Hingham, March 7, Whit-Tuesday, Wymondham, Feb. 2 and May 6, O.
October 2 S.
Hockham, Easter Monday Yarmouth, March 28 and 29.
Hockwold, July 25
Holt, April 25, November 25
CONCISE HISTORY OF NORWICH. {49}
Its latitude, according to Sir Henry Spelman, is 52 degrees, 45 minutes,
North: longitude, 1 degree, 19 minutes, East of the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich:—It is 108 miles from London by Newmarket, 114 by Bury St.
Edmund’s, and 110 by Ipswich and Colchester.
It is rather more than a mile and a half in length, from King-street-gate
to Magdalen-gate; and a mile and a quarter in breadth, from Bishop’s gate
to St. Benedict’s gate.
It has thirty-four churches, besides the cathedral, chapels, and
dissenting meeting-houses; and is encompassed by a ditch, and the remains
of a flint-stone wall, begun in 1294 and finished in 1310, which was
flanked with forty towers, in the ancient method of fortification, and
had twelve gates for entrances on all sides.
THE CASTLE
Is supposed to have been built by King Canute, the Dane, in 1018; and as
far the greater number of his subjects were Saxons, who, at this period,
were the first architects, and most probably employed, it is considered
as one of the most complete Saxon remains in England.
In confirmation of this opinion, all its ornaments are in the true Saxon
style; and the bridge leading to it is unquestionably one of the noblest
and most perfect Saxon arches now extant.
The inside, instead of an open yard, was filled up with floors of most
magnificent and spacious apartments; traces of which may yet be seen by
persons accustomed to examine buildings of this sort. On the ground
floor they were vaulted over with stone, for a great part of the old
vault still remains; also the great stone arches of the buttresses, and a
stone vaulting where the present chapel is. It was used as a prison so
early as the reign of Henry I. but not for that purpose solely:—the upper
apartments of these towers, were state apartments, for the residence of
great officers and their attendants.
Its length is 92 feet, 10 inches; the length of the North and South
fronts, 98 feet each: the walls are 50 feet in heighth.
Somewhat resembling the architecture of the Old, is the New Castle,
adjoining to it on the East side, built with Scotch granite in the year
1793; apparently of great strength and durability.
The Castle-Hill appears to have been raised by art, with incredible
labour: it stands nearly in the center of the city, and commands an
agreeable prospect of the surrounding buildings, interspersed with
gardens, which, with the adjacent country and river, form a most
delightful landscape.
Since the addition of the Gardens round the bottom of the Hill, strangers
have acknowledged the view from the summit to be superior to any thing of
the kind in Europe, and have justly styled Norwich ‘The City in an
Orchard.’
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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