The Norwich Road: An East Anglian HighwayHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Description and travel; Norwich Road
Jumbo, let it be explained, is the modern water-tower of Colchester's
waterworks. It was built in 1881, and cost close upon £10,500, and
there are those who say it is the second largest of its kind in
England. Where the largest may be we know not, but if it injures its
surroundings as effectually as does Colchester's incubus, that unknown
place has our sympathies. Jumbo is shameless and rejoices in his name,
for, as the curious may see for themselves, his weather-vane bears the
effigy of an elephant.
Returning to Crouch Street, and so by Head Gate and along Head Street,
the High Street is gained. It is one of the broadest and most spacious
streets in the kingdom, as it had every occasion to be, for it was not
only part of the great road leading into Suffolk, but in it was held
the principal fair of the town. Here, too, close by where Colchester's
new and gorgeous Town Hall stands, was the old Moot Hall, a building
of Saxon, Norman and later periods, barbarously destroyed in 1843. In
the Moot Hall the Mayor and justices dealt with offences of all kinds,
from the selling of bad meat to charges of witchcraft, sorcery and
heresy. Thus we may read in the borough records of things so diverse
as the fining of Robert Barefot, butcher, in the sum of twelve pence
for selling putrid meat, and may learn how William Chevelying, the
first of the Colchester martyrs, was imprisoned here in the reign of
Henry the Sixth until such time as it was convenient to burn him in
front of Colkyng's Castle. Here the local Court of Pie Powder was held
during the Corporation Fair Days, in October. Summary jurisdiction
was the special feature of that Court, and it was needed, for in those
times, when people of all sorts and conditions came from far and near,
offences were many and various. In the legal jargon of the Middle Ages
this tribunal is called the _Curia Regis Pedis Pulverizatis_, or, in
the Norman-French then common, the "Cour Royal des Pieds Poudrés,"
that is to say, the King's Court of Dusty Feet. Courts of Pie Powder
obtained this eminently descriptive name from the original Fair
Courts, held in the dusty streets long before buildings were erected
for the purpose, and the name survived long after the necessity which
originated it had disappeared. Imagine, therefore, the highwaymen, the
cheats and thieves and those who came into disputation on the Fair Days
being brought before the Mayor by the bailiffs, their cases arising and
being heard, and judgments and sentences being delivered and executed,
within the space of one day, amid the bleating of the flocks, the
lowing of the herds, and all the noise and tumult of the Fair itself.
We must not, however, suppose the High Street to have been absolutely
clear of obstructions in days of old. In midst of it stood the Late
Saxon or Early Norman church of that Saxon saint, St Runwald, which
remained here until so recently as 1878, when it was pulled down and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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