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Norwich and Civic Centres of the twentieth century matter not just because they are 'heritage assets' but because of what they represented about urban governance and local government.
The development of the civic centre of Norwich owed much to Robert Atkinson, who had been Director of Education at @AASchool. He produced this 'masterplan' for the site:
Two significant things about it, despite a conventional courtyard plan, and conventional classical motifs (eg portico): the crooked lateral streets and the unusual 'round tower', a nod to the East Anglian tradition of round tower churches. These were contextualising devices
Though Atkinson didn't design the City Hall in the end, he did design the Market Place (rare colour photographs from late 30s)
The City Hall was designed by Stephen Rowland Pierce and Charles Holloway James. They were inspired, as many were at this time, by Scandinavian Romantic Nationalism. Things like Stockholm Town Hall and Concert Hall (Atkinson was probably inspired by the Haymarket in front)
They were also inspired by travels round Italy. Rowland Pierce was a @the_bsr scholar and made these interesting topographical studies of urban form. The one of Zagarolo is particularly revealing of his approach:
So there were a number of 'imaginaries' at play in the creation of the Civic Centre - the Italian City State, the social democracies of Scandinavia and Georgian social and civic life too.
Architects like Charles Holloway James were part of the 'Long Arts and Crafts' - they remained interested in integration of sculpture and decorative arts w/ building. He was married to Margaret Calkin James who estd Rainbow Workshops and was renowned in her own right
The most thought-provoking sculptural decoration round the City Hall - please save yourself the Alan Partridge refs - are not Hardiman's lions
But instead James Woodford's bronze entrance doors.
Woodford was also @the_bsr and developed a specialism in contemporary bronze doors: he did these for Liverpool School for the Blind's Hope Street Extension by his friend Anthony Charles Minoprio, which I think owe something to Ausberg Cathedral and some for the RIBA (more l8r)
The Norwich doors showed the light industry and labour of Norwich and Norfolk. Shoe-making, wire-netting, chocolate production, bottle-making etc
Depictions of labour - of workers, working - are sensitively executed
Depictions of labour - of workers, working - are sensitively executed
The most moving depiction is of Robert Kett, shown here: a languid figure, hanged, with a noose still around his neck
the yeoman farmer Robert Kett led a rebellion in 1549 against the enclosure. Kett was eventually captured, found guilty of treason, and hanged from the walls of Norwich Castle - you can make out the crenellations in the background
Aldermen J F Henderson, who had been the first socialist member of the City Council (in 1902), and who claimed descent from the Kett family, was himself imprisoned in the Castle during food riots in 1885.
He was on the Municipal Offices Committee who oversaw the City Hall project. Kett was by this time a socialist hero in Norfolk; his inclusion nods to the growing power of Labour in municipal government
My concern is that the richness of that political, intellectual and social history of the idea of the #civiccentre has been emptied out. It’s just become another synonym for local authority HQs; it once meant so much more. Interested to know others' thoughts.
