The Free Library.
This is a large building at the corner of St. Andrew’s Broad Street; erected in 1856, and opened in 1857, under the Free Libraries and Museum Act, by the Corporation, at a cost of £10,000. It includes large rooms for the Museum and the Free Library, the Literary Institution, and the School of Art. The Free Library, in the lower room, contains about 4,000 volumes, and the Old Collection called the City Library. The middle room above is fitted up as a lecture hall. The School of Art is located at the top of the building, where rooms are furnished for about 200 pupils, who receive instruction in drawing, designing, and decorative art. There is a committee of management for the Free Library, another for the Museum, and another for the School of Art. Mr. Harper is the librarian.
The Theatre Royal
is situate at a short distance from the Market Place, in Theatre Street. It is a very plain building, erected in 1826, but the interior is quite commodious enough for the limited number of patrons which Norwich furnishes to the drama.
The Post Office
is a large, but by no means handsome building; situate in Post Office Street, near the Market Place. There are two deliveries from London daily, and mails daily to all parts of the kingdom.
THE PARISHES AND PARISH CHURCHES.
Norwich appears to have taken the lead in the erection of religious edifices. At a very early period, before the reign of Edward the Confessor, the city contained 25 churches, and in the eleventh century, 55 existed in or near the town. After the conquest, 43 chapels were in the patronage of the burgesses, most of which were afterwards made parochial. In the reign of Edward III., 58 parish churches and chapels were within the walls, besides 19 monastic institutions and cells, anchorages, &c. Norwich still contains a greater number of churches and parishes than any other city in England except London. Many of the present churches are excellent specimens of ancient architecture. Several of them are built of squared flints. Besides the cathedral there are three undoubted specimens of the Norman style, and there are also many examples of the decorated or florid which succeeded the lancet style, of the transition style, and of the perpendicular. This later perpendicular style, which prevailed during the 15th and 16th centuries, is the chief characteristic of the city churches. The best examples of this style are the churches of St. Peter Mancroft, St. Andrew, St. Stephen, St. Giles, and St. John Maddermarket; also St. Andrew’s Hall. Of all these churches complete restorations have been lately effected. The original designs have been faithfully adhered to by the architects and contractors, which is the highest praise that can be awarded them. In this age we can only restore or rebuild; we cannot invent new orders of architecture. All our restorations take us back to the middle ages, and the spirit of those ages seems to be again revived in our parish churches.
We shall now proceed to describe the parishes and parish churches, in four districts, west, east, north, and south.
Western District.
The western district is the most prominent, comprising the Market Place, the parishes of St. Peter at Mancroft, St. Giles, St. Gregory, St. John’s Maddermarket, St. Andrew, St. Margaret, St. Benedict, St. Swithin, and St. Lawrence. Nearly all the public buildings are situated in this part of the town—the Guildhall, the Corn Hall, the Post Office, the Museum, the Free Library and School of Art, the Public Library, and the Literary Institution. The Market Place is about 200 yards in length, and 110 in breadth, but part of that area is occupied by the Guildhall, and St. Peter’s church. A handsome bronze statue of the Duke of Wellington, 8 ft 6 in. high, was erected, at a cost of £1000, in the middle of the Market Place in 1854. This statue is placed on a granite pedestal, surrounded by a low railing with lamps at the corners. The new Fish Market is on the western side of the Market Place. It consists of two rows of shops with an open space between, and was built, a few years ago, at a cost of £6000. On Saturdays the Market Place presents a highly animated scene, and is well supplied with provisions of every kind. It is generally crowded from morning till night by the citizens, and by the vendors of the produce of the field, the garden, or the dairy. It is surrounded by handsome shops, warehouses, hotels, and taverns.
St. Peter of Mancroft.
This parish was, at the beginning of the Confessor’s reign, an open field, that part of it which is now the Market Place, being the great croft of the Castle or Magna Crofta. Towards the end of the Confessor’s reign it began to be built over and inhabited; and at the survey of 1086, the whole field was owned and held by Ralf de Guader, Earl of Norfolk, in right of his castle, who granted it to the King in Common to make a new burgh between them, which burgh contained the entire parishes of St. Peter of Mancroft and St. Giles. The Earl Ralf founded the church of St. Peter and St. Paul at Mancroft, and gave it to his chaplains. On his forfeiture, Robert Blund, the Sheriff, received an ounce of gold, yearly, from the chaplains; and on Godric’s becoming sheriff, the Conqueror gave it to Wala his chaplain, at which time it was worth £3 per annum.
Sir Peter Read, though not certainly known to be a native of this city, yet deserves to be mentioned here, because he was buried in St. Peter’s Church, having this inscription on his monument:—
“Hereunder lieth the corps of Peter Read, Esq., who hath worthily served not only his prince and country, but also the Emperor Charles the Fifth, both at his Conquest of Barbary, and his siege of Tunis, as also in other places, who had given him, by the said Emperor, the Order of Barbary, who died on the 29th December, in the year of our Lord God 1566.”
If it be demanded why the title of “knight” was not put on his tomb, but only “esquire,” it may be answered that he was knighted by the Emperor Charles V., and Queen Elizabeth would suffer no foreign honour to be worn by her subjects in her dominions, saying, “Her sheep should be known by her mark only.” The knight lies buried in the east corner of the north aisle of this church. His effigy in complete armour is on a brass plate on the stone. He gave £4 4s. yearly from the rental of houses in St. Giles’, that the great bell of St. Peter’s Mancroft Church should ring at four o’clock every morning and eight in the evening for the benefit of travellers.
The following epitaph in this church is a specimen of good versification for the time in which it was written, 1616:—
“Here Richard Anguishe sleepes for whom alyve
Norwich and Cambridge lately seemed to strive;
Both called him son as seemed well they might;
Both challenged in his life an equal right:
Norwich gave birth and taught him well to speake
The mother English, Latin phrase, and Greeke;
Cambridge with arts adorned his ripening age
Degress and judgment in the sacred page;
Yet Norwich gains the vantage of the strife,
Whiles there he ended where began his life.
September XXIII. Ao Dni. 1616.”
The church is a large handsome cruciform structure of freestone mixed with flint, begun in 1430 and finished in 1455. It is a good example of the perpendicular style, and is the finest parish church in