Quayside
Quayside Connecting Quayside to St
Martin-at-Palace Plain is Bedding Lane, which was known
as Baddinges Went late in the thirteenth century. The
historian John Kirkpatrick four hundred years later,
however, stated “it is now called the Three Privy
Lane.” At this, the eastern, end of Quayside
formerly stood a number of tall houses, late Georgian in
origin. Those in Beckwith’s Court (left) had
in their attic storeys casement windows of the type
usually associated with weaving. By the mid-1930s these
houses had fallen upon hard times, becoming divided up
into multiple occupation.Among the several courts that were formerly hereabouts one had the curious name of Cock and Pie Yard, no doubt adopted from a public house of that name. Larwood and Hotten in their History of Signboards stated that this was once a common sign and considered that it derived from the Peacock and Pie. In ancient times the peacock was a favourite dish, being introduced to the table in a pie, the head elevated above the crust with beak gilded and tail feathers extended. |
 At No 8 Quayside, at the
northwest corner of Pigg Lane, stood the New Star inn
(right). This was a timber-framed building, having the
ground-floor walls of brick, jettied first floor, and
gabled attic storey. The upper walls were plastered and
colourwashed. When in 1871 it was acquired by the brewers
Steward and Patteson it was apparently known as The Jolly
Young Waterman but a directory of 1877 lists it by its
later name. Repaired and redecorated in 1954, when it was
described as being among the city inns scheduled for
preservation, it was closed only three years later, and
the suggestion was then made that the City Council should
buy it and convert it into two dwellings. Although this
proposal was turned down on the grounds of cost, the old
inn was nevertheless included in a list of buildings of
special architectural and historic interest, its possible
use as a store and workshop meeting with disapproval.Despite an offer by the Norwich Society to raise money to restore it, all this was rescinded in 1962 after it had been privately acquired, and demolition followed in March of the next year. It was then that the discovery was made that it was not a Tudor building but one of earlier date, incorporating a former mediaeval warehouse, the only one of its kind to have survived in the city up to that time, and one of the comparatively few existing in England. Originally the warehouse was separated by a passage from the merchant’s own house, but the two were, in Tudor times, made into one set of premises which survived until 1963. As a postscript, and as though to eradicate finally all traces of the street’s antiquity, the ancient cobbled paving was taken up in the following year, to be replaced by a smooth surface of tarmac. Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2001 |