BOOK EXTRACT - Chapter 10 Thorpe Hamlet

Nest veteran Neville Porter

NORWICH City prepare for a crucial home game at Carrow Road today.  

But how many people can remember the days when the Canaries played at their previous home ground - The Nest, off Rosary Road. The last game there was on May 6^th, 1935, so we’re going back a bit. For the Thorpe Hamlet chapter of my book I tracked down a gentleman called Neville Porter who has just celebrated his 93^rd birthday.

“I first went to see City I suppose when I was eight or nine so we’re probably talking about 1932 or 1933,” he told me.

 “It was sixpence for an adult and three pence for children. I can remember standing on the concrete terracing where you could look directly down on the goalkeeper. It was all most precarious; safety considerations just didn’t come into it. It was no surprise when the FA told them they’d had to move.

“I can remember seeing Willie Warnes who they’d signed from Arsenal. He was a good little winger, but when he ran he was a bit bow-legged. So all of us kids when we played football in Eaton Park, we’d all be running round with legs like that, trying to imitate him. Bernard Robinson was another one. He was one of the generation who lost out on half his career because of the Second World War.”

Mr Porter was a season-ticket holder in the City Stand at Carrow Road until 2013. How many others can say they kept the turnstiles turning for 80 years?  

* There's much more on history of The Nest as well as the early days of Carrow Road in "Hidden Riverside Norwich" available at Jarrold's, £16.99

Literary Lunch with Hemsley + Hemsley

THIS elegant cookery book by Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley has little to do with Hidden Riverside Norwich - except that I'm their warm-up act when the sisters visit Norwich next month.

To be precise, I’m one of two other writers at the latest Jarrold Literary Lunch which is being held at Carrow Road on May 10^th. The third is the novelist Peter Hanington whose thriller A Dying Breed is set in Afghanistan.

So the latest cooking sensations, a much-heralded debut novelist and me chatting about the wonderful Wensum. What’s not to like?

*Tickets cost £29.50 and include a two-course lunch (recipes from H&H of course…) plus coffee. More details here.

In Jarrold's now...

A REMINDER that Hidden Riverside Norwich is now in the shops – or at least it’s in both branches of Jarrold’s in the city. Price? A very reasonable £16.99. 

Thanks Jarrolds...

JUST over a month to go now till Hidden Riverside Norwich hits the shelves and thanks to Jarrolds for getting organised. They can't review the book, because they haven't seen it yet. But nonetheless they've been very helpful with a bit of positive pre-publication blurb. You can read it here.

It's going to be April

GOOD news. The launch date for Hidden Riverside Norwich has been set for April of this year. ...By which time I hope to be back on the water with the canoe. This pic from last summer shows my Dagger Axis heading upstream on the Wensum just below Hellesdon Mill.

Not long now...

The lowdown from Hellesdon

View from the Wensum

This is a typical page from Hidden Riverside Norwich. The whole point of being in a canoe of course is that you can capture images and angles that are impossible from the bank.

This bridge is a real survivor. It's one of the Midland and Great Northern line originals - in other words it used to carry trains, now it has a lighter load of pedestrians and cyclists.

You'll find it on Marriotts Way just south of Hellesdon Road. As a canoeist I float my boat just upstream from here and head in to Norwich city centre. The variety of views and landscapes in that 2 or 3 odd-miles is amazing.

Hidden Riverside Norwich - revealed at last

I'VE been going through page proofs this weekend - all 144 pages of Hidden Riverside Norwich. I'm not likely to see a hard copy until next Spring, but nevertheless it's a big moment. As ever Halsgrove have done a super job with the design and layout. Roll on 2016...

* Hidden Riverside Norwich, £14.99 and likely to be in Norfolk's book shops from May 2016

Saying goodbye to Window Coffee

Hayley Draper at The Window Coffee  

I WAS very sorry to hear that Window Coffee in Wensum Street shut down at the end of July. It was undoubtedly the best coffee shop in Norwich. I had interviewed Hayley Draper for my next book. Here's what you would have read: 

"Somehow squeezed in between a kebab joint and an estate agent, you could easily overlook Hayley Draper’s cafe.

For a start The Window Coffee is tiny. Really tiny. Something like 12ft by 10ft. That means there’s only room for about half a dozen people around the coffee table. But sheer proximity does funny things to you.  It’s virtually impossible to ignore your neighbour here – and Hayley is adept at finding the right thread to draw two strangers together.

But the sense of instant community is just a nice side effect. Really, it’s all about the coffee and Hayley knows her stuff. Above the adverts for “flavoursome house blends” are certificates from a recent UK Barista of the Year awards ceremony.  She’s come a long way since she made her first coffee in a café in Diss aged 14. She did try other jobs, but nothing else gave her the same buzz.

“This is what makes me happy,” she says with a simple shrug.

The Window Coffee at 25 Wensum Street was born in February 2009 and it’s gone from strength to strength.

“I don’t have to do any marketing now,” she says. “People come to me. If you put ‘best coffee in Norwich’ into Google I pop up. Google, Trip Advisor, the internet is very important.”

Hang around for a while and you start to see the secrets of her success. There’s a constant flow of chatter with the mocha and the lattes. There are no “Have a Nice Day” platitudes, just the thrill of proper conversation.

The grinder grinds, the steam wand froths and you notice that the small Mona Lisa in the window carries a flat white in her hand. No wonder her smile is enigmatic. The ipod is on “shuffle”. Something Adele-ish follows something Chopin-ish. Another double decker roars past.

 “Good things happen after good coffee” runs the slogan on another wall. Hayley Draper was clearly in her element."

Ringland to Taverham by canoe

ON A summer’s day River Green at Ringland quickly fills up with picnickers and paddlers. But within a hundred yards the canoeist leaves civilisation behind. The river winds left and a long row of elegant poplars demand to have their pictures taken, their trunks reflecting in the crystal clear water.

Then the Wensum begins a long lazy meander. Cattle graze the meadows to the left while horses are stabled on the right bank. Today, an early June day that felt like hot July, I heard one solitary cuckoo and caught a glimpse of a retreating kingfisher. Banded demoiselle damselflies flitted from leaf to leaf by the dozen, the blue-black band across their wings making the males instantly recognisable.

Swans too were on patrol. Give them a wide berth and you’ll be fine. They are very territorial, especially when protecting a nest. If they curve their neck back and half raise their wings, watch out. It’s called “busking” and it’s a warning to keep away. I’ve yet to use my paddle, but I’ve felt safer with it on a couple of occasions.

Nature has provided a new bridge on this stretch. A poplar has fallen clean across the river, creating a dam to be by-passed. Was it the wet winter of 2013/14 that did the damage? Then the river gets more claustrophobic. Dodge and weave around low-lying branches of alder and white willow.

Costessey Lane gets closer in time to catch a view of the white-washed Beehive Lodge, originally one of the lodges for the long-demolished Costessey Hall. Then road and river diverge, leaving longer and longer gardens for the selection of static caravans and houses which lie undetected by all but us river-users. Almost every one has its own home-made staithe, even if it’s just scaffold poles and aluminium ladders. And then the country becomes more open again. To the left, the grounds of Taverham Hall prep school, to the right, the Taverham  Mill nature reserve. After three miles on the river, the sluices here mean our journey’s at an end.

Turn around in the slower water dominated by yellow water-lilies and head for home.

* Non-natives to Ringland need a £5 annual licence to launch from River Green in Ringland. See the Ringland Parish Council website for details.

Ringland: where was the Union Jack?

RINGLAND has just the one pub now, The Swan with its idyllic position at the end of The Street, overlooking the Wensum.

But in the old days there was another. It gloried in the name of the King of Prussia until 1915 when some local soldiers ripped the sign down. Clearly the landlord then decided that a name-change to The Union Jack might do wonders for trade in the context of the First World War. 

The same boozer with its different name apparently flourished right through until the mid-1960s, but where was it? Looking at this photo my money would be on The Street up towards the church? Can anyone tell me for sure? Please email me at sanddsilk@btinternet.com if you can help.

Drayton Old Lodge: 1914 and all that

REMEMBER “EBR” inscribed into the wall at Drayton Old Lodge? Well, after a bit of help, I’ve found the man those initials belong to. The details confirm that the Old Lodge was indeed built as private house rather than the Nurses Home which it later became.

The timing is quite poignant. Here was a successful man returning to Britain to build a mansion complete with grand hall, billiards room and drawing room. But as the first bricks were being laid, the First World War was erupting in Flanders. The house – with its sculleries and servants’ quarters - was being built for a world which would no longer exist by 1918. Just look at nearby Costessey Hall – demolished in 1920 - to see what happened to several old estates in this era.

Clearly Drayton Old Lodge did survive, though I haven’t yet been able to establish exactly when it became a Nurses Home. The late 1920s or early 1930s is my best guess at the moment.

Finally who was EBR? Well, you’ll have to wait till the book gets published for the full details.

Drayton: the ghost of a great poet

IN the middle of a heath, an incongruous clump of pampas grass. Look closer and you might be able to see that the land is suspiciously flat between the pampas and the copse. It’s the site, the exact footprint, of the old David Rice Psychiatric Hospital. It was built in the late 30s of the last century and demolished in the mid-noughties of this one. Who would have thought that an ornamental plant would outlive the buildings it was designed to grace?

Now owned by The Lind Trust, this 33 acre site was going to be home to a massive new church. Plans fell through after an acrimonious row with many neighbours. Its future is still uncertain but in the meantime the Trust is more than happy for us walkers to explore its gentle contours. Locals can probably see it returning to nature almost month by month.

It’s been much in my mind this week after discovering a little bit more about the David Rice’s most famous patient. According to the experts, Francis Webb (1925-1973) was one of the best poets Australia has ever produced. But he suffered from terrible mental health problems, so much so that he spent many months here, accidentally getting to know the Wensum valley in the process.

Thanks to the good old Millennium Library I’ve now borrowed a 1969 collection of his poems (It’s an inter-library loan all the way from Bucks, smelling beautifully of second-hand book shops and complete with loan dates stretching back decades. Excellent.)

I thought it would be his poems on named Norfolk places which would get me, instead this vision of a lonely night inside the David Rice knocks you sideways with its raw, melancholic power:

“The side-room has sweated years and patience, rolls its one eye

Skyward, nightward; hours beyond sleep I lie;

And the fists of some ardent Plimsoll have laboured this wall

Clear of its plaster beside my chosen head.

Someone murmurs a little, dithers in bed,

Against that frail call

Are imminent the siege-works of a huge nightfall.”

There’s much more, but you get the idea and I better be careful of copyright. His great champion in this country is Cameron Self of Literary Norfolk fame. Cameron knows his stuff. Read his summary to get a proper idea of what a big name Webb is in Australia, but also how Norfolk should claim him as one of our own.

I found it slightly eerie walking across this site even before Bucks came up trumps. The demo guys have done such a thorough job that there is very little evidence left of the hospital. But nevertheless the odd drain cover – and pampas grass - means that you somehow feel the absence of a building.

Throw in the “siege-works of a huge nightfall” and it’s safe to say you probably won’t find me up here after dark.

Picture Post: Sunrise on the Wensum

TOP tip for lazy photographers: don’t get up at 4am in the summer when you can get a good sunrise at just gone 8am during the winter. This is the Wensum at Drayton yesterday, looking south-east from the old railway bridge over Marriotts Way.

Drayton: Who was EBR at the DOL?

THIS is Drayton Old Lodge, a lovely wedding venue overlooking the Wensum Valley in the village of Drayton. It was a nurses’ home until roughly the early 1990s and then spent a decade or so as a conference centre. Today I would call it a hotel, but the website fights shy of that term. So “venue” it is. I thought it had been built in 1914 as a purpose-built nurses’ home, but now I’m not so sure – and that’s where I need your help. Take a look at this crest. it doesn’t feel “corporate” to me. There’s some suggestion that the building didn’t become a Home till 1917. So I’m wondering if this was a posh old pile where perhaps the owner perished during the First World War. But that’s complete speculation at the moment.

It’s a great spot, one of many along the Wensum where I have the sacrilegious desire to chop down dozens of trees. Without the woods on the hillside, you would have a gorgeous view down onto the river valley below. But I digress. Who can EBR have been in Drayton in 1914? And how was he (she?) related to HR. If you can help, please email me at sanddsilk@btinternet.com

December 15th update:

It probably closed as a nurses home in the 1970s rather than the 1990s. Documents at the Norfolk Record Office talk of it being the home of the Norwich Health Authority between 1975 and 1993. The NRO also has some great black and white photos of nurses at the home taken in the late 1930s. The photos of Sister Parr, Nurse Fincham and Nellie Burton were handed in anonymously in 2009. If that was you, do get in touch. Sadly though, the NRO had nothing to help me work out how the building started life.

The bloody legend of Bloods Dale

I GET the impression that many people who live in Drayton don’t really see much of the River Wensum. Busy commuters could be forgiven for not  even realising it’s there, hidden beyond the Low Road while they take the High Road to Norwich. Perhaps the legend of the bloody battle of Bloods Dale can tempt them. Here’s my first draft:

The land climbs steadily from the Wensum between the Low Road and the High Road in Drayton. A footpath bisects the two roads and just to the north lies an idyllic spot at the centre of a grisly legend.

It’s a field, trapezoidal in shape, with the unlikely name of Bloods Dale. And local tradition maintains that this was the site of an epic battle between the Danes and the Saxons in the Dark Ages.

“In a plantation near the road are traces of an entrenchment; and at a short distance is Bloods dale, said to be the scene of a battle in the Saxon era,” wrote one Victorian chronicler.

Notice how we all say “said to be”. No-one has the remotest bit of evidence, but tantalisingly 13 skeletons were dug up a short distance from here by navvies digging the Midland & Great Northern railway line in the 19^th century.

All that we can be sure of is that the “Bloods Dale” name has a long lineage. A 15^th century document talks of land called “Blodeshille” and “Blodisdale” owned by a Walter Nich of nearby Taverham. The first edition of the OS map from 1884 shows it as a large field running from Low Road to the brow of the hill, while a 1913 edition adds the wood we still see today.

And look again at your current OS Explorer. Bloods Dale is picked out from among all the other dozens of field names the cartographers could have chosen in the area. Well done Ordnance Survey for helping to keep this faint historical whisper alive down the centuries.

Remembering Drayton Station

WHO’S old and lives in Drayton? I’m writing up Drayton Station and I could do with a bit of local knowledge. The station closed in the late 60s so I need someone with more than a few grey hairs,

If I’ve got things right, Station Road is to the immediate right of this photo, making the building to the right of the footbridge the station itself. It’s the left hand side of the tracks which I need help with. Were there sidings over there? And what are those white gates all about? Was this perhaps an area where cattle were kept before getting on cattle trucks? If you remember Drayton Station in its heyday please email me at sanddsilk@btinternet.com or leave a comment below. Many thanks.

The Low Down at Hellesdon

ANOTHER conundrum courtesy of ebay. This is Low Road at Hellesdon, but where exactly? We’re looking north, but I can’t place this combination of gradient and curve of the river. Do email me at sanddsilk@btinternet.com if you can help.

King Street’s forgotten church

HERE’S the last piece of my King Street jigsaw. The long shadows of early morning at the remains of St Peter Southgate just off King Street. The 12^th century church was all but demolished in 1887. But these sturdy remains of a 15^th century tower survive to look kindly over a children’s park.

It’s not easy to find. Southgate Lane is a tiny alley at the King Street end and not much broader up on Bracondale. It’s also the local park for Argyle Street residents - although it was a surprise to me to see that many houses there look set for demolition.

So King Street finished. Next stop Drayton.

King Street: reflections of the past

I

I’VE collected a shelf-full of local books over the last ten years or so. And a dark green hardback with a ripped dust jacket and a 16 shilling price tag is proving very useful for the King Street chapter.

If Stones Could Speak was written by R H Mottram. Mottram was a novelist and a First World War poet who loved the city of Norwich. He was its Lord Mayor in 1953 and was also a staunch defender of Mousehold Heath. If Stones… is a romp through the history of Norwich, but done geographically rather than historically. So Chapter VI, for example, is dedicated to King Street:

“There is no doubt as to which of the Norwich streets is most connected with the sea. In King Street you find the signs of the Ship and the Old Barge, the Ferry Inn and the Keel and Wherry. One of its by-streets, descending the deep slope to the west of it, is Mariners Lane. Here is Waterman’s Yard and Swan Yard.

“For half its length, the long, straight, street leading due south from the old market-place on Tombland, into South Norfolk, runs parallel with the River Wensum.

“Here, at the continuous line of “staithes”, as they call a quay or landing place in Norfolk, are tied up the craft, mainly registered in London or north-west Europe, that bring to Norwich all varieties of bulky, non-perishable goods. Mills and breweries, engineering and constructional works line the banks, which, like so many things in Norwich, have never become entirely sacrificed to ruthless commerce”.

I’m going to quote at least that last paragraph in my book. It seems to sum up a 1950s King Street very nicely. A non-conformist, Mottram was buried in a beautiful spot within the Rosary Road cemetery. Forty two years after his death, all hail Ralph Hale Mottram.

A viaduct across the Wensum

THIS wonderful vision of an alternative future for the King Street riverside comes from possibly the most famous document the city council has ever produced.

City of Norwich Plan 1945 mapped out a 50-year blueprint across 135 pages of elegant prose. (When did council officials stop writing in plain English?)

An inner ring road and an outer ring road would converge on this tall viaduct “carrying a high-level road from Bracondale to the railway bridge at the junction of Carrow Road and Clarence Road.” It would be, they claimed, “a light and elegant structure of great beauty, and would command a wonderful view of the old city from which it would be seen as a terminating feature and a break between it and the commercial and industrial zone further down the river valley”.

The conventional 21^st century wisdom is to say thank goodness it was never built – to be fair it was controversial from the start. But I’m not so sure. In fact I can’t argue with a word of the authors’ comments. And even if you do, remember that the inner ring road is still not complete some 70 years later. To this day traffic still crawls down King Street and across Carrow Bridge to get to Thorpe St Andrew.

The 1945 masterplan is worth quoting elsewhere – particularly with regard to the river:

“While Norwich has turned her back to the Wensum, industry has helped herself. At present the river is looked upon chiefly as a commercial utility providing a cheap form of transport; but unfortunately whilst rendering this old established service, it has encouraged the evil of an ugly spread of unsightly buildings and ramshackle sheds along its banks as well as the defilement of its waters by effluent from various factories…

“Except for short stretches of its course, the Wensum is at present overshadowed by grim walls, hidden by ugly barriers and inaccessible to the public as an amenity within the city: the potential attractions of the river are almost lost. We propose that its banks should be cleaned wherever possible and opened up for the public to enjoy the pleasures of the river which is one of the largest open spaces in the city.”

We’ve come a long way haven’t we? Nice work messrs C H Jones FRIBA, S Rowland Pierce FRIBA and H C Rowley, City Engineer.

* More on the viaduct from Nick J Stone here.