Attraction of Norwich

Norwich Cathedral

Background: The arrival of Christianity in Norfolk
Christianity was openly practiced in England and the rest of Europe when the Romans legalised it in the fourth century.

In the Seventh Century Saxon King of East Anglia, Sigebert, had been converted to Christianity in France before becoming King. Whilst in France he had got to know Felix, a Burgundian missionary, and with the approval of the Archbishop of Canterbury, invited him to East Anglia to become its first bishop. Felix became known as the ‘Apostle of East Anglia’ and he and the king made such a good team that both were made saints.

It is not known exactly where the first church was set up. The Venerable Bede names Donmoc (perhaps an old spelling of Dunwich?). Certainly at Dunwich a large number of churches sprang up almost overnight, the town becoming ‘a kind of Canterbury.’

Bishopric moves to Thetford

After the Norman Conquest of 1066, William the Conqueror appointed a Norman called Herfast as his chaplain and chancellor. Herfast deposed the last Saxon Bishop of Elmham and moved the bishopric of East Anglia from the tranquillity of North Elmham to the bright lights of Thetford, which was already a thriving commercial centre. He enlarged the Church of Great St Mary to serve as his cathedral. The bishopric fell vacant twenty years later.
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Sport in Norwich

The local football team is Norwich City FC, the “Canaries”; their ground is at Carrow Road.

Perception

Norwich is occasionally portrayed by the media as a city out-of-step with national trends (see Alan Partridge); This is primarily due to its geographic isolation which has contributed greatly to its ‘unspoilt’ and insular character. There has always been a general tolerance of “incomers” by the ‘native’ population of Norwich and Norfolk, though becoming a “local” is still reckoned to take decades. There are good rail links from Norwich railway station to Peterborough and London, and direct services to Cambridge were added in 2004.

A large proportion of the population of Norwich are users of the internet — a recent article has suggested that, compared with other UK cities, it is top of the league for the percentage of population who use the popular internet auction site eBay

Entertainment in Norwich

Satirical comedian Steve Coogan located his fictional, unbearably vain, cheesy broadcaster ‘Alan Partridge’ in Norfolk, specifically hosting the pre-breakfast show on the fictional independent station ‘Radio Norwich’. It exploited the county’s reputation as being somewhat detached from modern trends, past its prime, and rather peripheral to national life.

Other comic entertainers who have drawn comedy from that stereotype include Allan Smethurst ‘The Singing Postman’ and The Kipper Family lately represented by ’son’ Sid Kipper, though these are associated with Norfolk in general and not just the City. These have been joined by The Nimmo Twins

Independent radio stations are Radio Broadland (formerly Broadland 102) and Classic Gold Amber. BBC Radio Norfolk and the University of East Anglia’s Livewire 1350 all broadcast to the city.

Business and Shopping in Norwich

The city’s economy, originally chiefly industrial with shoemaking a large sector, has changed throughout the eighties and nineties to a service-based economy. Norwich Union, an Aviva company, still dominates these, but has been joined by other insurance and financial services companies.

Norwich Market is an ancient market place, established by the Normans between 1071 and 1074, and is today the largest 6 days a week open air market in England.

New developments on the former Boulton and Paul site include the Riverside entertainment complex with nightclubs and other venues featuring the usual national leisure brands. Nearby, the football stadium is being upgraded with more residential property development alongside the river Wensum.

Castle Mall, a shopping mall designed by local practice Lambert, Scott & Innes and opened in 1993, presents an ingenious solution to the problem of sensitively creating new retail space in a historic city-centre environment - the building is largely buried underground and in the side of a hill.
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Culture in Norwich

The University of East Anglia on the outskirts of Norwich was one of the New Universities founded in 1963, following the Robbins Report. UEA adopted the city’s motto of independence Do different and is especially well-known for its creative-writing programme; established by Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson, its graduates include Kazuo Ishiguro and Ian McEwan. The university campus houses the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. The city also has an art college, the Norwich School of Art & Design, located in the centre. Additionally, the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital on the city’s periphery at Colney was opened in 2001.

Each year the Norfolk and Norwich Festival celebrates the arts, drawing many visitors into the city from all over the eastern England.

The Forum, designed by Michael Hopkins and Partners and opened in 2002 is a building designed to house the Millennium Library, a replacement for the Norwich Central Library building which burned down in 1994, and the regional BBC broadcasting offices. The building provides a venue for exhibitions, concerts and events, although the city still lacks a dedicated concert venue.
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History of Norwich

Roman

The Romans had their regional capital at Venta Icenorum on the river to the south which is now at modern day Caistor St Edmund. No sign of Roman influence can be seen in Norwich.

Early English/Norman Conquest

Norwich was a construct of the Anglo-Saxons, the Danes and the Normans. The word Norvic appears on coins minted during the reign of King Athelstan (early 10th century AD). The ancient city was already a thriving centre for trade and commerce in East Anglia when Swein Forkbeard the Viking destroyed it in 1004 AD.

At the time of the Norman Conquest the city was one of the largest in England, and it continued to be a major centre for trade, especially wool. The River Wensum was a convenient exporting route to the sea.

The main area of the city south of the Wensum was destroyed by the construction of the Norman castle (see Norwich Castle) during the 1070s creation of a “New” or “French” borough.

In 1096 Bishop Losinga, then Bishop of Thetford, began construction of the cathedral, then moved his See there to what became the cathedral church for the Diocese of Norwich. The bishop of Norwich stills signs himself Norvic.
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Facts About Norwich

Geography

Status: City (1195)

Government Region: East of England

Administrative County: Norfolk

Area: Ranked 322nd
- Total 39.02 km²

Admin. HQ: Norwich

Grid reference: TG 232 085

ONS code: 33UG
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Norwich

Norwich is a city in East Anglia, in Eastern England, and the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk.

In effect the City expands a long way beyond its actual borough boundary, with large suburban areas on most sides, particularly Thorpe St. Andrew on the eastern side. The Parliamentary seats cross over into adjacent local government districts. The population for the whole built-up area was 194,839 in 2001 (census figures), up 5.1% from the 1991 figure of 185,420. It is the 32nd-largest urban area in England.

Norwich , city (1991 pop. 32,664) and district, county seat of Norfolk, E England, on the Wensum River just above its confluence with the Yare. Norwich is a principal city market for cattle and grain. It is also a center for shopping and entertainment, as well as administration. Since the 11th cent., Norwich has been a leading provincial city. It was sacked by the Danes in the 11th cent. and scourged by the Black Death in 1348. Norwich was the scene of events in Wat Tyler’s rebellion of 1381 and in the uprising under Robert Kett in 1549. There are many medieval churches as well as a cathedral founded in 1096 by the first bishop of Norwich.

Norwich Castle, part of which dates from Norman times, was made (1894) into a museum for collections of natural history and local antiquities. It also houses paintings of the 18th- and 19th-century Norwich school of artists. Other old buildings include St. Giles’s Hospital (13th cent.), Suckling House (14th cent.), Strangers Hall (15th cent.; now a museum), the guildhall (15th cent.), and St. Andrew’s Hall (15th cent.; formerly a Dominican church). The Maddermarket Theatre, a reconstruction of a Shakespearean theater, has a permanent amateur company. The Norwich grammar school dates from the 13th cent. The city is also the cultural center of the county; triennial music festivals have been held there since 1824. It is seat of the Univ. of East Anglia (1963). The writer Harriet Martineau was born in Norwich.