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Norwich ( NORR-ij, -itch) is a cathedral city and district in Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. It lies by the River Wensum, about 100 mi (160 km) north-east of London, 40 mi (64 km) north of Ipswich and 65 mi (105 km) east of Peterborough. The population of the Norwich City Council local authority area was estimated to be 144,000 in 2021, which was an increase from 143,135 in 2019. The wider Norwich built-up area had a population of 213,166 at the 2011 United Kingdom census.
Norwich is the seat of the see of the Diocese of Norwich. For much of the second millennium, from medieval to just before industrial times, Norwich was one of the most prosperous and largest towns in England; it was second only to London. Today, it is the largest settlement in East Anglia.
Norwich claims to be the most complete medieval city in the United Kingdom. It includes cobbled streets such as Elm Hill, Timber Hill and Tombland; ancient buildings such as St Andrew's Hall; half-timbered houses such as Dragon Hall, The Guildhall and Strangers' Hall; the Art Nouveau of the 1899 Royal Arcade; many medieval lanes; and the winding River Wensum that flows through the city centre towards Norwich Castle.
In May 2012, Norwich was designated England's first UNESCO City of Literature. One of the UK's popular tourist destinations, it was voted by The Guardian in 2016 as the "happiest city to work in the UK" and in 2013 as one of the best small cities in the world by The Times Good University Guide. In 2018, 2019 and 2020, Norwich was voted one of the "Best Places To Live" in the UK by The Sunday Times.
The capital of the Iceni tribe was a settlement located near the village of Caistor St Edmund on the River Tas about 5 mi (8 km) to the south of modern Norwich. After an uprising led by Boudica in about 60 AD, the Caistor area became the Roman capital of the Iceni ( in nowadays East Anglia ) named Venta Icenorum, literally "marketplace of the Iceni". This fell into disuse about 450 AD.
The Anglo-Saxons settled the site of the modern city some time between the 5th and 7th centuries, founding the towns of Northwic ("North Harbour"), from which Norwich takes its name, and Westwic (at Norwich-over-the-Water) and a lesser settlement at Thorpe.
Norwich became settled as a town in the 10th century and then became a prominent centre of East Anglian trade and commerce attested by the presence of a mint. The name Norvic is attested on pennies minted during the reign of Æthelstan.
It is possible that three separate early Anglo-Saxon settlements, one north of the river and two either side on the south, joined as they grew; or that a single Anglo-Saxon settlement, north of the river Wensum-Yare, emerged in the mid-7th century after the abandonment of the previous three. Mercian coins and sherds of pottery from the Rhineland dating from the 8th century suggest that long-distance trade was happening during this time. The Vikings were a strong cultural influence in Norwich for 40 to 50 years at the end of the 9th century, setting up an Anglo-Scandinavian district near the north end of present-day King Street. Between 924 and 939, during the reign of King Æthelstan, Norwich became fully established as a town, with its own mint. The word Norvic appears on coins across Europe minted during this period. The ancient city was a thriving centre for trade and commerce in East Anglia in 1004 when it was raided and burnt by Sweyn Forkbeard, the Viking king of Denmark.
At the time of the Norman Conquest, in 1067, the city was one of the largest in England. The Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, states that the city had approximately 25 churches and a population of between 5,000 and 10,000. It also records the site of an Anglo-Saxon church in Tombland, the site of the Saxon market place and the later Norman cathedral. Norwich continued to be a major centre for trade, described officially as the Port of Norwich. Quern stones and other artefacts from Scandinavia and the Rhineland have been found during excavations in Norwich city centre. These date from the 11th century onwards.
Norwich Castle was founded soon after the Norman Conquest. The Domesday Book records that 98 Saxon homes were demolished to make way for the castle. The Normans established a new focus of settlement around the Castle and the area to the west of it: this became known as the "New" or "French" borough, centred on the Normans' own market place, which survives today as Norwich Market, the largest permanent undercover market in Europe.
In 1096, Herbert de Losinga, Bishop of Thetford, began construction of Norwich Cathedral. The chief building material for the Cathedral was limestone, imported from Caen in Normandy. To transport the building stone to the site, a canal was cut from the river (from the site of present-day Pulls Ferry) up to the east wall. Herbert de Losinga then moved his See there, to what became the cathedral church for the Diocese of Norwich. The Bishop of Norwich still signs himself Norvic.
Norwich received a royal charter from Henry II in 1158, and another from Richard the Lionheart in 1194. After a riot in the city in 1274, Norwich has the distinction of being the only complete English city to be excommunicated by the Pope.
The first recorded presence of Jews in Norwich is 1134. In 1144, the Jews of Norwich were accused of ritual murder after a boy (William of Norwich) was found dead with stab wounds. William acquired the status of martyr. Pilgrims made offerings to a shrine at the Cathedral (largely finished by 1140) up to the 16th century, but the records suggest there were few of them. In 1174, Norwich was sacked by the Flemings. In February 1190, all the Jews of Norwich were massacred except for a few who found refuge in the castle.
At the site of a medieval well, the bones of 17 individuals, including 11 children, were found in 2004 by workers preparing the ground for construction of a Norwich shopping centre. The remains were determined by forensic scientists to be most probably the remains of such murdered Jews, and a DNA expert determined that the victims were all related so that they probably came from one Ashkenazi Jewish family. The study of the remains featured in an episode of the BBC television documentary series History Cold Case. A research paper from 30 August 2022 confirmed the remains were most likely Ashkenazi Jews. The paper found that many of the victims had certain medical disorders most often seen in Ashkenazi communities, suggesting that a population bottleneck had occurred among Ashkenazim before the 12th century. This challenged traditional views among historians that the bottleneck had happened between the 14th and 16th centuries.
In 1216, the castle fell to Louis, Dauphin of France, and Hildebrand's Hospital was founded, followed ten years later by the Franciscan Friary and Dominican Friary. The Great Hospital dates from 1249 and the College of St Mary in the Field from 1250. In 1256, Whitefriars was founded. In 1266 the city was sacked by the "Disinherited". It has the distinction of being the only English city ever to be excommunicated, following a riot between citizens and monks in 1274.
From 1280 to 1340 the city walls were built. At around 2+1⁄2 mi (4.0 km), these walls, along with the river, enclosed a larger area than that of the City of London. However, when the city walls were constructed it was made illegal to build outside them, inhibiting the expansion of the city. Part of these walls remains standing today. Around this time, the city was made a county corporate and became the seat of one of the most densely populated and prosperous counties of England. The engine of trade was wool from Norfolk's sheepwalks. Wool made England rich, and the staple port of Norwich "in her state doth stand With towns of high'st regard the fourth of all the land", as Michael Drayton noted in Poly-Olbion (1612). The wealth generated by the wool trade throughout the Middle Ages financed the construction of many fine churches, so that Norwich still has more medieval churches than any other city in Western Europe north of the Alps. Throughout this period Norwich established wide-ranging trading links with other parts of Europe, its markets stretching from Scandinavia to Spain and the city housing a Hanseatic warehouse. To organise and control its exports to the Low Countries, Great Yarmouth, as the port for Norwich, was designated one of the staple ports under the terms of the 1353 Statute of the Staple.
Hand-in-hand with the wool industry, this key religious centre experienced a Reformation significantly different from that in other parts of England. The magistracy in Tudor Norwich unusually found ways of managing religious discord whilst maintaining civic harmony.
The summer of 1549 saw an unprecedented rebellion in Norfolk. Unlike popular challenges elsewhere in the Tudor period, it appears to have been Protestant in nature. For several weeks, rebels led by Robert Kett camped outside Norwich on Mousehold Heath and took control of the city on 29 July 1549 with the support of many of its poorer inhabitants. Kett's Rebellion was particularly in response to the enclosure of land by landlords, leaving peasants with nowhere to graze their animals, and the general abuses of power by the nobility. The uprising ended on 27 August when the rebels were defeated by an army. Kett was convicted of treason and hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle.
Unusually in England, the rebellion divided the city and appears to have linked Protestantism with the plight of the urban poor. In the case of Norwich, this process was underscored later by the arrival of Dutch and Flemish "Strangers" fleeing persecution from the Catholics and eventually numbering as many as one-third of the city's population. Large numbers of such exiles came to the city, especially Flemish Protestants from the Westkwartier ("Western Quarter"), a region in the Southern Netherlands where the first Calvinist fires of the Dutch Revolt had spread. Inhabitants of Ypres, in particular, chose Norwich above other destinations. Perhaps in response to Kett, Norwich became the first provincial city to initiate compulsory payments for a civic scheme of poor relief, which it has been claimed led to its wider introduction, forming the basis of the later Elizabethan Poor Law of 1597–1598.
Norwich has traditionally been the home of various minorities, notably Flemish and Belgian Walloon communities in the 16th and 17th centuries. The great "stranger" immigration of 1567 brought a substantial Flemish and Walloon community of Protestant weavers to Norwich, where they are said to have been made welcome. The merchant's house which was their earliest base in the city — now a museum — is still known as Strangers' Hall. It seems that the strangers integrated into the local community without much animosity, at least among the business fraternity, who had the most to gain from their skills. Their arrival in Norwich boosted trade with mainland Europe and fostered a movement towards religious reform and radical politics in the city. By contrast, after being persecuted by the Anglican church for his Puritan beliefs, Michael Metcalf, a 17th-century Norwich weaver, fled the city and settled in Dedham, Massachusetts.
The Norwich Canary was first introduced into England by Flemings fleeing from Spanish persecution in the 16th century. Along with their advanced techniques in textile working, they brought pet canaries, which they began to breed locally, eventually becoming in the 20th century a mascot of the city and the emblem of its football club, Norwich City F.C.: "The Canaries". Printing was introduced to the city in 1567 by Anthony de Solempne, one of the strangers, but it did not take root and had died out by about 1572. Norwich's coat of arms was first recorded in 1562. It is described as: Gules a Castle triple-towered and domed Argent in base a Lion passant guardant [or Leopard] Or. The castle is supposed to represent Norwich Castle and the lion, taken from the Royal Arms of England, may have been granted by King Edward III.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Norwich”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.