The Heart of Northwic

The King of Hearts, ancient courtyard house

Phil (my son) and Lizzy’s wedding was held at the King of Heart’s music centre in Norwich on Saturday 26th June. The weather was excellent, the bride lovely, and the venue fascinating and unique in many respects. The perfect day, in fact.

The courtyard, last Saturday

The King of Hearts is a courtyard house built in the fifteenth century (pre-Tudor, although inspection reveals that not much of the original fabric now exists. See above for courtyard). This puts the King of Hearts in Norwich’s “Oldest Houses” league. However, the historical significance of the site itself actually goes back even further, perhaps more than a thousand years to the Anglo-Scandinavian days of the ninth century. My remarks which now follow are based on the historical reconstructions suggested by archaeologist Brian Ayers in his book “Norwich” (English Heritage 1994)

It is likely that Norwich developed as a string of Anglo-Saxon settlements along the banks of the Wensum. Those settlements had names like “Coslany”, “Westwic”, and “Conesford”, names now only heard as an echo in contemporary street names. The largest and most important of those settlements was “Northwic”. The latter came to dominate the cluster of settlements and in due time they all subsumed under the name of “Northwic” or “Norwich”. Archeological evidence suggests that Northwic was a fortified settlement with what is now Fye Bridge street and Magdalen street running down the centre of the settlement. The fortified town was protected on three sides by a bank and ditch earth works, the line of which is evidenced by a combination of archeology and modern street lines. Protection on the forth side was provided by the river Wensum. Entrance to the town was via a ford or causeway crossing the Wensum at the point where we now find Fye bridge. Thus, the King of Hearts stands just inside the fortified Anglo-Scandinavian town where the main gateway to Northwic was once found. Opposite the King of Hearts, on the other side of Fye bridge street, stands the church of St. Clements. It is surely significant that St Clement was a popular Saint in Scandinavian countries, the patron saint of sailors. Let Brian Ayers continue the story:

“A characteristic location of churches to St Clement in towns is near the river, often at the main river crossing, as in Bedford or Cambridge and in Norwich (at Fye Bridge, first recorded in the twelfth century but almost certainly in existence in the pre-Conquest period). The location of St Clement, in the heart of the area probably known as Northwic, suggests that the centre of Anglo-Scandinavian activity in Norwich was on the north bank of the river Wensum, the Danes co-occupying that part of the growing city which was apparently most densely occupied by the Anglo-Saxons”

So, in short the King of Hearts is a location rich in historical associations. It harks back to the beginnings of a nation with a strong tradition of proactive maritime venturing and whose up and coming post-mediaeval merchant class had started building comfortable homes for themselves, like the King of Hearts, in England’s second city, a city that at that time covered an area greater than Southwark and London combined. Of course they had no clue what conclusion the history they were creating was driving toward but this go-getting middle class were to prove fertile ground for the reformation message of individualism. They were eventually to threaten the power of both monarchs and religious authorities. In due course they lead the world into the industrial revolution that made the modern world. Norwich was a parliamentarian city with a healthy scepticism for the mystique of authoritarian traditions. It’s not often that a wedding takes place at such a significant and meaningful venue, a venue that in a metaphorical sense was one of the gateways to the modern world.

Maids then...

Maids now...