Rambles in an Old City

Norwich's cathedral, market-place and guildhall give Susan Swain Madders starting points for a wide-ranging account of city life and local history. Writing after ten years of residence, she gathers architectural observations, biographical sketches and stories associated with familiar streets and buildings. The old city appears as a place where factories, charitable institutions, churches and fragments of medieval walls stand close together, each suggesting a different way of looking at the past.

The guildhall chapter follows civic government from a modest room for collecting market dues to a building containing council rooms, courts and cells. Elsewhere, an anecdote about a magpie carrying off historical papers shows Madders's taste for curious stories, with an explicit warning that the tale may be unreliable. Readers interested in Norwich or in the habits of nineteenth-century local historians will find a conversational account that connects physical landmarks with public customs and individual lives.