Demolition that killed a community

February 18, 2005

MARINERS LANE
(Ber Street)

So many streets were wiped away.

Shops, factories and pubs were destroyed — it was if they had driven a stake right through the heart of a thriving city community.

A doorstep at the top of Mariners Lane provides one resident with a seat. This is not far from the quaintly named Old Friends Yard.

At one time thousands of men, women and children lived in the “village on the hill” between King Street and Ber Street in Norwich.

There were about 2,000 houses and around 40 pubs huddled on the slopes between the two historic streets.

It was a survivor of the slum clearance from the late 1950s when the “village on the hill” between Ber Street and King Street in Norwich was destroyed.

It was hailed as “the most imaginative piece of redevelopment” proposed for post-war Norwich.

The £1 million plan involved the compulsory purchase of entire streets of houses and the council claimed that the scheme marked the “beginning of the end of the old dreary, depressing, worn-out area of houses unfit for human habitation.”

Only pockets of the community remain — and a few names were kept.

Mariners Lane recalls the glory days of the Port of Norwich — Nelson Place and Compass Street once opened out of Mariners Lane.

Way back in the 14th century it was called Bliburghes Lane because a family by that name lived there.

In 1889, a description of the lane read like this: “At first a lane called Holgate or Hollewent or St John Lane, but now the Three Mariners Lane, from the sign of a public house.

“It was called Holgate and Hollewent as being a hollow way or lane, gulled or washed by the rain water and falling down it from Berstreet.”

If more of the houses and the courts and alleys had been renovated and preserved instead of bulldozed, I wonder what they would be worth in today’s housing market?

What's in a Name homepage