Kett’s Hill
Kett’s Hill A wildlife park known as
Kett’s Heights has recently been formed on a
hillside between Kett’s Hill and Gas Hill,
overlooking Bishop Bridge and the Cathedral. Here at its
highest point a flint wall is all that remains of the
chapel of St Michael-on-the-Mount. According to the Registrum
Primum of Norwich Cathedral Priory, in 1101 Herbert
de Losinga, the first Bishop of Norwich, was granted the
manor of Thorpe and Thorpe wood by Henry I. There he
built the church and priory of St Leonard and, nearby,
the chapel of St Michael. The latter was to replace a
church on Tombland having the same dedication, which the
monks had pulled down in order to make an entrance to the
Cathedral monastery.St Leonard’s priory was a cell to the Cathedral, and while certain of the monks were placed here permanently others were here only while the cathedral church was being built. One of their duties was to perform daily service in St Michael’s chapel; out of their revenues they had to find a scholar and pay for an exhibition for him at one of the universities. At the dissolution of the monasteries Henry VIII granted the priory to Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, whose son the Earl of Surrey built a magnificent mansion here known as Mount Surrey. He did not live long to enjoy it, for after falling out of favour he was beheaded in 1547. Two years later Robert Kett (pictured, being hanged, in bronze on one of the City Hall doors) and his rebels encamped here. The priory they largely destroyed, but Mount Surrey they used as a place of detention for their more important captives. Little now remains of the priory. Walter Rye, who owned the site at the beginning of the twentieth century, carried out excavations there and uncovered the entrance to the gate tower, but he found very little else. Of St Michael’s Chapel, later familiarly known as Kett’s Castle, only the flint wall remains - tidied up from the rugged appearance it presented when made the subject of a painting by John Sell Cotman in 1810. Supported on one side by a brick wall, once part of a greenhouse, it now stands isolated and a prominent reminder of the city’s past. |
 Text and photographs
Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2001 |