Castle Mound

The Norwich Society is delighted that the winter stabilizing of the SW slope has now been completed in preparation for the spring sewing of grass.

The Society first drew attention to the dilapidation of the southern surface over three years ago and has been steadily and vociferously lobbying for its restoration ever since.

The Society continues to be concerned about the state of the Victorian Gardens beyond the bridge, and structural issues between the Shire Hall and the Mound on the NE side. 21/12/09

The Norwich Society has joined with Norwich Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust (HEART) and Norwich City Council in The Wensum River Parkway Project which is designed to re-establish the river as the natural artery through Norwich and act as a driver for tourism and leisure industries.

Norwich is a river city and the river can act as a source of regeneration that benefits all its citizens.

On December 11 2009, The WRP project hosted a Stakeholders’ Conference at the Great Hospital.  The opening event was the unveiling by the Dean of Norwich of the second interpretative sign at Pull’s Ferry (see picture).  The Bishop of Norwich was present.

Afterwards the conference, in the Refectory of the Great Hospital by kind permission of the Master and Trustees, was opened by the Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP, and by Councillor Stephen Morphew, leader of Norwich City Council

The Rt Hon Charles Clarke MP chaired the meeting.  Presentations were made by
1. Michael Loveday, CEO HEART
The River in the Past
2. George Ishmael, Landscape Planning and Strategy Officer
Current Developments
3. Alec Hartley, Chairman of the Norwich Society
The Future of the Wensum in Norwich

After which there was discussion of the various possibilities for co-operation, partnership and projects.

The guest List was as follows:
Mary Ash, Chairman, Norwich Society Planning Appraisal Committee
Linda Bamment, Wensum Lodge
Peter Bentley, Chairman, The Friends of Elm Hill
Averil Brennan, Chairman, Norwich Society Environment Committee
Professor Derek Burke, Vice Chairman, Norwich Society
Anthea Cawdron, Licensee of The Ribs of Beef PH
The Rt Hon Charles Clarke, Member of Parliament
Councillor Colin Gould, South Norfolk District Council
Barbara Hacker, Chairman, The Cathedral Quarter
Alec Hartley, Chairman, Norwich Society
George Ishmael, Landscape Planning and Strategy Officer, Norwich City Council
The Rt Reverend Graham James, Bishop of Norwich
Caroline Jarrold, Group Corporate Affairs Director, Jarrold & Sons Ltd
Dr Stephen Johnson, Chairman, The Broads Authority
Professor Peter Landshoff, Chairman, Cambridge Past present Future
Professor John Last, Principal, Norwich University College of the Arts
Britt Lawrence, Programme Manager, Norwich City College Business School
Michael Loveday, CEO, Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust
Graham Macdonald, Lecturer, Norwich City College Business School
Vicky Manthorpe, Administrator, Norwich Society
Felicity Maton, Friends of the Julian Centre
Gillian McArthur RIBA, McArthur Tring, Architects
Councillor Stephen Morphew, Leader of the Council, Norwich City Council
Sally Nicolaou, Food/Beverage Manager, Nelson Table Restaurant
Dr John Packman, Chief executive, Broads Authority
Air Commodore Kevin Pellatt, Master of the Great Hospital
Stephanie Potts, General Manager, Dragon Hall
James Powell, Chairman of the Trustees, The Great Hospital
Darren Purnell, General Manager, premier Inns
Rory Quinn, Chairman, Norwich Churches Trust; Chairman, Norwich Society Conservation and Development Committee
Paul Rao for Greater Norwich Development Partnership
Caroline Richardson, General Manager, the Playhouse
Jan Scott, Manager, The King of Hearts
The Very Reverend Graham Smith, Dean of Norwich
John Spinks, Friars Quay Residents’ Association
Dr Jeremy Taylor RIBA, Vice President, Norwich Society
Philip Thomas, Estates Manager, Norwich Cathedral
Tony Jones, Planning Officer, Norwich City Council
Frank Tucker RIBA, Norwich Society
Ray Walpole, Broads Access Forum
Matthew Williams, Chairman, Norwich Rivers Heritage group
Peter Wilson MBE, Chief Executive, Theatre Royal.

The WRP Steering Executive will be assessing the discussions and releasing a summary in due course.

VM
21/12/09

The Norwich Society was saddened to learn that several of the buildings in Elm Hill, most owned by the City Council, are in a poor state of repair.

Following up detailed information provided by The Friends of Elm Hill, the Society asked the City to inspect a number of properties and as a result 29/29a and Wright’s Court will be recommended to be placed on the County’s “Buildings at Risk List” early next year. Several others also need care and attention.

In addition, the state of the road is poorly attended to; the cobbles, which are such an important part of the historical ambience of the street, have become shabby, irregular and filled with detritus and grass. Despite pleas to the City Council from Friends of Elm Hill for more than a year, nothing has been done.

Elm Hill is a showpiece street for Norwich, sought out by tourists, painters, photographers and film makers. It is vaunted on calendars, postcards, brochures and advertising. It was one of the first series of buildings that the Norwich Society was able to save from demolition by the municipal councils of the day in the 1920s and 1930s.

This neglect is quite unacceptable. Elm Hill should be one of the City’s highest priorities, why is it being allowed to deteriorate ?

Dr Jeremy Taylor, architect, architectural historian and recent chairman of the Norwich Society, has been actively involved with the Advisory Group for the restoration and enhancement of the St Peter Street memorial Gardens. Paul Monchaux is the artist chosen to create the new sculpture to complement the back of the Lutyens War Memorial when it is repositioned. He has devised a sensitive work called ‘Breath’ that is both impressively authoritative against the scale of City Hall, yet sensitive in terms of the meaning and importance of the War Memorial itself. To see the design: Norwich City Website

The Howard House (97 King Street) dates from the mid-17thC and was built for Henry Howard, 6th Duke of Norfolk. Originally extending the length of Mountergate and to the river it had extensive pleasure gardens. Said to incorporate a fine Jacobean staircase, possibly from the former ducal palace, it is now sadly derelict and steadily deteriorating. Owned by City Living Property, the developers of the St. Anne’s Wharf site, it has been surrounded for many months by scaffolding and heavy sand bags, around and through which large weeds are springing up.

Originally the Preservation Trust indicated that the developer was to undertake immediate repair and conservation, with a view to using it initially as a site office.

The Society is anxious that given the important history of the house it will not remain neglected and that later the question of some public access can be discussed. It would be very suitable for pre-booked visits from local societies and for Heritage Open Days.

Alec Hartley had a long career in journalism, working in newspapers and on television, writes KEIRON PIM. Now he puts the same skills to use in safeguarding Norwich’s heritage, which he believes is currently under threat.

IT IS “A FINE OLD CITY, TRULY… VIEW IT FROM WHATEVER SIDE YOU WILL”, but some views of Norwich are looking distinctly more fine than others at present. As the city’s history comes under the spotlight during the current Heritage Open Days, that famous old phrase by George Borrow is less true than it has been at many times since he wrote Lavengro in 1851. At present the Guildhall is wrapped in scaffolding, the Castle mound is suffering from slippage, the Memorial Gardens are a mess, and Elm Hill is being blighted by heavy traffic and vandalism.

The full text of the interview is available- here!

The Norwich Society rejects the Boundary Committee’s preferred proposal for the reorganisation of local government in Norfolk of creating a single Unitary Authority covering the whole of the county with the addition of Lowestoft. It believes that abolition of Norwich City Council, thereby placing all the City’s affairs in the hands of a massively unwieldy County Council, would only accelerate Norwich’s slow but steady decline as the county’s economic engine in recent decades.
Instead the Society supports the so-called “Doughnut Solution”, in which the Boundary Committee also sees merit, of a Unitary Greater Norwich Council within boundaries expanded to take in the City’s outlying suburbs, and a Unitary Norfolk County Council beyond.

Our main arguments are:

• Norwich is the economic engine for Norfolk. Recent research shows that it is a “Stuck City”, firing on only three cylinders, with a large but under-performing private sector. It has slipped from 12th to 20th place in the league of “most thriving cities” since 1995.
• This has happened in the three decades since the County Council took over strategic planning responsibility for Norwich’s economy. The Society feels that a bureaucratic attention deficit, brought about by the need for County Hall to listen to the many highly vocal communities within Norfolk, and the fact that representatives of the City are inevitably in a permanent minority in the county council chamber, has meant that Norfolk has failed to provide the kind of sustained infrastructure and development planning needed to attract the investment that Norwich needs.
• The county needs an economic engine firing on all four cylinders. Norfolk can only be dragged out of its under-performing position as a low-wage economy if Norwich returns to its historic role as the county’s dynamic focal point. To regain this dynamism, the City needs to be its own master, with finances derived from its true population and the dedicated cadre of high-quality officers and councillors that would be attracted to the governance of such an exciting and unique community.
• Subjecting Norwich to a Unitary Norfolk would also produce a massive democratic deficit, leading to frustration with and even more cynicism about local government among Norwich citizens.
• The Society recognises that in recent years the City Council has displayed weakness in a number of areas, including planning control and management of its own finances. We argue that the way out is to strengthen the City Council, to restore and increase the power and income lost more than thirty years ago, when the 1974 Local Government Act reduced it to District Council status. Those weaknesses are a direct result of that reduction, but the past does not inform the future.
• A strong, independent City of Norwich can only benefit the County of Norfolk. Giving the City more responsibility, power and scope, and charging it with leading the regeneration of Norfolk, could be the saving of the county and the region.

For downloadable and printable full report click here.

Changes to Government planning procedures have forced the Greater Norwich Development Partnership (GNDP) to issue a new document entitled Technical Consultation Regulation 25 (TCR25) on the Joint Core Strategy (JCS) for Broadland, Norwich and South Norfolk. We feel that the new document does nothing to change the opinions and reservations expressed in our response in February 2008 to the Joint Core Strategy Report (Issues and Options), but the extra information that it contains does require further comment.
The rapidly worsening national and international economic situation has already made meaningless the assumptions of continued expansion and development on which the JCS is founded. Worries that we expressed in our earlier response have now become major anxieties, and we see no evidence in the new document that the planners are able to even acknowledge the existence of the new realities.

In addition, developments on the ground, in the form of transport infrastructure decisions and piecemeal planning permissions already granted by or in process with individual councils, may have begun to distort and undermine the JCS before it is even formulated. Those details that do emerge in the new document reveal a lack of strategic long-term planning vision that is in danger of producing a badly-flawed and unbalanced outcome for the Greater Norwich area.

Full latest response click here • For original response click here