A SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF 
NORWICH AND. DISTRICT 
iy 
PREFACE: THE NORWICH BLEND 
BY 
R. H. MOTTRAM. 
NorwIcH is a county borough of over 120,000 inhabitants, capital of 
Norfolk, and the largest town for over a hundred miles in any direction. 
While its self-government dates from A.D. 1194, its ancient importance 
is shown by the establishment of a mint before A.D. 700. It is thus 
Anglo-Saxon in origin, for the Romano-British centre of the district was 
three miles away to the south-east, at Caistor, and it owes nothing to 
that civilisation except possibly the direction of Ber Street and Holm- 
street (now Bishopgate) which lie along what may have been a Roman 
track to Caister by Yarmouth. 
It seems obvious that its site was chosen just where the Wensum, 
midmost and largest of the three rivers that form the estuary that drains 
the eastern half of Norfolk, passes the most marked escarpment of its 
course, and immediately receives its tributary, the Yare, under whose 
name it continues to Yarmouth. ‘The Anglo-Saxon settlement of Conis- 
ford, which stretched roughly from the present General Post Office 
along King Street to the works of J. & J. Colman, Ltd., at Carrow, 
records the lowest fordable spot on the river, which is here still tidal, and 
still enables sea-going ships to reach the centre of the City. 
The open wooden village which sprang up at this point has ever since 
been the scene of layer after layer of immigration and repeated disaster, 
the former absorbed and the latter surmounted with astonishing rapidity. 
This perhaps accounts for the special character of Norwich. Its racial 
mixture and subsequently added elements have their source in a sea- 
crossing. It has no tribal roots in the earth. It is a blend thoroughly 
mixed by the most strenuous stirring of events. 
The first documentary fact about it is an entry in the Anglo-Saxon 
