100 to 1,300 seats and offering a wide variety of programmes. The Theatre Royal is the largest and has been on its present site for nearly 250 years, through several rebuildings and many alterations. It has 1,300 seats and hosts a mix of national touring productions including musicals, dance, drama, family shows, stand-up comedians, opera and pop.

The Maddermarket Theatre opened in 1921 as the first permanent recreation of an Elizabethan theatre. The founder was Nugent Monck who had worked with William Poel. The theatre is a Shakespearean-style playhouse and has a seating capacity of 310. Norwich Puppet Theatre was founded in 1979 by Ray and Joan DaSilva as a permanent base for their touring company and was first opened as a public venue in 1980, following the conversion of the medieval church of St James in the heart of Norwich. Under subsequent artistic directors — Barry Smith and Luis Z. Boy — the theatre established its current pattern of operation. It is a nationally unique venue dedicated to puppetry, and currently houses a 185-seat raked auditorium, the 50-seat Octagon Studio, workshops, an exhibition gallery, shop and licensed bar. It is the only theatre in the Eastern region with a year-round programme of family-centred entertainment. Norwich Arts Centre theatre opened in 1977 in St Benedict's Street and has a capacity of 290. The Norwich Playhouse, which opened in 1995 and has a seating capacity of 300, is a venue in the heart of the city and one of the most modern performance spaces of its size in East Anglia.

The Garage studio theatre seats up to 110 in a range of layouts, or can be used for standing events for up to 180. Platform Theatre is in the grounds of the City College Norwich. Productions are staged mainly in the autumn and summer months. The theatre is raked and seats about 250. On 20 April 2012, it held a large relaunch event with an evening performance, showcasing it with previews of coming performances and scenes from past ones.^[116]

The Whiffler Theatre, built in 1981, was given to the people of Norwich by the local newspaper group Eastern Daily Press. It is an open-air facility in Norwich Castle Gardens, with fixed-raked seating for up to 80 and standing for another 30 on the balcony. The stage is brick-built and has its dressing rooms set in a small building to stage left. The Whiffler mainly plays small Shakespeare productions. Sewell Barn Theatre is the smallest theatre in Norwich and has a seating capacity of just 100. The auditorium features raked seating on three sides of an open acting space. This staging helps to draw the audience closer into the performance.

Public performance spaces include the Forum in the city centre, with a large open-air amphitheatre for performances of many types throughout the year. Additionally, the cloisters of Norwich Cathedral are used for open-air performances as part of an annual Shakespeare festival.^[117]

Museums

Norwich has several museums to reflect the history of the city and of Norfolk, and wider interests. The largest, Norwich Castle Museum, has extensive collections of archaeological finds from Norfolk, art (including a fine collection of paintings by the Norwich School of painters), ceramics (including the largest collection of British teapots), silver, and natural history. Of particular interest are dioramas of Norfolk scenery showing wildlife and landscape. It has been much remodelled to enhance the display of the collections and hosts frequent temporary exhibitions of art and other subjects.^[118]

Dragon Hall, Norwich, a medieval merchant's house. Taken on the 2006 Sponsored Bike Ride for The Norfolk Churches Trust, 2006-09-09. View from King Street of house front, sign hanging from iron dragon reads 'Dragon Hall'.

The Museum of Norwich at the Bridewell (until 2014 the Bridewell Museum) closed in 2010 for refurbishment of the building and overhaul of the displays,^[119] and re-opened in July 2012.^[120][121] The several galleries and groups of displays include "Life in Norwich: Our City 1900–1945"; "Life in Norwich: Our City 1945 Onwards"; and "England's Second City" depicting Norwich in the 18th century. "Made in Norwich", "Industrious City" and "Shoemakers" have exhibits connected with historic industries of Norwich, including weaving, shoe and bootmaking, iron foundries, and manufacture of metal goods, engineering, milling, brewing, chocolate-making and other food manufacturing. "Shopping and Trading" extends from the early 19th century to the 1960s.^[122]

Strangers' Hall, at Charing Cross, is one of the oldest buildings in Norwich: a merchant's house from the early 14th century. The many rooms are furnished and equipped in the styles of different eras, from the Early Tudor to the Late Victorian. Exhibits include costumes and textiles, domestic objects, children's toys and games and children's books. The last two collections are seen to be of national importance.^[123]

The Royal Norfolk Regimental Museum was, until 2011, housed in part of the former Shirehall, close to the castle. Although archives and the reserve collections are still held in the Shirehall, the principal museum display there closed in September 2011 and was relocated to the main Norwich Castle Museum, reopening fully in 2013.^[124] It illustrates the history of the regiment from its 17th-century origins to its incorporation into the Royal Anglian Regiment in 1964, along with many aspects of its military life. There is an extensive, representative display of medals awarded to soldiers of the regiment, including two of the six Victoria Crosses won.^[125][126]

The City of Norwich Aviation Museum is at Horsham St Faith, on the northern edge of the city, close to Norwich Airport. It has static displays of military and civil aircraft, with various collective exhibits, including one for the United States 8th Army Air Force.^[127]

A house in the Cathedral close in Norwich.

Formerly known as The John Jarrold Printing Museum, The Norwich Printing Museum covers the history of printing, with examples of printing machinery, presses, books and related equipment considered of national and international importance.^[128] Exhibits date from the early 19th century to the present day. Some machinery and equipment are shown in use. Many items were donated by Jarrold Printing.^[129] In November 2018, redevelopment plans for the museum site at Whitefriars caused uncertainty about its future.^[130][131] The museum closed its Whitefriars premises on 23 October 2019, with a plan to relocate to the vacant medieval church of St Peter Parmentergate in King Street in 2020, but this site was later found to be unsuitable.^[132][133] In 2021, the museum trustees were offered space at Blickling Hall, near Aylsham, and, as "The Norwich Printing Museum", it reopened there as a fully-working museum in July 2021.^[134] Whilst the museum continues in its temporary home at Blickling, as at March 2023 the trustees were seeking permanent quarters in Norwich.^[135]

Dragon Hall in King Street exemplifies a medieval merchants' trading hall. Mostly dating from about 1430, it is unique in Western Europe. In 2006 the building underwent restoration. Its architecture is complemented by displays on the history of the building and its role in Norwich through the ages. The Norwich Castle Study Centre at the Shirehall in Market Avenue has some important collections, including one of more than 20,000 costume and textile items built up over some 130 years and previously kept in other Norwich museums. Although not a publicly open museum in the usual sense, items are accessible to the public, students and researchers by prior appointment.^[136]

Entertainment

Norwich has three cinema complexes. Odeon Norwich is located in the Riverside Leisure Centre, Vue inside the Castle Mall and previously the Hollywood Cinema (closed 2019)^[137] at Anglia Square, north of the city centre. Cinema City is an art-house cinema showing non-mainstream productions, operated by Picturehouse in St Andrews Street opposite St Andrew's Hall, whose patron was actor John Hurt.^[138] Norwich has a large number of pubs throughout the city. Prince of Wales Road in the city centre, running from the Riverside district near Norwich railway station to Norwich Castle, is home to many of them, along with bars and clubs.

Media and film

Anglia House, the headquarters of Anglia Television, today ITV Anglia

Norwich is the headquarters of BBC East, its presence in the East of England, and BBC Radio Norfolk, BBC Look East, Inside Out and The Politics Show are broadcast from studios in The Forum. Independent radio stations based in Norwich include Heart East, Smooth East Anglia, Greatest Hits Radio Norfolk and North Suffolk, and the University of East Anglia's Livewire 1350, an online station. A community station, Future Radio, was launched on 6 August 2007.

ITV Anglia, formerly Anglia Television, is based in Norwich. Although one of the smaller ITV companies, it supplied the network with some of its most popular shows such as Tales of the Unexpected, Survival and Sale of the Century (1971–1983), which began each edition with John Benson's enthusiastic announcement: "And now from Norwich, it's the quiz of the week!" The company also had a subsidiary called Anglia Multimedia, which produced educational content on CD and DVD mainly for schools, and was one of the three companies, along with Granada TV and the BBC vying for the right to produce a digital television station for English schools and colleges.

Launched in 1959, Anglia Television lost its independence in 1994 with a takeover by Meridian Broadcasting. Subsequent mergers have seen it reduced from a significant producer of programmes to a regional news centre. The company is still based in Anglia House, the former Norfolk and Norwich Agricultural Hall, on Agricultural Hall Plain near Prince of Wales Road.

Despite the contraction of Anglia, television production in Norwich has by no means ended. Anglia's former network production centre at Magdalen Street has been taken over by Norfolk County Council and revamped. After a total investment of £4 million from the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) it has re-opened as Epic Studios (East of England Production Innovation Centre). Degree courses in film and video are run at the centre by Norwich University of the Arts. Epic has commercial, broadcast-quality post-production facilities, a real-time virtual studio and a smaller HD discussion studio. The main studio opened as an HD facility in November 2008, when it began concentrating on the development of new TV formats and has worked on pilot shows.

Archant publishes two dailies in Norwich, the Norwich Evening News and the regional Eastern Daily Press (EDP). It had its own television operation, Mustard TV, which closed after being bought out by the That's TV group. Mustard TV is now That's Norfolk.

The character of Alan Partridge in the sitcom I'm Alan Partridge (1997–2002) and the comedy film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013) is a Norwich broadcaster played by Steve Coogan.

Esoteric associations

Because Norwich was England's second city in the medieval and Renaissance periods, it has some little acknowledged, but significant associations with esoteric spirituality. It was the home of William Cuningham, a physician who published An Invective Epistle in Defense of Astrologers in 1560.^[139] The Elizabethan dramatist Robert Greene, author of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, was born in Norwich in 1558. The city was the retirement residence of Arthur Dee (died Norwich, 1651), eldest son of the alchemist John Dee.^[140][141]

The Layer Monument, marble polychrome c. 1600

Norwich was the residence of the physician and hermetic philosopher Sir Thomas Browne, author of The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Many influential esoteric titles are listed as once in Browne's library.^[142] His coffin-plate, on display at the church of St Peter Mancroft, alludes to Paracelsian medicine and alchemy. Translated from Latin it reads, "Great Virtues, ...sleeping here the dust of his spagyric body converts the lead to gold." Browne was also a significant figure in the history of physiognomy.

The Church of St John Maddermarket's graveyard includes the Crabtree headstone, which has the pre-Christian symbol of the Ouroboros along with Masonic Square and Compasses carved upon it. Within the church is the Layer Monument, a rare example of an alchemical mandala in European funerary art.^[143]

From 1787 the congregation of the New Jerusalem Church of Swedenborgians, followers of the mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, worshipped at the Church of St Mary the Less; in 1852 they moved to Park Lane, Norwich to establish the Swedenborgian Chapel.^[144][145]

Parks, gardens and open spaces

Riverside flats, Norwich

See also List of parks, gardens and open spaces in Norwich Chapelfield Gardens in central Norwich became the city's first public park in November 1880. From the start of the 20th century, Norwich Corporation began buying and leasing land to develop parks when funds became available. Sewell Park and James Stuart Gardens are examples of land donated by benefactors.

After the First World War the Corporation applied government grants to lay out a series of formal parks as a means to alleviate unemployment. Under Parks Superintendent Captain Sandys-Winsch,^[151] Heigham Park was completed in 1924, Wensum Park in 1925, Eaton Park in 1928 and Waterloo Park in 1933. These retain many features from Sandys-Winsch's plans and have joined the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest.^[152]

As of 2015, the city has 23 parks, 95 open spaces and 59 natural areas managed by the local authority.^[153] In addition there are several private gardens occasionally opened to the public in aid of charity.^[154] The Plantation Garden, also private, opens daily.^[155]

Retail

Norwich Market With St Peter Mancroft church and the Sir Garnet public house in the background

Norwich was the eighth most prosperous shopping destination in the UK in 2006.^[183] It has an ancient marketplace established by the Normans in 1071–1074, which is today the largest six-day-a-week open-air market in England. In 2006, the market was downsized and redeveloped; the new market stalls have proved controversial: with 20% less floor space than the originals, higher rental and other charges, and inadequate rainwater handling, which has been unpopular with many stallholders and customers. In 2007 the local Norwich Evening News called Norwich Market an ongoing conflict between market traders and its operator, Norwich City Council.^[184]

The Castle Quarter, a shopping centre designed by the local practice Lambert, Scott & Innes and opened in 1993, presents an ingenious solution to the problem of accommodating retail space in a historic city-centre environment — the building is largely concealed underground and built into the side of a hill, with a public park created on its roof in the area south of the castle.

A second shopping centre, Chantry Place (formally Chapelfield) was opened in 2005 on the site of a closed Caley's (later Rowntree Mackintosh and Nestlé) chocolate factory, featuring as its flagship department store House of Fraser. Following a change of ownership in 2020, it was renamed Chantry Place. Detractors have criticised the centre as unnecessary and damaging to local businesses, prompting smaller retailers to band together to promote their virtues. Despite this, in August 2006 it was reported by the Javelin Group that Norwich was one of the top five retail destinations in the UK,^[185] and in October 2006 the city centre was voted best in the UK in a shopping satisfaction survey run by Goldfish Credit Card.^[186]

A section of central Norwich roughly bounded by Bethel Street/Upper St Giles Street, Grapes Hill, St Benedict's and St Andrew's Hill/London Street/Castle Meadow is now known and promoted as Norwich Lanes. As a series of mostly pedestrianised lanes, alleyways and streets, it is noted for independent retailers and eating and drinking establishments. It also contains several of the city's cultural attractions, including museums, theatres and other venues. Norwich Lanes, as part of a nationwide drive to recognise the importance and maintain the character and individuality of Britain's high streets, was the Great British High Street Awards 2014 national winner in the "City" category.^[187]

To the north is Anglia Square shopping centre. The owners of the site want it redeveloped; demolition work was due to start in 2010 after an archaeological dig, conducted in 2009 and due to the centre being located around the site of a Saxon fortified settlement. The Twentieth Century Society has objected to demolish on the ground of the architectural merits of one of the few Brutalists shopping centres left in the UK and the 35,900 tonnes of embodied carbon.^[188][57] The development is planned to be a mix of shops and housing, unlike the original offices, shops and cinema.^[189] In February 2009, an initial delay to the plans was blamed on the economic climate, and developers were unable to say when work would begin. Further delays occurred in the years following.^[190] In 2014, it was bought by investment manager Threadneedle Investments for £7.5 million.^[191] The owners and their partner Weston Homes announced in November 2016 they had been holding talks with chief officers at Norwich City Hall. Plans submitted included demolishing Anglia Square, the former stationery office and Gildengate House. Over a thousand homes were planned above shop units and a public square.^[192][193] In early 2018, Weston Homes and landowner Columbia Threadneedle submitted regeneration plans to include 1,200 homes, a 20-storey tower block, a supermarket, a hotel, green squares and central courtyards.^[194] The controversial 2018 plans were rejected by the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government in 2020, and in 2021 the developer resubmitted revised plans.^[195]

Electricity supply

Temporary electric street lighting in Norwich started in 1882. The first permanent supply came in 1893 from a generating station in Duke Street. This supplied local industry and domestic users and from 1900 the Norwich Electric Tramways. In the late 1920s, a new 40 MW power station was built at Thorpe, to which was added in 1937 30 MW "high pressure" generating plant. These operated until 1975. A gas turbine plant was installed in 1964 to provide power at times of peak demand. This closed in 1986 and the entire Thorpe power station site was demolished and cleared in 1981–1982. Two tall electricity pylons stood near the site until they were dismantled in 2017. Further details appear in Norwich power stations.

Road

Norwich stands north of the A47 (bypassed to the south of the city), which connects it with Great Yarmouth to the east, and King's Lynn and Peterborough to the west. There are plans to upgrade the A47, especially sections that are still single-carriageway, prompted partly by ongoing construction of Great Yarmouth Outer Harbour.^[196]

Norwich is linked to Cambridge via the A11, which leads to the M11 motorway for London and the M25. It is linked to Ipswich to the south by the A140 and to Lowestoft to the south-east by the A146.

Norwich has the UK's largest independent car club.^[197]

Railway

Norwich railway station

Norwich railway station is sited in the east of the city centre and is managed by Greater Anglia, who also operate most passenger services.

It is the northern terminus of the Great Eastern Main Line. There are half-hourly inter-city services to London Liverpool Street via Ipswich, Colchester and Chelmsford; they are worked by Class 745 electric multiple units.^[198]

Hourly regional services to Cambridge, and out of Norwich as far as Ely, are run along the Breckland Line. There are also hourly local services to Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft (using the Wherry Lines) and to Sheringham (using the Bittern Line). They all use Class 755 bi-mode units.^[198]

East Midlands Railway operate a direct route to the Midlands and North West England, with hourly services to Liverpool Lime Street calling at Peterborough, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester Piccadilly. Class 158 diesel multiple units are employed on this route.^[199]

Norwich is the site of Crown Point TMD, a depot that maintains the trains used in the area.^[200]

Bus and coach

Norwich bus station

The main bus companies operating routes in and around Norwich are First Eastern Counties, Konectbus and Sanders Coaches; destinations throughout the city and the rest of Norfolk are served, as are Peterborough and Lowestoft.^[201]

National Express runs ten coaches a day to three main London airports: Stansted, Heathrow and Gatwick; there are also five services each day to London and one a day to Birmingham.^[202] Megabus also operates a daily service to London.^[203]

Most bus and coach services run from Norwich bus station or Castle Meadow.

The Norwich park and ride network has six sites run by Konectbus, as one of the larger UK park & ride operations.^[204][205] Almost 5,000 parking spaces are provided and, in 2006, 3.4 million passengers used the service.^[206]

Air

Norwich Airport (ICAO code EGSH) is a feeder to the Dutch airline KLM's Schiphol hub. Loganair and TUI Airways both serve Norwich, with flights to Aberdeen and European holiday destinations respectively.^[207]

Through Bristow Helicopters, Norwich Airport caters for the offshore oil and gas industry. There is also a strong holiday charter business there. The airport was originally the airfield of RAF Horsham St Faith. One of the old RAF hangars became the home of Air UK, which grew out of Air Anglia and was then absorbed by KLM.

Cycling

Cycling routes around the station

National Cycle Route 1 between Dover and Tain, Scottish Highlands is the only route in the National Cycle Network to pass through Norwich.^[208] Norwich City Council maintain seven colour-coded cycling routes in the city known as Pedalways. ^[209] A attempt in 2015 to improve the Pedalways attracted scrutiny from local residents and cycling campaigners alike.^[210][211]

Waterways

The River Wensum near Norwich Cathedral and the Maid's Head Hotel

The River Yare is navigable from the sea at Great Yarmouth up to Trowse, south of the city. From there, the River Wensum is navigable into Norwich and up to New Mills; it is crossed by the Novi Sad Friendship Bridge. Scheduled trips through the city and out to the nearby Broads are run by City Boats from outside of Norwich station and Elm Hill. In June 2012, Norwich City Council gave permission for punting on the River Wensum.^[212]

Proposed developments

In 2017, the first part of the new 12 mi (19 km) Norwich Northern Distributor Road, linking the A1067 in the north-west of the city to the A47 road in the east, was opened. The remainder of the road opened in 2018. There is also some discussion in building the Norwich Western Link section from the A1067 to the A47 southern bypass to the west, as originally proposed.^[213]

Other proposals in the Norwich Transport Strategy include limiting traffic on some roads, introducing five rapid bus links into the city and creating a train/tram link to the Rackheath eco-town.^[214]

Climate

Sea fog clinging to the East Anglian coast, February 2008; Norwich is denoted by the yellow dot

Norwich, like the rest of the British Isles, has a temperate maritime climate. It does not suffer extreme temperatures, and benefits from rainfall fairly evenly spread throughout the year. Coltishall, about 11 mi (18 km) to the north-east, was the nearest official met-office weather station for which records are available, although it ceased reporting in early 2006 – Norwich airport now provides readings. Norwich's position in East Anglia, jutting out into the North Sea can produce weather conditions that have less effect on other parts of the country, such as snow or sleet showers during the winter months on a northerly or easterly wind, or sea fog/haar during the summer half of the year. An example of Norwich being afflicted by sea fog is shown in the adjacent image.

The highest temperature recorded at Coltishall was 33.1 °C (91.6 °F)^[215] during June 1976. However, going back further to 1932, and Norwich's absolute record high reached 35.6 °C (96.1 °F).,^[216] while 37.0 °C was reached in July 2022 at Norwich Weather Centre. Typically the warmest day of the year should reach 28.8 °C (83.8 °F)^[217] and 9.9 days^[218] should register a temperature of 25.1 °C (77.2 °F) or higher.

The lowest temperature recorded at Coltishall was −15.3 °C (4.5 °F)^[219] during January 1979. In a typical year however, the coldest night should only fall to −7.5 °C (18.5 °F).^[220] On average 39.4 air frosts will be recorded during the course of the year^[221] More recently, the temperature at Norwich Airport fell to −14.4 °C (6.1 °F)^[222] on 18 December 2010 with unofficial weather stations reporting localised readings of −17 and −18 °C (1 and 0 °F).

The nearest sunshine monitoring weather station for which records are available is Morley agricultural research centre, about 11 mi (18 km) south-west of Norwich city centre. For the 1961–1990 period, it averaged 1558 hours of sunshine a year,^[223] a relatively high total for an inland part of the British Isles outside of southern England.

Rainfall, at around 650 mm (26 in), is low, although as much as 100 mm (3.9 in) higher than other, more sheltered parts of East Anglia, as Norwich is more prone to showers originating from the North Sea.^[224]

Individuals

• Ove Fundin
• Colin Self
• Arthur Miller
• Sir Robert and Lady Sainsbury

Military units

• 1st East Anglian Regiment: 1964
• 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment: 1984^[231]
• RAF Marham: 2008
• 2nd Air Division, USAAF Association

Organisations and groups

• Anglia TV
• Norwich City Football Club: 2002
• Norfolk Constabulary
• Norwich Union
• The Jarrold Group: June 2020^[232]

^[233]