A city palace fit for kings and queens

January 6, 2003

DUKE STREET (Charing Cross to St Mary's Plain)

Majestic building made way for ill-fated multi-storey car park

TODAY, it is a mess. The crumbling St Andrew’s multi-storey car park has been pulled down . . . but there was a time when a grand palace stood on this site.

Work to demolish St Andrew’s car park on Duke Street, in Norwich.

Kings and queens and some of the most powerful men in the land arrived to be richly entertained amid sumptuous surroundings in the palace built by the Duke of Norfolk.

It was the largest private house in the city but after a row with the mayor of Norwich he lost his temper and had it pulled down.

The 3rd Duke of Norfolk set up his town house in Norwich of 1540 on what is now Duke Street and the 4th Duke set about extending this grand house. It was a quadrangle with a court in the centre and an entrance in the middle and south side.

The north and south ranges were three storeys high and the other two ranges four storeys high. He had his own bowling alley and a covered tennis court.

The sixth Duke also spent a lot of money on the palace and it was during the rebuilding that Charles II stayed in 1671.

There is no known list of the people the king brought with him but the queen was followed by 55 people from her Lord Chamberlain to the laundry maid.

The Grand Duke’s palace stood on the site of the St Andrew’s car park and was pulled down after a row with the mayor.

Among the visitors was Thomas Baskerville who was none too impressed with the place.

He described it as “seated in a dunghole place” and that “though it has cost the Duke already £30,000 in building . . . hath but little room for garden and is pent on al sides both on this and the other side of the river with tradesmen’s and dyers’ houses”.

Then, in 1710, the mayor of Norwich Thomas Havers, refused to allow the Duke to enter the city in procession with his private Company of Comedians sounding trumpets and flying banners.

Havers may have been worried about a Jacobite riot as the Dukes were Roman Catholic.

The Duke demolished most of his palace the following year, letting one wing to the Guardians of the Poor who used it as a workhouse.

The Roman Catholic chapel survived until the 1960s when it was being used as a billiard room — it was pulled down to make way for the multi-storey car park.

• With thanks to Frank Meeres author of A History of Norwich. The early drawings come from his brilliant book.

Majestic building made way for ill-fated multi-storey car park

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