The day our history went up in smoke

July 31, 2004

Tomorrow it will be 10 years since a devastating fire swept through Norwich’s Central Library, destroying hundreds of years of history in less than 12 hours.
Jo Green remembers the events of that tragic day and the fire which, eight months later, devastated its neighbour, the Assembly House.

Firefighters tackle the blaze at Norwich's central library on August 1st, 1994.

It’s a day Norwich people will never forget. On August 1, 1994, a plume of black smoke rose steadily over the city; a sinister portent of the tragedy to come.

Many still remember what they were doing on that fateful day, and how they first heard the news that the Central Library on Bethel Street had been engulfed by fire, losing thousands of precious and priceless
documents, books and archives.

They include Jennifer Holland, the present head of libraries and information, who was driving into Norwich for a meeting at County Hall when she noticed smoke over the city centre.

“I was area librarian at Attleborough at the time. I could see this thick black plume of smoke and wondered what it was and, of course, when I got to County Hall, they told me it was the library.

“The first concern for everyone was whether there was anybody trapped in the building or hurt. The roads were all blocked so we initially all stayed at County Hall, listening to the radio.

Firefighters tackle the blaze at Norwich's central library on August 1st, 1994.

“Everyone was devastated because, although it’s something you plan for, you don’t imagine anything ever happening on the scale that it did.”
The fire broke out at 7.30am and spread rapidly through the open-plan building, which did not have water sprinklers fitted. Alerted by the alarms, those inside got out quickly and no one was hurt, but within minutes civic dignitaries, members of the public and library staff watched in tears as the fire raced through the building.

With temperatures in excess of 1000 degrees, the ferocity of the blaze was astonishing and it took 150 firefighters from across the county to put it out.

Fortunately, many of the most important records were rescued,
including those from the County Records Office, which survived because they had been stored in a fire-proof basement.

These included Norwich’s 800-year-old charter, which bears Richard the Lionheart’s seal; parish registers from 650; the first Bishop’s Register from 1299; rare medieval maps and original handwritten manuscripts of Sir Henry Rider Haggard’s novels She and King Solomon’s Mines from the early 1900s.

But there were also many losses, not least the entire contents of the lending library and the 2nd Air Division memorial room, which included military standards, silverware and personal items donated by airmen who served in Norfolk in the second world war.

As fire crews ran in and out rescuing documents and books, some staff formed human chains, loading the water-soaked documents on to a fleet of lorries.

Others, like Jennifer Holland, set to work assessing the damage and doing their best to preserve what was saved. Wet items were quickly put into cold storage before later being shipped to specialists in Oxfordshire who assessed their condition and restored what they could.
“Altogether, 125,000 lending and reference books were lost, 11,500 videos, 25,000 local-history books and 75 years of newspaper cuttings,” says Ms Holland.

Devastated: Librarian Jennifer Holland

“It was all irreplaceable but in the case of the newspaper cuttings, there was 75 years of work putting the cuttings together that was also lost.

“A lot of the local-studies material we looked at also seemed beyond repair but a specialist binding company came up to look at them and gave us a lot of help and advice.

“Within a year quite a lot of the damaged volumes had come back but nothing on the scale of the stock we had.”

Restoring the damaged books and documents was to be a long job involving many experts, including Bernard and Sarah Hiom, specialist bookbinders from Eaton, near Norwich.

They worked on several projects, including the 16 volumes which were all that survived of a collection of hundreds belonging to the parochial library of St Peter Mancroft Church, and dating from the 12th century to 1763.

Among them was a manuscript Vulgate (Latin version of the Scriptures) of 1340 on vellum and a Baskerville Bible, printed in 1763.

If the scale of the damage was vast, so was the emotional impact.
The mayor at the time, Brenda Ferris, spoke for everyone when she said: “It is much more than losing a library, it is losing a valuable piece of Norfolk life.”

But despite the tragedy, life had to continue.
Ms Holland explained: “It was a tremendous shock. But straightaway the public still needed a library service. So from the beginning the staff were really focused on how to re-establish the service, rather than dwelling on what had happened.”

Temporary library services were quickly set up across the city and within six months, temporary homes had been found for the lending and reference libraries.

“Later we had the Great Norfolk Book Hunt, asking people of Norfolk to help restore our collections by looking in attics to see if they had any books that might fill the gaps. That helped us replace some items or at least find material that covered the same sort of area as the items we lost.”

The loss of the library, although a massive blow, was also an opportunity to redevelop the heart of Norwich and so a plan emerged to build an ambitious replacement on the site, bolder and better than its predecessor.

The best hope for funding centred around the newly established Millennium Commission, and a grand scheme for a £79m library technology centre and tourist attraction dubbed Technopolis was soon put forward. When this was rejected, amid much local wrangling and heart-searching, a scaled-down version was eventually accepted.

Seven years later, in November 2001, the new Millennium Library opened its doors to the public, housed within the stunning precincts of the £65m Forum.

For many, the new library, with its state-of-the-art tech-nology and services, has proved the best possible outcome.
“The fire was terrible but also an opportunity that would not other-wise have been there,” says Jennifer Holland.

“And while the human reaction is to get up and running as quickly as possible, the fact that time was taken to consider how we can have the best possible outcome meant that, eventually, we got the fantastic Norwich and Norfolk Millennium Library.

“Yes, it took time, making the bid and deciding what was possible, but what we’ve got now is fantastic. We get 27,000 visitors a week.
“I think the local-studies collection is at 75pc of what it was and we have 100pc coverage of the subjects we had before in the lending library.

“They do say that out of something bad something good can come. In the first few days, all anybody could see the fire as was as a dreadful tragedy, which it was.

“But something very positive has come out of it and it’s a tribute to the key people who were involved at the time. They were always very concerned that Norfolk people should get the very best central library that could be delivered for them and now they have that.”

ASSEMBLY HOUSE – April 12, 1995

The fire at the Assembly House on April 12, 1995 was the second major blaze to scar the city within a year.

Destroyed: The Assembly House goes up in flames.

The beautiful 18th-century Grade I-listed building was devastated by the fire, which destroyed much of the interior, including the magnificent music room where, on September 26, 1840, the composer Liszt gave a concert.

The fire started in a store room and was caused by an electrical fault in heating and ventilation equipment.

Despite the devastation, many of the house’s valuable paintings and furniture were saved by gangs of firefighters who worked hard to rescue everything they could before the blaze took hold.

Mike King, the current manager, said: “It was devastating. There’s still a sort of question mark that hangs over the Assembly House of ‘what is it and what does it do?’ and, of course, it actually performs the function that assembly houses originally were built to fulfil – it’s a place for people to meet. Whether that’s having a cup of tea or listening to music, meeting friends or enjoying an art exhibition. And all of a sudden all those things were gone in the space of 20 minutes.”

Despite the damage, the structure of the building remained intact, allowing the trustees to carry out a complete restoration.

And although the roof and ceilings of the entrance hall and Music Room were gone, large areas of wood panelling and Georgian plasterwork also miraculously survived intact.

Within hours of the blaze, chairman of trustees Eric Sexton vowed they would restore the building to its original state.

“The Assembly House is an absolute gem,” he told reporters. “Last night, I thought that all was lost but the building is so substantial that the fire has not damaged the structure.”

True to their word, within 18 months the restoration was completed and on February 14, 1997, it reopened to the public.

Mike King: "Gone in 20 minutes".

Fans of the building were delighted with the results, although some were nostalgic for the old green colour-scheme.

Mr King said: “The music room is now stunning in ivory, the restaurant is a mixture of pinks which has been quite controversial, but it forms part of a colour scheme that would have been genuine at the time the place was built. The green colour seems to appear slightly later in the late Georgian/early Victorian period and that’s when it was painted that colour originally.

“Although we know the building itself to be Georgian, certain wings of the house are a lot older and it actually sits on a much older 12th-century monastery and church.

“Now the house looks really grand. I’ve heard it said before and would second it that there isn’t another assembly house better than this in the country except for Bath.

“To be able to walk into that grand hall and admire the architecture every single day is quite a privilege. There’s a great atmosphere and it’s well loved.”