96: Chapelfield

Wednesday, April 14, 2010
4:22 PM

The opening in 2005 of Chapelfield shopping mall has helped put Norwich in the top retail bracket in the country. But the area has a long history, and has served the people of Norwich for centuries.

So there was a chapel. And a field?

Long history: Chapelfield Gardens, Norwich.

Medieval England was dominated by church lands, and Norwich was no exception. The area covered by Chapelfield Road, from the Assembly House to the modern-day gardens, used to belong to a large site just inside the city walls. This formed the College of St Marys in the Fields, which trained generations of priests. A chapel was built by John le Brun in about 1248, forming an adjunct to the hospital built on the nearby site of what is today the Assembly House. From 1404, when the city was granted the right to govern itself in the form of a corporation, assemblies were held there in which citizens voted for bailiffs, the officials who were to govern Norwich for the following year. It was also the centre for the Feast of Corpus Christi, an important annual festival in which trade guilds marched in procession. The guilds were vital in forming social and economic loyalties, as well as conducting religious duties. St Marys received royal approval in 1487 when King Henry VII stayed the night at the chapel. Things all changed during the Reformation of the 1540s, when St Marys was closed down by Henry VIII. Although the site was subsequently sold to private owners the Cornwallis family Norwich citizens were keen to maintain their open space.

A matter of conflict?

By the 1600s Chapelfield had come into the ownership of the Hobart family. A Norfolk family which prospered in the legal profession, it also built the great house at Blickling Hall, near Aylsham. In 1656 Lady Hobart, wife of the attorney general, held the lease of Chapelfield. She tried to stop citizens right of free access to the area. The people resisted, and maintained their right of way. By this time Chapelfield was used as a training ground by the city militia. In 1588 it is said they trained, shooting with hand guns and arquebusks in preparation for the attack of the Spanish Armada.

This tradition of military use is said to date back even further, as archers were depicted in contemporary illustrations there before the Battle of Agincourt in the 1400s. On a grimmer note, the area was used as a mass burial ground when plague struck in 1666. Other, more nefarious activities went on there; at Christmas, 1772, a Customs and Excise officer seized a large quantity of smuggled foreign brandy. Smuggling was common at the time, due to high import duties, and many contraband goods came in via the east coast.

Another suspicious incident came in 1821, when businessman John Thurtell claimed had had been mugged in Chapelfield of the huge sum of 1,508. It was a false claim; Thurtell was in fact bankrupt, and fled to escape his creditors. (He was hanged for murder a few years later). By the mid 18th century Chapelfield had come into the hands of the city when John Hobart, duke of Buckingham, granted a 500- year lease to some aldermen of Norwich.

And it became a proper garden?

While the great Georgian Assembly House was built by Norfolk architect Thomas Ivory, much of the open space was turned into a reservoir. Measuring 88 yards by 50 yards, it was owned by the Norwich Waterworks Company. In the late 18th century it burst, and 50,000 barrels of water were lost. It was rebuilt, and also used as a public baths and skating rink. Unfortunately at least two youngsters drowned while playing there two 13- year-olds called Charles Stiles and James Nudds fell through the ice in separate fatalities in the early 1800s.

The reservoir was closed following a cholera outbreak in the mid 19th century. Finally, the area was set to be turned into a formal ornamental garden for the citizens of Norwich. The city corporation paid for it to be enclosed with iron pallisading, and opened in its current form in 1880. A large cast-iron Japanese-style pavilion built by Thomas Jeckyll for Norwich firm Barnard Bishop and Barnard, and originally exhibited at the 1878 Paris Exhibition, was bought by the corporation for a whopping 2,000. Placed in Chapelfield, it stayed there until dismantled after the second world war.

The original park was larger than today; part of the western end was cut off to make way for the inner ring road, but a row of mature trees planted by former alderman Thomas Churchman, who lived in nearby Upper St Giles, in the 18th century remain.

Anything else?

In the 19th century AJ Caley was the owner of a small chemists shop in London Road. He expanded to Bedford Street, and then took over a factory in Chapelfield Road. To keep his workers busy in winter he started making cocoa in 1886. Caleys Marching Chocolate was used as rations for soldiers during the first world war. The factory was destroyed by second world war bombing during 1942; rebuilt, it was later taken over by chocolate manufacturers Rowntree Mackintosh, then Nestle, before closing finally in the 1990s. For some years derelict, the site now forms part of the new shopping mall.

And the modern gardens?

Norwich was once described as the city of gardens for its many green spaces. The need to build housing has put paid to that, but Chapelfield Gardens is a reminder of the past. It remains a popular spot for city people to relax in, as well as hosting annual fun fairs.

However, in 1998, a proposal to build skateboard facilities there led to protest, and the formation of the Chapel Field Society to protect the site. A striking modern sculpture in the gardens commemorates an Elizabethan character named Will Kemp. An actor, comedian and contemporary of Shakespeare, in 1599 he set out on his Nine-Day Wonder, when he morrisdanced his way from London to Norwich accompanied by musicians. Must have seemed a good idea at the time.