The building then was made to serve the purpose of the City Grammar School, and so continued for twelve years, until Edward VI., in 1548, granted the ancient Charnel House Chapel—then usually called the Carnary—in the Cathedral Close, for the School. A striking change then came over the Dominicans’ old church, for the citizens, who had found the Guildhall too cramped, put this fine roomy building, under the name of the New Hall, to use as an assize-court, an exchange, a place of assembly, a hall for City feasts, or as anything that the public needs of the moment dictated. On Sundays the large alien Dutch population were permitted the use of the nave for their services, and the Flemish refugees had the choir. Perhaps the grandest of all the sumptuous feasts and receptions given here was that at which Charles II. and his Court were entertained, in 1671. It was on this occasion that he knighted Sir Thomas Browne. [Illustration: CARICATURE IN STONE, ST. ANDREW’S HALL.] The eastern part of the building, anciently the choir, is still divided from the nave, and is known as Blackfriars Hall. It is in the nave, or “St. Andrew’s Hall,” that the Musical Festivals have long been held. Portraits of Norfolk and Norwich worthies, pictures of historical events, and naval trophies decorate the walls. The good folk of Norwich are rightly proud of their noble Hall, and the ways of its custodians have always been keenly followed. Its restoration and re-arrangement in 1863 were the cause of a good deal of local searchings of heart and contention, and a survival of that war of parties may still be seen in the grotesque carvings that form stops to the hood-mould of a door on the south side of the Hall. They are carved in the true mediæval style, one representing a pig blowing a horn; the other showing a pig with a very self-satisfied expression of countenance playing an organ, while a number of grinning demons blow the bellows. These were the satirical efforts of the victorious party who thus sealed their victory; the point of these satires in stone being that the head of the defeated faction was a Mr. Bacon—Richard Noverre Bacon, editor and proprietor of the _Norwich Mercury_, born 1798, died 1884. [Illustration: CARICATURE IN STONE, ST. ANDREW’S HALL.] XLIX [Illustration: TOMBLAND ALLEY.] BY Prince’s Street we come to Tombland, the open space by the Cathedral, where St. George’s Church and Tombland Alley make so picturesque a group; and thence across the Wensum at Fye Bridge and along Magdalen Street. Bearing to the left, by Botolph Street, and noticing the gable end of the “King’s Arms” inn, with its ornamental tie-rods “I.C. 1646,” on the gable-end, we finally pass along St. Augustine Street, to come to the long suburban rise of the Aylsham Road, through Upper Hellesdon.