Gildencroft
Gildencroft Leading from the northern
end of Pitt Street is Gildencroft, with St
Augustine’s Church on the one hand and a row of
Tudor cottages, restored by the City Council in 1956, on
the other. When arguments for and against their
renovation were being put forward it was claimed that
they constituted one of the longest complete rows of that
type and period in the country, exceeding as they did two
hundred feet in length. While renovation was being
carried out, however, the first three cottages were taken
down to improve the road junction at that point.It was at the western end of the Gildencroft that in February 1699, the Society of Friends first opened their Meeting House (pictured in 1934). The burial ground that it adjoined had been purchased by them in 1670 for £72. The rectangular building was of plain but pleasing design, with its red brick walls supported externally by pilasters of the same material. The roof was covered by English plain tiles and was hipped, the central part flat and supported internally by two tall oak pillars, each hewn from a single tree. A double row of casement windows lit the interior, which had a gallery at either end. The building, which was completely gutted by fire during an air raid in April 1942, was erected by the Quakers because their original house in Goat Lane had become too small. However, it was superseded as their principal place of worship in Norwich in 1826 when a new building was erected in Upper Goat Lane by the builder/architect J. T. Patience. Towards the end of the nineteenth century the Gildencroft building was leased for a time to the Particular Baptists, but the Friends continued to use the burial ground for their interments, as indeed they still do. In 1958 they erected on the old site a much smaller single storey building that incorporates in its structure parts of the original meetinghouse. For many years the only way by which wheeled traffic such as a funeral cortege could reach the Meeting House was by a narrow thoroughfare leading from St Martin’s Lane, about eighty yards long and widened at the burial ground end to allow carriages to turn round. Since Chatham Street has been extended to join up with Gildencroft it is reached much more conveniently by way of Sussex Street. Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2001 |