Quaint Norwich

Norwich at its Quaintest

My last post linked to my album of photos of “Ostentatious Norwich”. This post links to my Quaint Norwich album. This is what most people think Norwich is all about; the past.

The album shows buildings mostly ranging from Tudor to the 17th century. The 1507 great fire of Norwich ensured that there is little pre-Tudor architecture in Norwich apart from stone ecclesiastical buildings going back nearly a 1000 years and few of the more substantial high status structures of the wealthy from the 14th and 15th centuries. Many old houses in Norwich are rendered timber framed structures with the original wattle and daubing now replaced with brick infills and cladding, and thatching replaced by tiles. Seventeenth century houses are noticeably common in Norwich and are usually distinguished by the large dormer windows that housed weaving and spinning garrets: In the 17th century Norwich was getting rich on the textile industry, but it all fell through when power strapped Norwich could not support the mechanized spinning and weaving of the industrial revolution.

I like to think of the timber framed houses of Norwich as the final sophistication in an evolutionary development going right back to the wattle, daub, wood and thatched structures that were the architectural staple of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron age periods. The walls of these structures were, as are the timber framed houses of Norwich, not thick and represented the urgent need to at least get a thin barrier between one self and the elements. Throughout these ages the dwelling places of the living used materials largely derived from organic sources – wood, thatch, animal dung and wickerwork, but for the land of the dead stone was used - and that is as true of Norwich's legacy architecture with its mix of timber framed houses and stone churches as it was in the days of Stonehenge.

These eventually became this...

..but it was evolution rather than revolution