St George’s Street
St George’s Street St George’s Street is
the middle of three running northward from Colegate
– Duke Street (formerly part of Pitt Street) and
Calvert Street being the others. This was formerly
Gildengate and later Middle Street; indeed, as recently
as 1877 it seemed a matter of personal preference which
name to adopt, Colman’s Norwich Directory for that
year listing some of its residents under “Gildengate
Street” and others under “Middle Street”.Until destroyed during one of the April raids of 1942, the Golden Can public house (right) stood at No 90. Walter Wicks in his book on the inns and taverns of old Norwich, while not referring to this house, mentions one with a similar sign formerly standing in St Andrew’s Street. Describing the sign as an old one, he thought it might have been suggested by the following nursery rhyme that contains a reference to it: Little
Brown Betty lived at the Golden Can Where she
brewed good ale for gentlemen. Alms Lane adjoining to the south of the public house was called, according to the historian John Kirkpatrick, “the Almes Lane 1626, now vulgarly pronounced Ammys Lane, from certain cottages called the Almeshouses wch. are on the N. side of the Lane”. |
 At the junction of St
George’s Street with Colegate there is now an open
space where, in 1937, buildings were pulled down to
improve visibility. The houses affected were 31 and 33
St George’s (left). The former had a weather
vane on its gable that was illustrated by Claude Messent
in his book on the subject. The pointer, which
represented a pipe, was probably put up about a century
ago when the shop was occupied by Moses Levine, a
tobacconist and pipe maker. It is said that he used to
hold competitions among his customers, giving a prize to
whoever made the best job of colouring a pipe. The house
dated from the seventeenth century; there is a model of
it in the Strangers’ Hall museum on which the name
over the shop is Pinchin’s. |
 Further along St
George’s, Nos 91 and 93 (right) stood on the
north corner of Green Lane. The former was a house and
the latter a shop, both occupying what was originally one
dwelling probably dating from the seventeenth century.
They had a picturesque appearance due to the unusual
arrangement of gables: one dormer occupied a near-central
position in the roof while another appeared to rise a
further storey above and behind it.John Crome the artist would have been familiar with the building, for he and his family lived in one of a terrace of houses south of the Green Lane entrance. These houses, which were sketched by Edward Preston Willins in the 1880s, were demolished at the turn of the century, to be replaced in 1901 by six cottages known as Layers Terrace. These in their turn were pulled down in 1962 under a slum clearance scheme, and the inner link road subsequently passed across the site. A rectangular stone plaque rescued from the front wall of No 89 (the end house of the terrace) is now in store at the Bridewell museum. It has a medallion portrait of the artist and bears the information that “John Crome - Old Crome, 1768-1821, Founder of the Norwich School of Painters, Lived in a House on this Site”. Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2001 |