The Great Hall, Oak Street, Norwich
HISTORY OF THE BUILDING
Part Two: 20th Century
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On this page, we take up the story at the period when photographs become available to help us.
The Hall, the Yard, and the Street
Photographs of Flower Pot Yard
Guide to "The Plunketts" web site
Guide to Pictures held by the Library
19th Century Overcrowding
By the 19th century, the whole of Oak Street had become exceptionally densely populated. Older buildings such as the Great Hall lost the outbuildings and gardens which once belonged to them, as houses were built in every available nook and cranny. Landlords then crammed in as many tenants as they could get away with.
Oak Street was lined with narrow buildings, shops and public houses. Every third or fourth building had a passageway built through it, sometimes wide enough for a vehicle, usually narrower. Each passageway led to a "Yard", a tiny area surrounded by the buildings behind those fronting the street.
At that time, the Great Hall was cut off from Oak Street by buildings lining the street. Our front door opened onto Flower Pot Yard, and that was our postal address. When house numbers came into use, the addresses 125 and 127 Oak Street applied to buildings lining the street, not to us. We took the address "127 Oak Street" only after those other buildings had been demolished (after WW2).
View from the Street, Today
The drawing shows the gable end of our building as seen from the street, today.
The ragged and patched wall reflects the fact that there was once another building between the Hall and the street. This turns out to have been a rather plain three storey building with a utilitarian 20th century double shop front. For a photograph of it, see below.
You reach our front door through the gate on the left. Flower Pot Yard was on this side: we still call the area in front of our door, with a slight change of wording, "Flowerpot Court". On the other side was Holl's Yard.
20th Century Destruction and Rebuilding
In the last 75 years, Oak Street has changed out of all recognition.
A large-scale slum-clearance programme began in 1931, starting from the other end of Oak Street and working northwards.
Then, in the Second World War, bombing took a further toll of the old buildings in the area. Flower Pot Yard was almost entirely destroyed, leaving the Great Hall "alone amidst the rubble".
Post-war rebuilding not only changed the character of the street, but even the pattern of side streets isn't exactly what it was.
All this makes it very hard to relate old photographs to what we see today.
Reconstructing the Appearance of Flower Pot Yard in the 1930s
For the top half of Oak Street we have an unusually detailed photographic record, which brings the pre-war appearance of the street vividly to life.
We can achieve best results by comparing pictures from two collections - the Heritage Library at the Forum, and "The Plunketts" web site. You may find it useful to open the pictures in separate windows, by holding down the Shift key when you click on a link.
Both collections are copyright to the respective owners. Browsing is OK, copying isn't. We are grateful to Jonathan Plunkett for his kind permission to use direct links to images from his web site.
Starting from the Norfolk Library Online Catalogue, take the link, "Picture Norfolk", and run a search using the keywords "125 oak". You should have two pictures of the same range of buildings, before and after a drastic transformation.
What have these buildings got to do with the Great Hall?
Take a look at this image from "The Plunketts": .../the_plunketts1/OakStreet05.jpg
You should have a page from a photo album, with five photographs. The page can be enlarged by clicking on a "hamburger" icon which appears when you move the cursor over the page.
1955
Focus attention on the picture at the bottom left of the group.
This key piece of evidence is a photograph taken in 1955, when many of the buildings damaged in the air raids of 1942 had been cleared away - but, crucially, not all.
The Great Hall is clearly visible on the right, looking much as it does today. On the left, number 125 is damaged but still standing, and there is enough of number 127 left to identify the "tunnel" through the building which led into Flower Pot Yard.
Number 125 has a distinctive pattern: deep upstairs window - front door with lip - shallow upstairs window. This pattern can be recognised in the 1930s pictures, with the Great Hall out of sight.
1937
Now scroll to the picture at the top right of the page of photographs. The pattern of windows and door is immediately recognisable, with the entrance to the "tunnel" clearly visible behind.
This is a 1937 photo of numbers 125 and 127. [Kelly 1987] suggests "a construction date of circa 1670" for this building, an opinion carried forward unchanged into [Barrett 1991].
Notice the tall, grey building in the background. A banded column holds up a ... Is it an acorn? Is it a pineapple? Is it a flaming torch?
The apparent damage part way up the banded column turns out on closer inspection to be nothing of the kind. It's the architect trying to be clever. There are two banded columns side by side. The one holding up the acorn (or whatever) never reaches the ground - it ends at head-height in an S-shaped flourish. The column next to it runs from the level of the shop sign right down to the ground.
I call this grey building the "acorn building". It is of particular interest to those of us who work in the Great Hall, because it stood on what is now our car park, and must have shared a wall with us.
Two cottages which once stood on this site were rebuilt as a shop and dwelling house between 1839 and 1894. When house numbers were first applied to Oak Street in the mid 1880s, this building became 131-133 Oak Street [Kelly 1987]. (129 was a different building at the back of the yard.)
1931 - or a bit later
Now that we have found our bearings, we can return to the Library's photographs.
In case you've let these pictures go, here are the instructions again: starting from the Norfolk Library Online Catalogue, take the link, "Picture Norfolk", and run a search using the keywords "125 oak".
This is a matching pair of photos of numbers 125 - 127, before and after some serious modifications. The "acorn building" is fully visible in the background of both photographs.
In his book, "Disappearing Norwich", George Plunkett wrote:
Flower Pot Yard ... was condemned in the early 1930s as the “worst slum in Norwich”, but was subsequently acquired by Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) S. E. Glendenning to demonstrate that old houses, originally well built, could be reconditioned for a further span of useful life even after years of neglect.
The exact date on which the Major took control of the Great Hall was 13 February 1931 [Kelly 1987]. That would fit in well with the winter coats and scarves of the children in the first of these photographs.
The buildings which had been demolished just before this work started (notice the makeshift barrier on the left of the photographs) were 121-123 Oak Street. Behind these buildings was Smith's Yard.
Entries in street directories of the period show the last occupiers.
Jarrolds Norwich Directory, 1911 and 1914:
121 J Sadd, tinware dealer
123 Charles William Bacon, greengrocer
Kelly's Norwich Directory, 1924-25-26-27:
121 Mrs M Debbage
123 Charles William Bacon, shopkeeper
Kelly's Norwich Directory, 1929 onwards:
No further mention.
Street Scene, mid 1930s
Once you've learned to recognise "our" group of buildings, they can be spotted even in the far distance. Take a look at this image from "The Plunketts": .../the_plunketts1/OakStreet04.jpg
Enlarge, and scroll to the middle picture in the top row. It's a street scene: a bicycle is propped against a wall, a man in a raincoat looks across the street, a woman walks through an area of shadow.
Our buildings are in the far distance - you can see 125-7, with its black and white livery. Beyond this you can just make out the taller shape of the "acorn building", and beyond that again the strange double chimneys of the Buck public house.
Enough time has passed since the transformation of 125-7 from 3 storeys to 2, for the demolition site at 121-3 to have been given a regular set of railings instead of the makeshift barrier of scrap iron.
The photographer is standing at the entrance to Jenkins Lane, or perhaps just a little further north. (In today's Oak Street, that means being close to the Green Man pedestrian crossing!) The strangely shaped shadow is cast by numbers 122-128, recognisable in pictures of Oak Street by the pattern, "3 large gables, one small".
1942 - how it all ended
Starting from the Norfolk Library Online Catalogue, take the link, "Picture Norfolk", and run a search using the keywords "war damage oak".
The building in the foreground of Norfolk Library's "War Damage" picture is Steward & Patteson's Maltings. The outer shell of this building is still a prominent feature of our part of Oak Street, about 50 yards north of our building, and clearly visible from our office windows.
Next to the Maltings, in the picture, stands 141 Oak Street, with its distinctive weavers' window just below the roofline. (See the top item on: www.the-plunketts.freeserve.co.uk/OakStreet.htm).
The tall, old-fashioned double chimney belonged to the Buck public house at 135 - 139 Oak Street, which has mostly collapsed. Beyond that again come "our" buildings. The "acorn building" has been destroyed, and in the far distance 125 - 127 can be made out, still standing.
The Air Raid of 1942 remembered in Books
At least 3 different photographs of the damage to numbers 125 - 141 have been published in books.
The most detailed photographs can be found in a large-format book called "Images of Norwich", compiled by the Evening News and published in 1994: see page 53. There's a copy in the Heritage Library at the Forum.
One picture shows 125-7 in the foreground. The remains of the "acorn building" and the Buck public house are visible in the centre of the photo, and we can see 141 Oak Street and the Maltings in the background. Soldiers carrying spades mill about in the street. Another picture, taken from Sussex Street, gives a close-up of the Buck public house, with a corner of 141 Oak Street in the background.
Neither of these pictures is available on the Internet.
Two more books, currently in the bookshops, include copies of photos we've already mentioned.
"Norwich at War", by Joan Banger (Poppyland Publishing), has a copy of the Evening News picture with 125-7 in the foreground.
"Norwich: 80 years of the Norwich Society", by Andy Anderson and Neil R Storey has the view from the opposite direction, with the Maltings in the foreground (page 59).
1963
There is an unusual picture of the Great Hall, dated March 1963, in the book "Images of Norwich", on page 147. This picture is not available on the Internet.
It represents another turning point in the story of the Great Hall, because for the first time in its 500 year history, the building is standing completely alone. All the damaged buildings around it have gone, the new ones (currently occupied by Moonraker Motorcycles) are yet to be started.
Diagram of Flower Pot Yard
Exact location of Flower Pot public house
House Numbers
Geoffrey Kelly's 1987 booklet on "Pre-1830 Documentary Evidence for the Great Hall" includes the following data:
The house numbers still in use in the 1930s were first applied to the buildings in Oak Street in the mid-1880s.
The former "Flower Pot" public house counted as "129 Oak Street", despite its position well inside the Yard. The "acorn building" was 131-133 Oak Street. The Great Hall was "1 and 2 Flower Pot Yard".
Inside the Yard
So far, we have concentrated mainly on the buildings at the front of the group (125-7 and "acorn") as seen from the street. We've seen how a "tunnel" leads through number 127 into Flower Pot Yard itself. Can we now go through the tunnel and see what there is inside?
For this, we rely entirely on pictures from "The Plunketts" web site. In 1937, George Plunkett documented these buildings so thoroughly, it's like having a web cam in there.
"The Plunketts" web site in greater detail
www.the-plunketts.freeserve.co.uk
A web site created by Jonathan Plunkett featuring the work of his father, the local historian and photographer, George Plunkett. The latter tells us on the web site how he bought an Ensign Carbine No 7 camera in 1930, and has been using it ever since to record the changing face of Norwich.
We are grateful to Jonathan Plunkett for his kind permission to make use of this copyright material.
"The Plunketts" on Oak Street
www.the-plunketts.freeserve.co.uk/OakStreet.htm
A page of single photographs with detailed commentary. Flower Pot Yard is the second entry down.
www.the-plunketts.freeserve.co.uk/o.htm
A picture gallery of scenes from Oak Street from the 1930s to the 1950s, from the same web site.
Scroll well down for Flower Pot Yard, or use the keyboard combination Ctrl+F and find "Flower Pot". There are eleven photos of the Great Hall and its immediate surroundings. For those of us who know and love the Great Hall, it's an exciting ride into the past.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR ENLARGING THESE PHOTOGRAPHS
The web page "o.htm" contains images of pages from a photo album. Clicking on any one of these images enlarges the image to fill the Internet window.
In the bottom right corner of the new, enlarged image, there should be a floating toolbar containing an icon which looks like a hamburger.
[If this doesn't turn up first time, try moving the mouse pointer within the window, first to a point outside the image, then back over the image itself. Wait a few seconds. When the "hamburger" turns up, pounce on it.]
One click on the "hamburger", and the image enlarges again so that a single photograph almost fills the Internet window. Now scroll to the desired picture.
The Flower Pot Public House
Flower Pot Yard was named after the former Flower Pot public house, which closed in 1905. At least for the last 25 years of its life, the Flower Pot occupied the building on the west side of the Great Hall (towards the river), as indicated in the diagram above.
On this point, we encounter contradictory opinions.
George Plunkett identifies the former public house with "127 Oak Street", the building on the left as you go through the tunnel, with a bay window on its rearward extension.
[Kelly 1987] and [Barrett 1991] are equally adamant that it was "129 Oak Street", which they state was on the west side of the Great Hall. That makes it the building directly opposite as you go through the tunnel, with a light over its door.
A large-scale OS map from 1884 puts the matter beyond doubt, at least for the period 1880-1905, after the brewery had sold numbers 125-127 and the Great Hall to Alden the baker.
Did the Flower Pot public house never have a frontage on Oak Street itself? That's still an open question. The pub was around for a long time, and in the 19th century the brewery owned all of Flower Pot Yard.
A Fuller List of Relevant Pictures from the Library's Collection
Starting from the Norfolk Library Online Catalogue, take the link, "Picture Norfolk", and run a search using the keywords suggested. There are 8 pictures directly relevant to our "patch".
The recommended search key to start with is "flowerpot", which must be entered as one word.
1. Through the Tunnel
Three pictures show the view through the "tunnel" which led from Oak Street into Flower Pot Yard. A strongly emphasised black & white colour scheme indicates a date in the range 1932 - 1942.
In each case, the photographer is standing with his back to Oak Street, and looking towards the former Flower Pot public house, which has a lamp over its door. The Great Hall is out of sight to the right. The bay window on the left is part of the rearward extension of 127 Oak Street, once a baker's shop.
NP 000 12691 Flowerpot Yard, Oak Street, Norwich
NP 000 01281 Flowerpot Yard, Norwich
NP 000 13195 wrongly captioned "Weavers windows in Georgian house, Muspole Street, Norwich"
[NP 000 13197, wrongly captioned "Flowerpot Yard, Oak Street, Norwich", shows Muspole Street.]
The errant item can be tracked down using the keywords "weavers muspole".
2. In the Yard
The "flowerpot" sequence contains two more items:
NP 000 12766 Flowerpot Yard, Norwich - I don't recognise this building.
NP 000 14839 Flowerpot Yard, Norwich - A 1954 picture of the Great Hall.
3. Out in the Street
Three pictures show the street frontage in the 1930s, when the Great Hall was hidden by a taller building in front of it, and in 1942, when many of the surrounding buildings were destroyed.
Recommended keywords are "125 oak", and "war damage oak".
NP 000 12976 Number 125, Oak Street, Norwich
NP 000 12773 Numbers 125 to 127, Oak Street, Norwich
NP 000 02546 War Damage in Oak Street, Norwich
These three pictures are discussed in detail elsewhere on this web page.
4. The Rest of Oak Street
The keywords "Oak Street Norwich" generate 49 pictures, all of them fascinating, especially when cross-referenced with corresponding items from "The Plunketts" web site.
The Worst Slum in Norwich?
According to the Plunketts, in the 1930s Flower Pot Yard was regarded as "the worst slum in Norwich". That is some claim, because the courts and yards of Norwich were notorious as places where chronic overcrowding and primitive drains led to a high death rate from disease.
Historical Background - The Old Yards of Norwich
www.iats.norfolk.gov.uk/NES/Curriculum/Norwich800/19cen/19cen-2.html
The full title of the picture shown on this web page,
by Thomas Lound (1802-1861), is "Old Yard in Oak Street".
It's not Flower Pot Yard (the buildings are too tall), but the atmosphere's right.
www.iats.norfolk.gov.uk/NES/Curriculum/Norwich800/19cen/20cen-1.html
Note the quotation which suggests that Norwich's slums were worse than the East End of London.
www.eveningnews24.co.uk/Content/DerekJames/Yards/asp/YardsHome.asp
The article "Yards and Courts of Norwich", by Derek James of the Evening News, includes
some interesting memories (mostly happy ones) from people who lived under those conditions.
The Air Raid of April 1942
We are close to the river Wensum; on the far bank there used to be a railway line, which led to a major station a few hundred yards to the south.
On the night of 27 April 1942, German aircraft made a sustained bombing raid on Norwich. Apparently, the first plane in dropped flares on the station, and successive waves of bombers used these as markers, dropping high-explosive and incendiary bombs over a wide area.
Flower Pot Yard was destroyed, as were most of the neighbouring buildings, but the Great Hall survived, though it lost all its original outbuildings.
Lt. Col. S.E. Glendenning
Colonel Glendenning was the owner of the Great Hall for 25 years from 1931 to 1956.
Undeterred by the place's unsavoury reputation at the time he bought it, he brought the building back into repair in order to prove that a sturdy old building could survive decades of misuse with a bit of help. He wasn't put off by the wartime bombing either.
After his death, the Great Hall was bought by the Norfolk Archaeological Trust, and converted into offices. We, the Norwich Unemployed Support Trust, are the current tenants.
We'd like to know more about this man who ensured that the Great Hall survived into the 21st century. If anybody out there can fill in some details, or remembers the Hall as it was years ago, please get in touch. We can be contacted on admin@nust.co.uk.
Moonraker Motorcycles
The parcel of land once occupied by Flower Pot Yard is now shared between ourselves and Moonraker Motorcycles. Their land surrounds ours on three sides. Their showroom is on one side of us; they park their van at the other side; and their workshop adjoins our building at the back.
Add to this the fact that our building is set back from the road, and placed sideways, so that only our plain end wall is visible, and you will see that we have a problem. When it comes to attracting the attention of passers by, we are completely upstaged by our colourful neighbours. It's not unknown for visitors to turn up half an hour late, after wandering up and down the street looking for us.
We occasionally hear strange thumps and whirrs as mechanics do whatever they do to motorcycles. Once, working late on a winter evening, my blood froze when I clearly heard a door open and close in what I knew to be an empty building. At first, I could hear nothing but my heart pounding. Then an engine fired up...
Norwich Unemployed Support Trust, The Great Hall, 127 Oak Street, Norwich NR3 3BP.
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[ 30 June 2004 ]