Transcribed from the c1858 Jarrold and Sons edition, usingscans from the British Library, .
(ENTERED ATSTATIONERS’ HALL.)
PRINTED FOR THE PROPRIETOR, BY
JARROLD AND SONS, LONDON STREET, NORWICH.
It is never pleasant to have tomake apologies; and yet there are some circumstances under whichan apology is a duty, and therefore, whether pleasant or not,should be tendered cheerfully. The present is a case inpoint. The work should have been published earlier, andwould have been had it been possible. The truth is that the“Guide to Streets, &c.,” was a novel experiment,and the compiler—having nobody’s experience to guidehim—thought the task an easier one than it turned out tobe. It was at first imagined that the matter for this“Guide” could be obtained simultaneously with theinformation for the Directory itself. The attempt provedthe mistake. It was found that to do both well they must bedone distinctly and independently. Hence chiefly came thedelay, to say nothing of the fact that for many “localhabitations” it was very difficult to find the“name.” In yards and courts not a few, and insome out-of-the-way streets even, not one of the inhabitantscould give his whereabouts a designation! The task,however, has been achieved at last; and it is trusted that uponthe whole the public will think that it has been achievedwell. A few errors have crept in, doubtless; but no laborand no care have been spared to avoid them. The hope isconfidently cherished that the faults of the work will beforgiven for the sake of its excellencies, especially as thecompiler promises to “do better next time.”
Norwich, a city and county, situatein the centre of the Eastern Division of Norfolk, consists of 35parishes and 10 hamlets, covers 6,638 acres, is nearly 14 milesin circumference, and contained, in 1851, 15,000 houses and68,195 inhabitants. The undisputed metropolis of theEastern Counties, it has communication both by water and railwith the seaports of Yarmouth and Lowestoft, while it is doublyconnected with London by the Ipswich and Cambridge lines; and hasaccess to the midland and northern counties, by way ofPeterborough. Having thus indicated the locale anddimensions of the “old city,” it is but right thatbefore proceeding further we should give a brief sketch of itshistory. And this we the more readily do, inasmuch asNorwich has borne a by no means undistinguished part in thosegreat political and social movements which have made England whatshe is.
We should, however, only trifle with our readers were we toexpress any opinion upon the origin and paternity of the EastAnglian capital, for it would ill become us to pretend to piercethrough the obscurity which surrounds the early history of this,as indeed of all other cities. It is certainly but naturalto suppose that Norwich gradually rose round a military fortresserected on the site which the present Castle partly occupies; butwhether that fortress was raised by some British potentate whosevery name is mythical, or was the work of Uffa, the first Saxonking of the eastern counties, and whether, it being destroyed bySweyn, the present structure was founded by Canute, it wouldprofit us little to discuss. Declining, therefore, thesebootless speculations, we find that in the reign of Edward theConfesso