Magdalen street and its’ surrounding

areas may be one of the most

deprived areas’ in Norwich nowadays,

but the deprivation of the area is

something that happened in the

modern era, as until the 1960s,

Magdalen street was its own “ self-

contained much of the city’s

industries.

The area would go on to become

popular with strangers (any person

not native to Norwich) and refugees,

which meant that more homes would

be built, in densely populated; yards,

courts and alleys. in the Tudor times, more wealthy residents (mainly

successful merchants) would often live in homes that were contained in

private courts.

Over time, the Magdalen Street area would go into long-term decline,

with the yards of Magdalen Street becoming home to a number of slums

before most of them were demolished in the slum clearances of the late

1930s. Only for a lot of this progress to be destroyed by the construction

of Anglia Square and the flyover.

But Magdalen Street still has a lot of history behind many of its’ buildings

and hopefully, this timeline will help provide the required context in a

semi-timeline layout.

Early History of Magdalen Street (up to 1900)

Magdalen street or as it was known for much of its’ history; Fybriggate, is

an area that is known for its’ long and rich history, The exact date of when

Fybriggate was built appears to have been lost to history, but It is most

likely that the street came into existence between the Roman and Anglo-

Norwich , during the Anglo-Scandinavian period.

Magdalen Street, Between the 1100s and the 1600s

Even though information about Magdalen street between the 1100s and

1600s is pretty patchy, we can still look into some of the history of the

buildings and structures that made up Magdalen street at the time.

Church of St. Margaret

It should not be surprising that due to how long Norwich history goes

back that the city has lost many a church. One of the churches we lost

was St. Margaret of Fyebridge , which used to be the most northern

church within the city walls, though the church was more likely have been

known by locals, for being the place where “common criminals” who were

executed, had the right to be buried.

Though it is hard to figure out what year that St. Margaret church existed

until, but it could have been still standing in 1672.

By 1806, a portion of the site was occupied by a large house, which was

owned by Thomas Tawell who would go on to give it away to the “

Hospital and School for the Indigent Blind”.

The collapse and rebuild of Fye Bridge

Before 1573, the main

bridge connecting the

Fybriggate area to the

centre of Norwich, Fye

Bridge was made out of

wood which would have

not been a bad choice

of material if it was well

maintained. Fye Bridge

would fall into disrepair

and than would go on to be destroyed by flooding in 1570

Fye Bridge would be rebuilt with a stone structure in 1573, which would

survive until 1829 when it was once again rebuilt, this time out of cast

iron.

Nowadays, the bridge is made out of brick, from its’ 1930’s

reconstruction.

Magdalen Street, Between the 1600s and the 1900s

Between the mid-1600s and late 1800s, Magdalen Street would see a

number of new pubs and factories being built, this would indicate that for

just over two centuries, at least the businesses of Magdalen street were

doing pretty well.

A large number of slums in the area by the early 1900s are likely a sign

that would indicate that Magdalen Street already had a high poverty rate,

even before that period in time.

Magdalen Street Slum-clearance during the late 1930s

To a lot of people, Norwich is known

to be a very nice city that is

brimming with history but what is

less well known is that the city has a

has one of the highest levels of child

poverty in the UK.

Nowadays many of the poorer

people that live in Norwich, live in

one of its council estates. This was

not always the case as before social

housing came into existence,

working-class people would often

have to live in overcrowded slums.

The areas around Magdalen Street

contained a number of “slum yards”, such as; Thoroughfare Yard or White

Lion Yard . The sight of horribly maintained Tudor houses would have not

made the yards look good at all and well, by the 1930s “slum clearance”

schemes were coming into fashion, many of these slum yards would be

demolished with the ones around Magdalen Street being cleared in 1936.

Even though the slum clearances displaced a lot of people to the

outskirts of Norwich, which some may see as an early form of

gentrification, Magdalen Street would be a bit luckier in this aspect as a

The 1959 Facelift of Magdalen Street

aimed to improve the appearance of the street by removing all

‘unnecessary clutter’ and making the buildings look more like each other,

by painting them pastel colours and removing unsightly advertisement

posters and signs from the facades. A portion of the costs of the “

revitalization” project was beared by the businesses of Magdalen Street,

with each of them paying £80, aka a total of £6,000 between all of the

businesses.

Tho the changes where popular at the time, some would see the pastel

shades to come to “signal gentrification in progress in countless

suburbs”.

The destruction of historic buildings during the construction of Anglia

Square and the connecting flyover

The 1960s would bring about the ideals of “progress at any cost” which

would sweep across much of the developed world, with many historic

buildings being demolished to make way for “efficient” buildings built out

of reinforced concrete.

As the areas contained in the “Norwich Over the Water” parts of Norwich

were heavily bombed in world war 2 , and as the recovery and rebuilding

work was being completed slowly, the area would become attractive for

redevelopment by the 1960s.

A lot of this redevelopment would take place around the Magdalen Street

area, between the 1960s and 1970s. There would be two major projects

that would, unfortunately, come to define Magdalen Street into the

modern day, those where;

Anglia Square Shopping Precinct (1966-1971)

In September 1964 , it was

announced the HMSO

headquarters would be moved

from London to a new office

building in Norwich, but the

project would not only end up

being for one office block, it

would be for a whole complex for

which the whole of Botolph

Street and a significant portion of Magdalen Street would be forcefully

bought from home and business owners through compulsory purchase

orders.

Between 1968 and 1970, Construction work on the first phase of the

Anglia Square shopping centre itself would take place, with the main

shopping precinct opening in 1970 and the new Odeon cinema opening a

Even tho, Anglia Square opened to the public in 1970, it was never fully

completed, with the following areas meant to have seen construction:

Phase 1: The second floor was never fully completed, with another

building meant to have been placed on top of where the newsagents

were based.

Phase 2 and 3?: Buildings were meant to be placed where the on-ground

car parks are currently based, with rumours of some plans to use the

dead space around the flyover.

Though, it is not fully known what was meant to be built during the other

phases of the Anglia Square construction as it appears that the plans for

thoes phases of Anglia Square were destroyed in the 1994 fire which

destroyed Norwich library.

You can read more about what happened during the history of Anglia

Magdalen Street Flyover

A big part of the post World

War 2 ideals of “regeneration”

was that of making cities

more accommodating to the

increasing number of cars,

Norwich would be no

exception to this trend.

As such, the 1960s would see

the construction of an inner

ring road (or as it was called; “inner link”), as part of the plans for this new

ring road, Magdalen Street would have a flyover built, for which plans

councillors voting for its’ approval.

Even after the approval of the flyover, campaigners against the project

made multiple attempts to get the council and government to change

their minds, with the Magdalen Street Traders Association even going out

Any hopes that the campaigners had for getting the flyover project

canceled would be heavily dashed when the government inquiry that was

started, due to the negative feedback from locals, would find in favour of

the plans to build the flyover.

Even with such a setback, in early 1970, locals and campaigners would

launch more objections, in an attempt to get Norwich City Council to

reconsider their plans for the flyover.

Even though they had the fact that Norwich was becoming more

residential and less industrial, thus making the inner link ring road less

necessary in their favour, the council had the fact that the Sovereign

House and Anglia Square development, had already had their planning

permission approved, with Sovereign House already having its’

construction completed. So it should not surprise anyone that the plans

to build the flyover would proceed.

time this section of the inner ring road opened to the public in early June

1972, it had cost the public over £700k (£9m in 2018) and was hailed by

some as a “traffic planner’s dream”.

Even though the Magdalen Street flyover has taken a lot of traffic off

smaller roads, it is extremely unpopular with locals who see it as being a

very ugly flyover that splits Magdalen Street into two, which in turns

Because of that dislike of the flyover, there have been plenty of calls from

demolished , but so-far it is seemingly very unlikely for this to happen as

the current redevelopment plans for Anglia Square retains the flyover.

Throckmorton Yard

The Norwich Institution For The Blind, which was set up to help the poor

blind people, would have its’ building be one of the targets of the

haphazard planning of the late 1900s, as after the site was excavated in

1988, the Victorian era building was demolished to make way for

Throckmorton Yard.

Throckmorton Yard would become a mixture of flats, terraced houses,

two shops and YMCA shared living spaces. The biggest problem really is

that the whole development is so void of architectural features, that the

yard just comes off like any other generic development, which means

that if the area goes into a large downfall it could end up becoming

“slums” like a lot of developments since the 1960s.

Modern Day Magdalen Street

Magdalen Street has been almost in a state of limbo since the early

2000s, with several attempts to redevelop the Anglia Square site being

planned, with none of the plans so far, coming to fruition.

The lack of progress on the Anglia Square redevelopment has left the

area with two massive abandoned buildings (sovereign house and the

multi-story car park), which is a massive problem as abandoned buildings

are a magnet for crime , with Sovereign house being heavily vandalised by

criminals.

Then we get onto the flyover which is an ugly bridge that effectively splits

Magdalen Street in helf and has created loads of dead space that is really

hard to use. Of cause with the boom in people using shipping containers

as a cheap way of making buildings, it should not be too surprising that

Columbia Threadneedle currently has plans to turn some of that disused

containers being available to rent out by shops and eateries, aka a bit like

Boxpark, in Shoreditch, London.

In the last couple of years, it has been noticed that a number of shops

have closed, with even charity shops starting to move out of the area.

This is a massive sign that unless things start changing around Magdalen

Street to bring more people to the area, the decline could put people off

from shopping in Magdalen Street, permanently, aka regeneration of the

area is vital.