Westwick Street
Westwick Street
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It appears that St Lawrence’s well, known to have existed here since the time of Edward I, was granted in 1547 to the parishioners, together with a lane leading to it from the street, on condition that they erected a door at the south end of the lane, to be open by day and closed at night. In 1576 this well and lane were granted to a beer brewer, Robert Gibson (Sheriff in 1596), on condition that he brought the water from the well by a pipe to the public street, there to erect a pump at his own expense. This he did two years later, and had a verse inscribed on the stonework extolling his goodness for carrying out the work. Unfortunately it seems that Gibson was an irascible person, which led him into trouble on more than one occasion. In 1590, for instance, he abused the newly elected Mayor, Thomas Pettus, both privately and in open court. Things seem to have been smoothed over, but in 1602 the Mayor, Thomas Lane, was similarly abused, and this led to Gibson being removed from the aldermanic bench. He was also disenfranchised “of and from the freedom and liberties of this city and forever henceforth to be a foreigner and so continue” - the penalty for failing to he “buxom to the Mayor”. Gibson died in 1606, presumably still disenfranchised, and was buried in the chancel of St Lawrence’s Church. Text and photographs Copyright © G.A.F.Plunkett 2001 |
In Westwick Street, St Margaret’s
Plain is the name given to a widening opposite the church
of that name, and here on its north side were Nos 50
and 52, pulled down two or three years before the
war. There was nothing particularly striking about their
appearance, it is true, but they could be quoted as
typical examples of Norwich Tudor dwellings; they
probably resembled some of the restored houses in Oak
Street before the latter were furnished with their
commodious attics about the time of Cromwell. In the
Westwick Street building one of the attractions was the
retention of a considerable part of the ancient pin-tiled
roofing.
No 90, the New Brewery Tavern,
fell victim to the bombing in April 1942. Its photograph
clearly shows the manner in which many an old house in
the city such as this one was re-fronted in modern times;
but unless either of the side walls is visible, as it was
in this case, the outside observer has no idea of its
antiquity. A similar example can be seen in Fyebridge
Street, in the house once inhabited by Edmund Wood, the
Mayor in 1548. The Westwick Street house was not quite as
old; the eastern gable had corbie or crow-steps, a
popular architectural feature of the seventeenth century.
At the end of the street, on the corner
of Station Road (now widened as a continuation of Barn
Road), stood the Norwich Corporation’s Westwick
Depot. In its yard, looking slightly out of place, was a timber-framed
house on whose gable was the inscription
“Removed from Whitlingham and Rebuilt A. D.
1900”. The site upon which it had been re-erected
was that of the mediaeval city wall adjacent to Heigham
Gate and adjoined that of the Cow and Hare public house.
This was also a timber-framed building with several
gables, but it was demolished in 1881-2 in order to make
way for an access road to the new City Station. A sketch
of this old inn showing a piece of the city wall
adjoining it was published in C. J. W. Winter’s book
Norfolk Antiquities. The house from Whitlingham
(known as the “Monkey House”), which later
replaced it, was burned down in the air raids of April
1942.
At the opposite end of Westwick Street
only a short distance away from another at St John
Maddermarket, is a much older pump known as known as Gibson’s
Conduit. This was for many years set into the
boundary wall of Bullard’s brewery facing Westwick
Street. After the conversion of the property into flats
and offices, however, it was dismantled and re-erected on
the other side of the wall, where it now faces the Anchor
Quay development and is set off to much better advantage.