More Change For Norwich Riverside

[Meantime]

More change is afoot at a section of the Wensum since the departure of the sea cadets naval base. The old Thai restaurant is being given a new lease of life as a coffee and pasta house. The old girl certainly looked in need of some TLC last time I passed on the river. Hopefully the new business will breathe new life into the boat and tidy up the view from the riverside as well.

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/vagabond-restaurant-in-place-of-thai-on-the-river-norwich-1-5577131

[vanessan]

The Vagabond - a good old Italian name! A much needed facelift, I’m sure it will do well. It is the view from the river that is so bad, I do hope they don’t ignore that side!

[Chelsea14Ian]

We used to go to the Thai on the river,every time we were in Norwich.Stopped over a year ago.From the riverside as was said in a very bad state.I wish them well will check it out next time there.

[Guest]

How the riverside has changed, over the forty or so years, I've entered the city along the River Wensum. Some changes have been good, some not so good. It's funny, once upon a time, most people would have shunned the idea of living beside a 'port river', nowadays you would have to pay a premium to live there. Some of the conversions, from warehouse to apartment building, have been done really well and the old buildings character has been sympathetically updated. Some of the new buildings I'm not so keen on, but they're fully occupied so that's good. I suppose, when you live there, it's the view you have and not the view others have of you, that matters...

The Wensum riverside will continue to change too. The old 'Colmans' buildings will either be demolished or converted to another use, in the next few years. I'll always miss the Colmans/Robinsons ladies, leaning out of the windows 'whistling & hooting', as us young lads cruised past the factory, in the seventies, though... The huge site of the old power station, where the Wensum joins the River Yare, is due to be developed too. On the whole, I think they've done a pretty good job so far and I still enjoy cruising into the city along the Wensum...

Picture: Google

[chrisdobson45]

My first job, fresh out of university, was Graduate Geotechnical Engineer, working for May Gurney (Technical Services) at Trowse in 1987. My boss was Jill Bond and I helped her supervise the site investigation for the Riverside Development. In those days Riverside Road ran from the station to the lift bridge along the river, with the Boulton & Paul works to the landward side. I spent months in the old BR carriage sidings and Boulton & Paul site, digging trial pits, logging boreholes, running to the shops for fags, bacon rolls and the like (all part of the training)....

[Vaughan]

49 minutes ago, chrisdobson45 said:

In those days Riverside Road ran from the station to the lift bridge along the river, with the Boulton & Paul works to the landward side. I spent months in the old BR carriage sidings and Boulton & Paul site,

I remember it well.

Does it look better now, than it did then? It is certainly very different!

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, kingfisher666 said:

I kind of remember 'Boulton & Paul', along the Wensum on the right bank as you came into Norwich. All sorts of buildings and yards, around the Norwich City football ground. I used to work in aviation sheetmetal work and knew a couple of old boys, that had worked for Boulton & Paul, during or just after WW2 making aircraft parts. I remember they were very skilled at 'stretching & shrinking' curved components, which is almost a lost art these days... My days of 'tin bashing' are finished now, thankfully.

I don't know whether it's my mind playing tricks, but I also seem to remember a large 'Jewson' timber yard, beside the Wensum, on the King St. side. But, I maybe confusing it with the large Jewson wharf on Southtown Road in Gt. Yarmouth/Gorleston, near where I lived for a few years, during the late seventies.

 

[Guest]

Oops... Please could someone delete, the first version of my post above. I made a little change and somehow ended up with both versions posted... Haven't got a clue how I managed that... Sorry...

[ranworthbreeze]

10 minutes ago, kingfisher666 said:

Oops... Please could someone delete, the first version of my post above. I made a little change and somehow ended up with both versions posted... Haven't got a clue how I managed that... Sorry...

Deleted as requested.

Regards

Alan

[RumPunch]

Anyone know the history of the restaurant boat ?

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, RumPunch said:

Anyone know the history of the restaurant boat ?

I always thought the hull looked like it was originally from an old Dutch barge or French Péniche, but even that is a guess.

[Vaughan]

1 hour ago, kingfisher666 said:

I don't know whether it's my mind playing tricks, but I also seem to remember a large 'Jewson' timber yard, beside the Wensum, on the King St. side. But, I maybe confusing it with the large Jewson wharf on Southtown Road in Gt. Yarmouth/Gorleston, near where I lived for a few years, during the late seventies.

Coming down the left bank from Foundry bridge (and not necessarily in this order) were the Great Eastern Hotel, Jewsons timber yard, Wallace Kings furniture factory, next to the timber yard, Thos. Moy and sons coal yard, which supplied house coal to most of Norwich, Archie King's scrapyard (his son Keith had the Ferry Boatyard in Horning and was also chairman of Blakes) and Reids flour mills. At the top of King St. was Mann Egertons Motor works, which used to be a furniture factory and was also supplied with materials from the port. In among all this were at least 4 breweries and I remember Watneys, Steward & Patterson and Youngs & Crawshays. (Bullards was off St Benedicts St. in the city centre). On the other side of the river coming downstream was Norwich Thorpe station, then Thorpe goods station with behind it, the locomotive and carriage works of the Great Eastern Railway. All the rest of this area as far as Carrow Rd was the Boulton and Paul engineering works. They built aircraft during the war and had their own airfield, which is now the Heartsease housing estate, to the north of the Plumstead Rd. Downstream of Carrow Bridge was Colmans mustard on one side and the huge works of Laurence, Scott and Electromotors on the other. You would have found their electric cargo winches on every British registered merchant ship built since the 1930's. after that, opposite Trowse Eye, was the coal fired power station, with coal supplied by sea. Oh, and the coachworks of the Eastern Counties Bus Co.

No wonder Norwich was considered as a sea port! Can you imagine the thousands of people who were employed by all this industry? and now it has all gone, including Colmans.

[Guest]

36 minutes ago, Vaughan said:

Coming down the left bank from Foundry bridge (and not necessarily in this order) were the Great Eastern Hotel, Jewsons timber yard, Wallace Kings furniture factory, next to the timber yard, Thos. Moy and sons coal yard, which supplied house coal to most of Norwich, Archie King's scrapyard (his son Keith had the Ferry Boatyard in Horning and was also chairman of Blakes) and Reids flour mills. At the top of King St. was Mann Egertons Motor works, which used to be a furniture factory and was also supplied with materials from the port. In among all this were at least 4 breweries and I remember Watneys, Steward & Patterson and Youngs & Crawshays. (Bullards was off St Benedicts St. in the city centre). On the other side of the river coming downstream was Norwich Thorpe station, then Thorpe goods station with behind it, the locomotive and carriage works of the Great Eastern Railway. All the rest of this area as far as Carrow Rd was the Boulton and Paul engineering works. They built aircraft during the war and had their own airfield, which is now the Heartsease housing estate, to the north of the Plumstead Rd. Downstream of Carrow Bridge was Colmans mustard on one side and the huge works of Laurence, Scott and Electromotors on the other. You would have found their electric cargo winches on every British registered merchant ship built since the 1930's. after that, opposite Trowse Eye, was the coal fired power station, with coal supplied by sea. Oh, and the coachworks of the Eastern Counties Bus Co.

No wonder Norwich was considered as a sea port! Can you imagine the thousands of people who were employed by all this industry? and now it has all gone, including Colmans.

Wow... That is an amazing history lesson on the industrial banks of the River Wensum. Thank you, Vaughan!...

It's sad that so much of the industry has gone from Norwich. I once had a girlfriend who worked at Bally's shoes in the city and that was one of several shoe manufacturers in Norwich. Also, there were the chocolate factories, Caley's and Rowntree Mackintosh, which I assume had their roots with the 'Quakers' who had a strong base in Norfolk.

I can remember seeing coasters going 'to and thro' on the River Yare during the seventies, I particularly remember one called 'A King 1', which I assume was owned by the scrapyard, you mentioned. I also recall looking across from Burgh Castle one day and was surprised to see a small coaster making it's way along the 'Haddiscoe New Cut'... When I lived in Gorleston, during the late seventies, I can remember quite large Russian ships from the Baltic, coming up the River Yare to 'Jewsons' wharf, on Southtown Road, loaded with timber. An old chap I knew, who had spent his early working life going to sea on the herring drifters, told me numerous Russian ships would arrive and then leave Gt. Yarmouth loaded with barrels of salted herring during 'the herring run'...

So much has changed, in what seems like such a short time...

[Wussername]

The history of Norwich, the dark side of Norwich, is still remembered by some. 

The airfield at Mousehold , where the Heartsease estate now sits. The old aircraft shelters that still exist off the Salhouse Road. The company that still exists that..................

The smuggling that took place from the Frenchman to the trawlers to the coasters up  to Thorpe St

Andrew where welcome hands awaited the bounty of Brandy, Cigarettes and Cigars before continuing their voyage to Norwich

The isolated airfields of Norfolk provided a magnet for some.

I feel a bit of a shudder coming on!

Andrew

 

[chrisdobson45]

17 hours ago, Vaughan said:

I remember it well.

Does it look better now, than it did then? It is certainly very different!

Always a challenge was Riverside Road at rush hour, even then. My wife was a graduate accountant at Norwich Union and I was expected to drop her off every morning and pick her up every evening from Surrey Street. I was based in Trowse so I got to know all the shortcuts and rat runs, either Riverside Road or King Street / Ber Street / Rouen Road, etc,. those were the days when one could drive around the city centre without there being too many restrictions, one way streets and the like.

[Vaughan]

It's funny you talk about the traffic chaos that is now Norwich. What have they done to it?

Norwich was always at the forefront of new ideas, in the 60s. It was the first city in the country to install a one-way system. Later, it was the first to install traffic lights on roundabouts - I think that was the start of the problem, myself! It was also the first city in the country to use a postal code system.

Believe it or not, that big red brick building on the corner of the Yarmouth Rd, opposite the station and overlooking the yacht station, was the original head office of the Automobile Association. Not much use for that, in Norwich now!

[Vaughan]

There used to be a well known story about Archie King, the scrap man. Seems that when he died, he met St Peter at the gates, to be let into Heaven. St Peter turned round to check on his list and when he turned back, Archie King had shoved off and the Pearly Gates weren't there any more!

[Guest]

4 hours ago, chrisdobson45 said:

Always a challenge was Riverside Road at rush hour, even then. My wife was a graduate accountant at Norwich Union and I was expected to drop her off every morning and pick her up every evening from Surrey Street. I was based in Trowse so I got to know all the shortcuts and rat runs, either Riverside Road or King Street / Ber Street / Rouen Road, etc,. those were the days when one could drive around the city centre without there being too many restrictions, one way streets and the like.

If I'm going to Norwich by car, these days I'll use one or other of the 'Park & Rides'. As I usually come into the city via the A140, it's 'Harford' one, that I use the most. Norwich can be such a pain to drive around these days and the car parks are pretty expensive too, so the 'P&R' works fine for me.

[RumPunch]

I rarely go to Norwich proper these days as I'm so fed up with what they have done with the parking / traffic management

[BroadAmbition]

Seems like it is easier and most surely more enjoyable  by boat

Griff