Norwich, Norfolk
Norwich is one of my favourite cities in the UK. There’s a river and a cathedral and the town centre is a higgledy-piggledy jumble of tiny lanes filled with interesting independent stores. There’s also a permanent market in the centre of the town. So many of the streets are far too narrow for vehicles so it’s a delight as a pedestrian to be able to wander without having to worry about getting run over.
Norwich dates back to 1067 and was once England’s second largest city and a busy trading centre. I read Tombland by C J Sansom while I was here and it’s a fascinating account about the local peasants who formed a camp of 8,000 people just outside of Norwich in the 1600s to petition the King for better treatment. Sansom shows them doing an extremely effective job of setting up a township with housing, sanitation, and a meeting place. An excellent read.
I went on a Hidden Street tour and was surprised to learn that there used to be a very deep moat around the castle. Three-storey houses lined the ditch with families and businesses and courtyards. A large portion of the moat was filled in to create a road and the original houses are now below ground-level. The tour guide did an excellent job of bringing the people who had lived or worked in the small rooms one and two floors below ground level to life. There were shoe store employees, weavers, a boardinghouse owner and her jailer tenants who worked across the street at the castle, and a family who sheltered below ground during WWII bombing.
If you are ever in Norwich, I highly recommend staying at 3 Princes Bed & Breakfast. There are 4 lovely rooms in a very central location. There’s home baking in the afternoon and a lovely individual breakfast in the morning. Plus the two women who run the B&B are friendly and very accommodating.
Three Princes is close to Elm Hill, an almost complete medieval street that winds its way downhill in the most delightful fashion.
