Medieval Norwich

If we define the greater English towns of the long middle ages as those which, for much or most of the period, were among the largest or wealthiest after London, almost the only consistent candidates are Bristol, Norwich and York. (Winchester and Lincoln were in decline by the thirteenth century; it was only then that Coventry, Salisbury and Newcastle rose.) All three are well documented and have yielded an increasing volume of archaeological evidence: but, for reasons not entirely clear, only York has as yet a considerable body of modern historical publications. Christian Liddy has rightly complained that Bristol ‘suffers in comparison’ with York in his comparative study of the two (War, Politics and Finance in Late Medieval English Towns [2005]), and similarly Rawcliffe and Wilson point out that ‘given its standing in the urban hierarchy [Norwich] boasts no extended history to celebrate its eminence’. Fortunately, thanks to their efforts and those of the expert team assembled here, the gap has now been largely filled. This volume covers the history and archaeology of Norwich from the Danish conquest around 870 (with a nod to previous settlement in the area) to the Reformation and Kett's rebellion, showing how a relatively late starter among the greater towns (there is no evidence for any sizeable urban settlement before the ninth century) had become, by the 1520s, second only to London; a position it retained until the mid-eighteenth century. Fourteen contributors provide a combination of chronological and thematic chapters, all of which have valuable contributions to make to our knowledge and understanding. The first two essays set the scene well: Brian Ayers's ‘urban landscape’ ranges over various types of evidence, especially archaeology, to give the necessary ‘spine’ to the whole volume: an incisive account of what is now known for the whole seven or eight centuries. James Campbell follows him with a brilliant sketch of certainties and possibilities for the less well recorded centuries before 1300, adopting Maitland's principle of working back from the known to the unknown, and ending with the tantalising possibility that a major emporium (wic) remains undetected in the Norwich area, a proto-town preceding the Danes. Professor Rawcliffe contributes, besides a sparkling introduction, surveys of health and disease and (with Christopher Harper-Bill) of the religious houses. Elizabeth Rutledge provides a masterly survey of economic life between about 1275 and 1348 (including a valuable statistical table of occupations), and Penelope Dunn a complementary survey (mostly on trade rather than crafts) after the Black Death. And David King's account of the important Norwich glass-painting school includes evidence to suggest that the surviving depiction of Beatrice of Valkenburg was intended for the Norwich Greyfriars, and not the Oxford house as previously thought; if so, that is significant, because it is the only intact English major figure known to survive from before 1300. There is the added bonus of a series of very clear period and topic maps by Phillip Judge which greatly add to the text, as well as twenty-nine plates and thirty text illustrations. A few small points could be corrected if (as it well deserves to) the book goes into a second edition. There is a mismatch between contents, text and notes on the title of Dr Rutledge's chapter; and there are two misprints confusing the sense of the preface; William Camden is oddly called John; and King's comparative statistics of glass-painters in Norwich and York could be corrected (Richard Marks's figure for York's glaziers, 1313–1513, is 85, not 64 as on p. 366). These, however, are very trivial points; this is a first-class account of a major medieval city which the publishers are quite right to call ‘the definitive history’

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