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 The
stories behind our street names
CROME ROAD
“JOHN, me boy, paint! And if your
subject is only a pigsty, dignify it!” Such, it
is said, was “Old Crome’s dying advice to
his son.
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| John Crome. |
The great landscape painter and one of the most talented
Norwich men of all time was only 53 when he drew his
last breath.
But it became customary to call him “old”
to distinguish him from his gifted boy, John Berney
Crome.
John Crome the elder certainly practised what he preached
for he dignified everything he painted.
And boy, how he could paint.
Yet, as with so many artists, he was never really appreciated
during his lifetime and while he lived his paintings
could be bought for a few shillings.
In his early days he was always willing to paint an
inn sign for a guinea and he would do a job of signwriting
for a few pence an hour.
He once paid his way on a tour round Wales by painting
sign boards for the inns where he stayed.
So who was John Crome — landscape painter extraordinaire?
Well, he came from humble stock. Born at Norwich in
the winter of 1768. His father was a weaver who kept
the Griffin Inn in a part of Old King Street that has
long since been obliterated.
He was baptised at St George’s, Tombland. How or
where he was educated is a mystery, but we know that
by the age of 12 he was working as an errand boy for
Dr Edward Rigby of St Giles.
And it was Rigby who opened the door to another world
— one occupied by the middle-class café
society that flourished in 18th century Norwich.
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| John Crome's painting
Norwich River, Afternoon, oil on canvas. |
It was possible the kind doctor spotted a germ of artistic
talent in his black-haired, bullet-headed and mischievous
little errand boy.
By the age of 14 Crome was apprenticed to Francis Whistler
who was a house, coach and sign painter in Bethel Street.
His career was launched.
The next thing we know of Crome is that he set up a
studio in a garret with his friend Bob Ladbrooke, who
was an apprentice painter and engraver. Later, they
formed the Norwich Society of Artists and, if it hadn’t
been for Crome, there probably wouldn’t have been
the Norwich School.
Both painted pictures which they sold for a few shillings
and then Crome met Thomas Harvey, a wealthy master weaver,
who loved collecting pictures and he introduced him
to Sir William Beechey, a fashionable portrait painter
who described him as “an awkward, unformed country
lad” but shrewd when it came to art.
From then on Crome — always painting — became
a drawing master to earn his bread and butter.
In 1792, he married Phoebe Berney at St Mary’s,
Coslany. They settled in Colegate and raised a family
of six.
After 1798 he started to teach the seven pretty daughters
of John Gurney, the banker of Earlham Hall, and in 1802
he made a sketching trip with the Gurneys to the Lakes.
A few years later he went off to Paris.
It was only much later that his landscapes at their
greatest were compared with those by Rembrandt and he
was regarded as a top British painter.
It is obvious from memoirs written after his death that
people liked him. He was welcomed as a shrewd and humorous
companion. A man who was content to live his life in
Norwich.
Crome was about to start painting a masterpiece representing
a water frolic on Wroxham Broad when he was taken ill
and died a week later at the age of 53 in April 1821.
Three of his sons were good painters, especially John
Berney, and his daughter Emily also painted flower pieces
with great delicacy.
Looking at his paintings now it is clear this modest
man was a genius who many tried to copy. He is buried
in St George’s, Colegate.
COWGATE
An occupational name. And note, it is not Cowgate Street
as it was called more than half a century ago. The “gate”
would be better understood if it were spelt “gait”,
for the street did not lead to doors in the city walls.
It was the “gaits” or “tracks” along
which the city cowherd led cows to pasture from Cow
Cross in Cross Street.
CREMORNE LANE (Thorpe Road)
BACK in the 19th century Cremorne Pleasure Gardens and
Gymnasium Grounds,” near the Tollgate on Thorpe
Road, was a very popular spot.
Walter Hart, the proprietor, boasted that it was “the
largest gymnasium out of London.”
City folk would take a stroll out of Norwich and then
refresh themselves with “Morgans Fine Ales, London
Stout, spirits and other refreshments of first-class
description.”
I’ll drink to that.
CROOKS PLACE (near Chapelfield Road)
John Crook — silk merchant from Manchester —
levelled the site of old clay pits just outside the
city walls beyond Chapelfield Road and built red brick
cottages. They were described as “rather above
average” for those times.
The Victorian name for this district was New City as
it was — spreading outside the mediaeval city walls.
Up until a few years ago, the handsome Methodist Chapel
standing so proud looking over Chapelfield Road was
still referred to by more elderly people as New City.
Crooks Place School has now became Bignold First and
Middle School and the whole area has been bashed about
during various road-widening schemes — but it is
important we remember Mr Crook.
CROSS LANE (St George Street)
THE lane that connected Gildengate with Snailgate and
in more modern times the connecting link between St
George Street and Calvert Street.
In the early years of the last century there lived in
Cross Lane a wardrobe dealer, a greengrocer, a teacher
of music and several others including the landlord at
the Rifleman.
This public house is said to have been frequented by
the great artist John Crome. It was his local as he
lived just up the street.
The old house dates from about 1626 and it was here
that the wonderfully named Dirty Shirt Club meet on
Saturday nights.
A manufacturer used to pay his workmen there, and the
men stayed on for a night of merriment — meanwhile
their wives waited at home for what was left of the
week’s wages.
The Rifleman later become known as the Little Portion
Mission House.
CROWN ROAD (from Agricultural Hall Plain)
HAVE you ever noticed the crown high on the old General
Post Office, now part of Anglia TV?
It has nothing to do with our royalty.
This grand building was the home of the Crown Bank,
which suspended business way back in the summer of 1870.
Sir Robert John Harvey had “abstracted” large
sums of money from the bank and had opened fictitious
accounts and credited forged bills to his private account.
He had, just before the suspension, committed suicide
by shooting himself and was found in the shrubbery at
his home at Crown Point.
CUSTANCE LANE (Peckover Road to South Park Avenue)
JOHN Custance was a powerful merchant in old Norwich.
He was sheriff in 1723 and mayor in 1726 and 1750.
He also had a bob or two and acquired the Weston estate
at Weston Longville from William Rookwood in 1726 for
£5,000 — which was a huge sum in those days.
John lived at 23 and 25 St Andrew’s Street and
was a manufacturer of linen and a weaver of worstead.
He ran his weaving factory from a flint building in
Colegate which later became the Sun and Anchor and then
the Labour Exchange.
He died in 1752 and is buried beside his wife in St
Andrew’s Church.
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