NORWICH ON THE CUSP - FROM SECOND CITY TO REGIONAL CAPITAL

Norwich in all its glory was an impressive sight to see, as the two opening quotations indicate. Visitors admired its relative size, its urban density, its attractive site, its busy industry, its famously lively population, and its long history - which was visible in the city’s glittering black flint-stone walls, its ancient castle, and in its many town churches of medieval origin. But how exactly did they ‘place’ Norwich? Their verdicts differed. George Borrow, who came to live in the city as a young man in the 1810s, described it both as ‘fine’ (an understated East Anglian compliment) and ‘old’, with a genuine urban antiquity. By contrast, the anonymous poet, who visited in 1792 but did not stay long, thought it ‘odd’ and unlike other places, although his doggerel verse did not specify the precise nature of its oddity.