Through East Anglia in a Motor CarVincent, James Edmund
General
Through East Anglia in a Motor Car
Vincent, James Edmund
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; Suffolk (England) -- Description and travel
Next morning I walked about Norwich, and I have done the like many times,
but, short of writing a book on the subject, which is certainly not
necessary, it is by no means easy to decide how to treat it. Norfolk has
more parishes and churches in proportion to its area than any other county
(730 to 2024 square miles, whereas Yorkshire to 5836 square miles has but
613, according to Mr. Rye), and of these, besides a remarkably striking
cathedral, there are no less than thirty-five in Norwich alone. Norwich
has a castle, its history and nature far from free of doubt; some relics of
walls built by the citizens for their own safety in the time of Edward I,
when they were empowered to levy a "murage" tax; an ancient Guildhall of
smooth, black flint (which interested me, although it is said to have "no
regularity or beauty of architecture to recommend it"); St. Andrew's Hall;
the nave of an ancient Dominican church; a school partially domiciled in
what is left of a Dominican convent; a fine museum containing some rare
treasures of antiquity; the curious part known as Tombland; and great store
of ancient houses, each one of them possessed of a history. Also, in the
"Maid's Head," to be described later, it has the most alluring old inn
known to me anywhere. True it is that a mayor of Norwich, conducting a
royal personage on a tour of inspection, is reported to have said "this was
an ancient city, Your Royal Highness, before several of the old houses were
pulled down," but, while there can never be too many old houses left to be
an endless delight to the antiquary, there are far too many to be noticed
in a work of this kind. One learns without surprise, but not without
satisfaction, that a society of persons interested in antiquities meets
periodically for "Walks in Norwich," and it is pleasant to follow their
wanderings. Now they are studying the stately cathedral, with its three
magnificent gateways, and its beautiful fourteenth-century spire, and
listening to its story from the lips, it may be, of Dr. Jessopp. (All I
need say at this moment is that I have never known the grand simplicity of
the prevailing Norman style to strike the imagination so quickly and so
completely as when I first entered it at a time, as it happened, when the
exceptionally perfect organ was being played in the empty church.) At
another time they are investigating the Butter Hills, and learning that
they take their name from John le Boteler, who gave them to Carrow Abbey;
at another finding traces in a malt-house of the house of that stout Sir
Robert de Salle who opposed Wat Tyler's rebellion in these parts, and was
celebrated by Froissart. Here the temptation to quote a little is
overpowering. The insurgents, it should be said, were led by Sir Roger
Bacon and Geoffrey Lister, a dyer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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